Words by Andrew Herndon
Photos by Joel Didriksen and Shauna Alexander
Flash and I got to the show around 9:15 and while we were waiting in line the two singers from David Wax Museum showed up and asked to cut in front of us because they were running late. We let them through and got into the show in the early middle of the Lightfoot set.
The band was in full swing and according to the invite it was the first time playing as a full band. Joel was already photographing and the kids were swaying along to the music streaming out from the stage. Lightfoot is a real easygoing indie rock take on pop country, think of it as Taylor Swift going through a make-or-break lifestyle that spit her out a lonely, soulful 20-something with a penchant for whiskey and cupcakes.
If there's anything wrong with Lightfoot, it's that they're too apple pie.
The music is safe, poppy and cheerful with an undertone of self-awareness and satirical depression. The stage presence is too cute for words -- the kind of cute that you have to throw up in your hand a little and save it for all the little baby birds that are outside smoking. They had cupcakes and DIY packaged CD's. The guitar player's guitar matched his attire perfectly and the band didn't seem to have a thing out of place.
The entire show itself was an exercise in booking bands that logically should play together, but nobody in their right mind really wants to sit through band after band.
Every band could be described similar to Lightfoot. The David Wax Museum was lower-fi and slower with some upbeat moments, the singers were wearing the kind of clothes you'd think you'd see if you were listening to the CD and opened up to look at the pictures in the insert.
By the time The Junior League Band came on every person's soul was sucked to the bottom of their stomach. It was still cute but it felt like the time you broke up with your first girlfriend and listened to Chris Isaak all day thinking it was a good idea. It was not. Every band was great and worth their weight in gold, but the combination of all three was enough to lead one to an early bedtime and miss out on the afterparty with cute hand drawn directions handed out by Lightfoot next to their courtesy cupcakes.
Previously in Live DC:
- 5/22: LiveDC: Spirit Animal @ Red Palace
- 5/22: LiveDC: Astra Via @ Black Cat
- 5/22: LiveDC: Father John Misty @ Rock & Roll Hotel
- 5/22: LiveDC: Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams @ Merriweather
- 5/22: Photos: Summer Camp takes the "Ladies of Town" Drag Show
- 5/22: LiveDC: Penguin Prison & Class Actress @ RNR Hotel
- 5/21: LiveDC: James Morrison @ 930 Club
- 5/21: Photos: Que Sera L'Anniversaire @ Napoleon
- 5/21: LiveDC: La Sera/ Beach Week @ Red Palace
- 5/21: LiveDC: The Black Keys & Arctic Monkeys @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
God loves a cheerful giver.
wait... so lightfoot is a drunk, fat, lonely taylor swift? what do birds and cigarettes and puke have to do with anything? where/how do smoking birds and puke come into play?
...i don't get it.
if 'huh?' doesn't get it, it must be a great review.
Good job sir!
Still bummed I wasn't able to make it down to see Lightfoot (I'm there next time by hook/crook), but comforted by seeing Mandrew up in this.
+ great pics
I wanna do nasty things to the chick in lightfoot!!! Their music is legit, which is hard to say when comes to music now of days!!!! Two thumbs up for the music and one boner up for the chick!!!!!
So now whiskey is apple pie? Shenannigans on the writer and kudos to Jes and the rest of Lightfoot.
I wish I could have been there, but alas i live on the West Coast. Lucky for me this is what the internet is for. I am able to listen to all their other stuff and must say, Lightfoot is much better than any Taylor Swift song and twice as stylish.
Ck da dj's comment was clearly written by Lightfoot or one of her friends. please.
Really? you have to make cupcakes, put on a ditzy southern girl routine and flirt with guys to get people to come to your shows? rock on....
I'd get a boner over whiskey apple pie.
Interesting. From the review you get the impression that the show ran out of steam by the time the headliner took the stage. Not actually the case. The room was almost filled to capacity at the end of Jr League's set, and the crowd called for an encore.
Andrew, lay off of the vague, obnoxious, self-indulgent rhetoric next time, deal? That way, you know...you can do a review!
"The David Wax Museum was lower-fi and slower with some upbeat moments, the singers were wearing the kind of clothes you’d think you’d see if you were listening to the CD and opened up to look at the pictures in the insert."
really??? that's it? i was at the show... had never listened to any of the three bands before.. and I'd have to say David Wax Museum was the only slightly interesting one of the night. Is it because you didn't like the way they were dressed? they didn't have cupcakes? they're not from this lonely, little vacuum of a wanna-be-scene that DC has become? well, maybe look around a bit, they are the only of the three bands that have been getting any sort of actual press outside of the two blogs that seem to make up this DC "scene"
but i admit, Lightfoot was the most bone-able of the night.
