Live: Two Cow Garage @ DC's 10.24.8

It used to be a lot easier to get out to Hoboken. The last time I rode out there was for the acoustic Ergs/Drag The River show at Maxwell's. It was a Saturday night and I had to wait for five trains to pass before I was able to get my bike on. This time I arrived at Christopher St. to find that there was no working machines, so I could either jump the turnstile (with a bike) and be the most conspicuous arrest of the early evening commuter set, or ride to Sixth Ave and get on there. Luckily, that passed without incident and I touched ground in Hoboken in fifteen short minutes.

DC's is out on 8th Street in Hoboken, out by Water Music. To say that it's small is a gross understatement. It makes Lakeside look expansive. I saw Micah and the new keyboard guy out front and walked through the front door seemingly on to the stage, before I realized that the band was crammed in behind the pool table and bathrooms, leaving about ten square feet for the Two Cow fans and bar-goers. It made it that much easier to find the Brothers Johnson for night two of our rock tour. We had some drinks while the gents set up and wondered openly if they had ever hosted a band there before, a fact corroborated by many a local who walked in to no small amount of confusion and left soon afterward.

The gents had to be over by 11pm, so they stepped lively and got underway by 9:30. They cranked out a good amount of the new record Speaking In Cursive, with a couple dips toward older tracks. We also managed to convince them to play Can't Hardly Wait and Born To Run for good measure. The whole thing served to assert two things: one being that Two Cow Garage are a hell of a lot of fun to see live and two, whoever the guy named Joe who convinced the band to play DCs for his birthday was, he's a hell of a lucky guy. Buy a copy of the new record here and convince them that they need to play a New York show soon. Shane was saying that they had fully intended to this time around, but they got screwed by all the CMJ shows. It's a bummer, as this is one of the best shows I've seen all year. Keep up with what the boys are doing here. Here's hoping we get them on our side of the water soon.

R

Two Cow Garage - Speaking In Cursive

Things are well in the world. There have been a slew of great releases lately, but few have been more exciting for this shut-in than the new Two Cow Garage record. It's called Speaking In Cursive and it's coming out via Virgil Dickerson and the good folk of Suburban Home (and the Vinyl Collective, if you are so enamored of the concentric spiral groove). I just got the pre-order a day or so ago, complete with buttons and beer coozie. Other than ears, what more do you need?

Speaking In Cursive marks the first Two Cow record without original drummer/Jesus doppelganger/God Of Thunder who lives and walks among us: Dustin Harigle. While Two Cow are hardly The Who, his drums were a big part of their live show. The gents seem to have found a replacement, and a full-time keyboard dude, since and expanded their arrangements accordingly. Don't expect a Marillion record or anything, but the move to a five-piece and mentoring by Brent Best (The Drams, Slobberbone) and Matt Pence (Centro-matic) has made for a bigger (and better) Five Cow sound.

Maybe you saw the This Is American Music tour last year with Glossary, The Drams, Grand Champeen and Two Cow? If you did, you probably heard some of the songs that have finally been magnetized on Speaking In Cursive, most notably Micah's stellar new Skinny Legged Girl. If that was the only track on the record, I would still put it in my top ten for the year. Lucky for us, it's not and the other dozen or so tracks are pretty damn good. Micah's got the lion's share of the tracks, but Shane and his baritone weigh in with a couple of numbers that are rapidly becoming my favorites.

And hopefully yours, too. They've cancelled more shows in NYC than they've played, but I'm looking forward to seeing them at DC's in Hoboken on 10/24. I've flown out to a handful of shows that historically would be stymied by amp failure or other enviornmental issues, but when they overcome the rock inertia, those boys tear it up live. I hear Chris Flint (manager and occasional guitarist) is out with them, so it's a fully-functioning death star. You really need to see them. Just watch out for the flying headstocks. The record's not out until 10/21, but I believe you can still snag the pre-order here. Buy it even if you don't need the buttons or the coozie.

R