A Night Out With Grown-ups and Good Music At The Kessler

http://novadallas.com

Friday night was a hoot. Literally... a hoot (actually several) and yodeling as well. Suzy, Geoff, Cat, Mike, Allen, Wendy, Melissa and I met up in Oak Cliff for a grown-up evening of food, booze and music. Good times!

We began the with drinks and dinner at Nova on Davis Street in Oak Cliff. Nova is a kitchy-cool sort of place with an interesting bowling ally/nouveau gourmet spin on just about everything. Don't get me wrong - it's good. Very good. But a little odd, like a Coen Brothers film (think Raising Arizona).


The beer selection is far more expansive than I would've expected. The selection ranges from Pabst Blue Ribbon to 1664 De Kronenbourg. The cocktail menu is also eclectic - ranging from the Chevy Nova (PBR + a shot of "rotgut whiskey") to Tequila Mojitos. They also have a full range of classic highball cocktails.

The food menu was equally diverse. For appetizers, we enjoyed Kelly’s Roasted Garlic Hummus with Crispy Pita and Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Fried Calamari, Corn Curry Aioli, Pulled Pork Sliders with Creamy Coleslaw and Carolina Mustard and Angus Beef Sliders with Mint. We opted for pizza as the main course and ordered the Four Meat Pie: Jimmy’s Sausage, Hamburger, Pepperoni and Sopressata, Red Onions and Four Cheese Blend and Fresh Tomato, Basil, Buffalo Mozzarella, and Balsamic drizzle.

Service was a bit on the dodgy side and it appeared like they were probably understaffed for a busy Friday evening. The waitress was sort of spacey and when she split the check for our group, the split was ANYTHING but balanced. There's probably no rational method to decipher how she did the math.

Overall though, it was a pretty good meal but it would be a good idea to specify separate tickets right up front if your with a big group.

http://www.thekessler.org/

After dinner, we made our way down the street to The Kessler at 1230 West Davis to see The Gourds in concert.

The Kessler is a pretty small venue but was well set up for the show. It reminded me a lot of the VH1 Storytellers series in the intimacy of the setting. I would like to see more bands play here.

Patrick Sweany
photo: ©2010 A Horse With No Name

Patrick Sweany opened the show and gave a very solid and enjoyable solo performance. He is a true talent with style spanning country, blues, early rock and R&B with a hint of punk and psycho-billy. I know... hard to get an idea from the description, right? It struck me as being similar to The Black Keys but definitely not in a copycat way. Patrick Sweany sounds completely original. Check out his site and listen to some of the tracks on his music page.

The Gourds are definitely a tour de force live act. I had never heard them before Geoff and Suzy invited us to go to this show with them. I'm very happy that they did because this band is now in heavy rotation in my listening list!

The Gourds hail from Austin, Texas. While their music is undeniably rooted in country and bluegrass, this Austin band seems to have pushed out the boundaries and defined a musical space all their own. In their vast catalog of songs, they manage to weave influences from nearly every genre of popular music. Hell, they even worked in several bars of Snoop Dog's Gin & Juice.

The Gourds

Although these guys seems to mostly play small venues, I wouldn't be surprised to hear them playing major festivals. The Gourds have that same sort of enjoyable jam session way about them that has been made great by bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish, The String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic and Gov't Mule... but with a distinctly Texas flair. The band seemed to be having serious fun and demonstrated an admirably high level of musicianship.

Certainly, they aren't everybody's cup of tea. But if you like the sort of free-association country, bluegrass, blues rock, jam-band blend of music that springs from the Central Texas Hill Country pedigree, you should enjoy The Gourds.

Be sure to check out The Gourds website. They have a nifty turntable music player on the site and the music is great. Get yerself a cold Shiner Bock (or maybe a PBR)  and listen to a few of their songs. Get out to see these guys live when they come to your town. You'll have a fun time, for sure!

Many thanks to our friends for coming together for such a fun evening. Let's do it again soon!