A review is typically, in my experience, about the music and in my opinion the music was fucking awesome.
before this board blows up... remember... he's not saying the music was bad, just that it was too much of a cute thing...
that can be said for the hipster folk scene generally... we should be honest about this "culture of cute." Is it cloyingly a-political? Is it enough to say, "hey, have a cupcake and a kiss and everything will be alright?" Obviously, this is not the forum for that assessment.
Or maybe it is...
true, there were people at the show for the show till the end and asking for an encore although to be fair I remember somebody mentioning to me that they just went on for an encore very shortly after they walked off stage... as for the self indulgent rhetoric I'll quit that shit when Dave Mustaine quits Nirvana... America rules. Obama rules. O'doyle rules. Lemon Out!
Here's hoping the uber hiptsters and BYT someday include more than a sentence and a half about the MUSIC in one of their reviews. I thought Lightfoot stole the show, personally. Solid songs, beautiful lyrics, tight arrangements, gorgeous vocal harmonies.
The JL guitarist and fiddle player can both shred, no doubt, but I find the songwriting to be uninspired and they would really benefit from some backup singing to complement the lead's pretty but rather thin vocal attack.
Take it easy with the creepy sexual references towards the ladies, boys. Women in the music industry have enough obstacles without you and your boners.
yeah my favorite part of this thread is the way folks are countering andrew's fair, thoughtful and nuanced review of the night's music with: 'THAT HO MAKE MY PEEPEE STRAIGHT' as if that was coming to her defense.
Unclench, kitty. No need to be so fucking touchy. This wasn't an overly critical review. There are some compliments in there - esp. considering it's the full band's first show.
I'm bummed I missed the Lightfoot live show. They've got the biggest buzz in the area, and their music is definitely adds a unique flavor to the mix. I won't be missing the next show.
+1 Lightfoot
missed the show, alas, in tempe, arizona watching live tunes out in saguaro-landia.... lightfoot's music is sweet, we know that; clearly she is the consummate self-promotor in this insular DC 'music scene' ... and yes, fellow rockers, sometimes ambivalent press is better than no press at all. rock on lightfoot. all the best!!
I know I puked a little because mixing cupcakes, whiskey and PBR always makes me puke. My mom can tell ya how many childhood birthday parties were ruined this way. However I was much too busy enjoying the music so the smoking birds outside had to fend for themselves.
"I’m bummed I missed the Lightfoot live show. They’ve got the biggest buzz in the area."
Wait, what? No, they absolutely do not. Please stop. That is insulting. It's not enough to bribe people with fucking pastries. This city sucks sometimes.
The day cupcake mix is recalled in this city couldn't come soon enough.
so we're definitely protesting cupcake mix! glad this pressing issue has been resolved! SYSOP, YOU MAY NOW CLOSE COMMENTS ON THIS THREAD.
My bad childhood habits aside, the cupcakes were quite delicious. If you're so weak willed that you're concerned about being bribed at a rock concert maybe you shouldn't be there, you deuchebag asshole. Next time try listening to the music, which was quite good, and don't worry so much about the dangers of pastry over one's will.
It's spelled DOUCHEbag. Just FYI
boooooooooooooooo
Hahaha... we're all just terrific
I was at the show. I had a cupcake and I did take a shot of whiskey as well. Seriously, I have to say, beyond all the nonsense of what the band was wearing... or some canned information that may have been stolen from a previous press release or another review, Lightfoot was outstanding. Clever lyrics, memorable melodies and definitely staying power.
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo do any of you have EARS? that work??
"If you’re so weak willed that you’re concerned about being bribed at a rock concert maybe you shouldn’t be there"
Who me? No, I'm talking about the weak-willed people who go to their shows and fall for it. I wouldn't go to a Lightfoot concert because I think it's kind of garbage to bribe people with cupcakes and parties in order to get them to go to one of your shows. But on the other hand I guess I understand it. They played at a Lambert institution after all. They need to pull any cheap stunt they can to fill Lambert's room.
"Next time try listening to the music"
Already have. Yikes. This emergence of twangy hick rock in DC is disappointing.
"All these assholes on the internet are calling us names because of this stupid fucking movie."
"That's what the internet is for -- slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that."
