Local music break

I haven't had time for blogging due to travel the last two weeks, so I'm going to ease back into it with something requiring less effort than the usual fare.

One of my favorite local bands is Honor By August, and this might be my personal favorite of their many great songs. "Johnny (Pass Me Another One)" is a poignant, heart-felt song and never fails to please when they play it at their shows.

The video up top is more or less the "official" video for the song. Below is another take on the song recorded when Honor By August played last month at the Colonial Tavern here in Fredericksburg. First, a little about this video.

A friend of ours, Young Devereaux, sits in on sax with the band just about every time they play here, and he joined them for "Johnny" that evening, and I'd recorded the whole show on a digital audio recorder I have which is great for capturing live performances. About a week later, Young mentioned to me that someone had evidently videotaped the show and put the "Johnny" track up on YouTube, but that the audio quality was pretty bad. More as an academic exercise than anything else, I downloaded a copy of the YouTube clip using savevid.com to see if I could marry up my audio track with the video. The clip below is the result.

Johnny

I haven't posted any music videos in a while (OK...I haven't posted much of anything in a while), so here's something you might like, and unless you're from the Washington, DC area you've probably never heard of them.

Honor By August played at the Colonial Tavern here in Fredericksburg last weekend and Mrs. Poolbar and I caught the show. It was something like the fifth or sixth time we've seen them there, and they never disappoint. This song is probably my favorite from them.

If they play at a bar near you, don't miss it. You won't regret it and when they hit it big, you can say you saw them "when".

Update: Damn...with these Hi-Def videos, I really need a blog template with a wider column width.

Incentives

Honor By August, one of my favorite DC-area bands, has an upcoming show at the 9:30 Club in Washington on July 11th, and they've engaged in some creative incentives to get their fans to bring as many friends as possible. To wit:

Tickets:
2 - HBA sticker
3 - Lottery entry for signed HBA drum head
5 - one free music lesson from a band member of your choice
10 - Your choice of bowling or dinner with the band at your house
15 - Personal show (invite as many as you want!)
20 - Personal show + we will make a DVD
25 - We will throw a party in your honor (we will supply band, burgers and beverages!)
50 - Michael will clean your house
100 - HBA will write a song about you and perform it at a private show at your house, which we will have just cleaned
500 - HBA will grant three wishes. Seriously

Too bad I'll be in Europe...I'm sure I could have rounded up 20 people to go.