We are back from our holiday trip to Alabama and I may actually finish the unpacking by tomorrow.  Yeah me.  Anyway, we ate lots of holiday food and saw loads of family. There was porch-swinging and football-watching.  The rumors that Dad-in-Law and I yelled rude things at LSU when they beat Arkansas are vicious lies.  Really.  Not that it matters since the only bowl game that means anything ( IRONBOWL!!! ) was played on Saturday and my team WON!!! 

Ahem…   

We made it home early Sunday morning so I was able to watch the Steve Carlson concert on StageIT later that evening.  This is the third stageit show I seen with Steve so I am not exactly unbiased in my review. Even so, it was still awesome.  Jonah Dolan joined him for the show and played various drums while Steve played guitar and sang.  Steve opened with Pinata Novia, which has slowly become my favorite Steve Carlson song and also played Days Behind from the new-ish album.  I wish he would play Break Me but maybe it doesn’t transition well to acoustic. 

There was some discussion in the chat stream about his shirt being mostly unbuttoned until everyone remembered his mom was on chat and then we were all embarrassed to be discussing his chest in front of his mom.  He would never have known except Danneel Harris told on us and he hurridly buttoned a couple of buttons and after a few sighs the chat swung back to discussing music.   

He did a great job covering Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight and then I am embarrassed to say I don’t even know what the last song played was because Jonah moved to play the keyboard, Steve picked up his mandolin and Jensen Ackles pulled up a chair behind them and joined in on guitar and MY BRAIN BROKE.  I was pretty much worthless after that.

So basically the concert was awesome and once again I wonder why can’t Steve stand in my sunroom and play guitar all day?

I went to another StageIT concert last night.  I hadn’t planned to see another show so soon but the link to a vid by The White Buffalo came across my twitter feed and while the video was okay the sound was just amazing. Jake Smith has this gorgeous, powerful voice and I was so impressed I popped over to stageit and bought my ticket as soon as the video ended.

Jake was set up in a studio so the sound was very clear.  This was my first time to hear any of his music and I was just blown away.  He opened with Into the Sun and followed with Wrong, which has some great guitar sections. I think the next song was One Long Lone Night with the poetic line, “dreamin’ wide awake”, followed by a rowdy drinking-type song. Then he played Everynight, Everyday from his upcoming EP and the beautiful Love Song #1 he wrote for his wife. 

Yes, you all can pause for a quick “awwww, how sweet” before we move on. 

I am not sure what the next two songs were called but they were good. He ended the show with Pilot, which I liked and everyone else went wild over.  The show finished up and I just sat there because a) it was an amazing show and b) why didn’t anyone TELL ME about him?

Jake’s new EP, The Lost and Found comes out on December 6th and in the interest of full disclosure I have to mention I WON a signed copy of the new EP after the show!!  Once it gets here I will review it for you guys, after you know, I stop dancing around gleefully.

You can find Jake on his website  where you can also download a free mp3 of Pilot or over on his facebook page.

- Kit
 
edit: thanks to Penny from Unison Music for the song title correction