I attended this show! All the performers played and looked great. Jessica and her Lightfoot band had obviously put a good deal of work into rehearsing and arranging their songs for the stage. Lex on keys was exceptional. David Wax Museum was very unique and lots of fun. Finally, Junior League sported a handful of new personnel and the perennial leader Lissy Rosemont. This was a great line up and all the bands worked very hard. Unfortunately, the case with most shows at Lambert's DC venues, the sound sucked. It wasn't very well mixed, there was feedback both in the front and moniter speakers, and the use of vocal reverb was overly indulgent. Can't wait to see Lightfoot again at a better sounding club.
Yes! Geddy Lee Guy is back!
...it's true, Jess has a magnificent cock that would put most to shame.
I need to tell everyone about the dump I took this morning because it reminded me of Jess's music.
In a word, it was very pre-cambrian.
calm down! where is all this hate coming from?
I have to go to a photo shoot in a sec, so I will tell you where all the hate comes from.
One morning, as I was returning from the gentleman's club, I happened upon two transvestites arguing. They were planning a takeover of the D.C. shitty music scene with their shitty music. I promised Sean Connory that I would stop them. One of those tranny's is Jess. The other I am still attempting to unmask. I will harass both of them until they do the world a favor and decide to die, at which point I will help them commit harakiri.
You see, hipsters don't deserve to live. They have shitty art degrees, and go to museums complaining about the amount of brush strokes a painter used without any knowledge. They go to shitty private colleges. They have shitty trust funds. Hipsters are the end of civilization. And they must be killed. All of them. I would love to go Jar-Jar Binks on them, and destroy all the things they stand for, but hipsters add nothing to a society except recycle stupidity. I, for one, am tired of hipsters pretending to be the end all of knowledge when my brothers and I died in Iraq and Afghanistan for these people. Hipsters are the new petit bourgeois, they consume everything, and contribute nothing, and all their enablers must be eliminated before this country is destroyed in a nuclear explosion of irony.
But is it my fault that Jess really does look like Geddy Lee? I mean, fuck, her nose nearly touches her chin! Her music is terrible. And her music appeals to retarded hipsters. And I hate hipsters.
Dear Jess's jilted ex-bf and his posse:
I've seen racist Tea Party homophobes with more class than you.
"By their bitterness ye shall know them."
Please move on. To another city, if possible.
Love,
Washington DC
I've never heard this band, nor do I really care too because I'm old and set in my ways, but holyfuckingshit some of ya'll are goddamned retards.
I mean I know you're only doing this because of the anonymity of the internet, which is pretty fucking gay. See? I still say shit like calling things gay, which means some of the gays (not all, some are cool) will get mad but the thing is that any of them know where to find me and can say "Michael, please don't use that word, it offends me" and I can reply with "I don't care."
That's how people handle things. Not like you fucking idiots.
Shit it would be one thing if any of your diatribes were even halfway funny, but they aren't. They aren't even amusing.
Ok, one thing was funny and probably the only thing in these thousands of words that will stick with me:
Whenever I stand near Bucket I am going to smell butterscotch. I guarantee it. It's like whenever I smell canvas it causes me to imagine diesel because of all the diesel motors and canvas in the Army.
damn. that is some nasty shit.
sort of strange review too, i mean, typical blogger stuff but byt usually doesn't go this way.
i will say this; hating on someone this hard makes them more interesting. would not have checked out jess lightfoot before i found out she inspires this sort of hatred.
this got just too quarrelsome, yes. Besides, the chick with the banjo (who I thought most impressive) isn’t even mentioned. The other chick (with the guitar) is fine, too. Those saying bullshit of her nose should have their heads examined. And saying show is a bore only because all the bands play in the same genre is absurd. If they were all crap, that would make one super fine complaint, but just because the entire lineup happened to play in the same style???.... Hmmmmmm.
this is basically really stupid.
but i like that this guy is having a lurid gay fantasy about me.
i also like how the worst things people can find to say about me is that im a hipster or i get laid too much.
jah bless the most high!
Had such a wounderful time!! Wouldn’t expect such a sweet powerful voice from someone so small. =)
Dear RC,
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. Sadly, I've watched this and the last blog devolve into some wicked shit, but now is the first time I've ever posted to a BYT site. All of this is ugly and hurtful and absolutely 100% beneath me. I would never stoop so low as this inanity.
Dear Mystery blogger,
Please stop.
this entire thread is the reason i kind of hate the internet.
unnecessary.