The Walkmen, Davidson, 3.10.06

Davidson has a habit of bringing painfully uncool bands to play--Black Eyed Peas, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, etc.--so I was shocked--shocked--to hear The Walkmen would be playing Duke Family Performance Hall. Now, here's the thing about bands playing Davidson: we don't have a good venue for a rock concert. The sound sucks for that sort of gig in Duke, Baker, the 900 room, everywhere (except maybe a frat house), so you're starting out with a less-than-ideal set-up to begin with. Will and I snuck into The Walkmen's sound check to see first hand their struggles against an environment designed more with The Royal Shakespeare Company than indiedom in mind. All sorts of sound issues, wedges, other stuff I don't understand...

For the show (tickets, incidentally, were $3 for students and $10 for the general public, so you'd have to be an idiot not to go, even without an opener, unless you were seeing The Silver Jews) the orchestra pit was cleared for people to stand right up at the stage, and that, from what I could tell, was where the WALT-Libertas-Woodrow crowd all congregated; pretty much everyone I still know at Davidson was in the pit. The Dave-Matthews-John-Mayer-Black-Eyed-Peas crowd sat uncomfortably (I assume) behind us. But we were all pretty psyched. 'Cause hey, The Walkmen are one of Summer Roberts' favorite bands!




I'm not a huge Walkmen fan, but I saw them at ACL and I have a couple albums. Of course, they played "The Rat" and "Little House of Savages," which are the only two Walkmen songs I'm familiar with. Sorry; no set list. The echo in Duke left their sound a bit hollow, and the lead singer's mic had all sorts of problems; he really, really wanted to throw that fucker. The band didn't seem like they were having a good time onstage--no joking with each other, no interacting with the crowd, just played straight through. They played well, but between their emotionless demeanor and the inherent trudgery of the music, I grew bored. The contrast between sound check, when they all joked around seemed to be having fun, and the show disappointed me. That said, I had a good time and I'm glad the fates allowed me to be down there for the show.