Ben Sollee concert last night!

[Mark Hogan]

It was great. The good son wrote it up:

With rows of folding chairs butted against one another the Rex holds about 100 people. We were fortunate enough to find four open in the front row. Starting just after 8:00 all three hit the stage and performed one of Carrie’s originals. From here on in, everyone knew they were in for an amazing night!


Carrie played one of three different instruments [Tenor Guitar, Mandolin & Fiddle] very well, singing tales of her youth and growing up with a father in the music business, whom never returned from touring Holland when she was still young and adding an occasional foot stomp to provide some percussion.


Ben took the stage and immediately captivated the audience when he went into his familiar song Its Not Impossible (Boys Don’t Cry.) A trained banjo player, Ben has incorporated the same finger plucking technique to his cello and developed his own tasty style. His voice is clean and his stories are honest. All of this while both hands seem so busy yet he makes it look effortless.


A little more rockabilly was added when Erin took the stage. She approached the mic with forearms adorned with bad tattoos hold a Gretsch hollow body guitar and her down to business attire yet with fish nets and cowgirl boots and announces “I’m gonna have to step my **** up playing after those two!”. The crowd laughed and watched as she did just that think Concrete Blonde. I’d say mostly just Johnette Napolitano doing singer songwriter stuff.


All three of them hit the stage again to finish the night out. The mixture of instruments made for a perfect group. The left the stage and the crowd persuaded them to return for an encore. It was Cat Stevens’ song Wild World from his international breakthrough album Tea for the Tillerman.

[Mark Hogan]