Winding down their west coast tour, Drew played at Luna's Cafe in Sacramento on Friday night. I got there about 7:30 p.m. At that point, it was literally just me, Drew and his band. I hung out while they set up. Several of the band members were lamenting the end of their month on the road; they don't want to go back to school. They would rather just keep touring!
Luna's Cafe is a small venue. When I got there, I staked out a spot next to the bar which included a couple of bar stools and a table with a couple of chairs. It was, as Brun would describe it later, a defensible space.
Starting about 8:00 p.m., a steady stream of people started to show up and fill the Cafe. Just as I was about to give up the bar stools and concentrate on trying to hold the table, Brun and Kim showed up. By 9:00 p.m., the place was packed and they were turning people away at the door. There were probably somewhere between 75 and 100 people stuffed into the venue.
Thomas Cunningham played for about 30 minutes before Drew and his band went on stage. Sharon and Janie showed up about 10 minutes after Drew started.
Even though I had already paid the cover for Sharon and Janie, they were not letting anymore people in the door. They kept saying that there were already too many people and that the fire marshal was going to show up. I turned my back to the door for a couple of minutes and somehow Sharon was able to bully her way into the cafe. I am still not sure how she did it. An older guy behind the bar (the owner?) apologized to her a couple of times for hassle as he repeated the phrase "fire marshal."
Drew et. al. played for about an hour and twenty minutes. I always enjoy seeing Drew play live. Depending on who he has with him, there are a lot of different arrangments for most of his material. Drew can play a lot of the songs with just him and a guitar. At the other end of the spectrum, I have seen him on stage with seven or eight people, including a sax, a keyboard and Morgan singing a female vocal back-up. On this evening, they took very good advantage of the sax.
Drew, Kellen (bass) and Jason (sax) played together in a competitive jazz band in high school. At the times, you can see this influence. They will go off in some direction and starting jamming.
Although the set did not include one of my favorites, I enjoyed the evening immensely.
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