[ATTENDED: April 28, 2017] Birdwing
Birdwing opened the show for Hovvdy and Pinegrove. I wasn’t familiar with their music, but I had listened to a few songs on bandcamp and I was interested to see them live.
This concert was being held at the First Unitarian Church in Philly, which I’d never been to. I had heard a lot about this venue and the really legendary bands that have played there (usually a few years before becoming legendary). I was under the impression that the venue’s capacity was like 100 people, but that is clearly not true. One source suggests that it is closer to 600. So I was surprised by just how large the basement proved to be.
But the one thing that I had heard for sure was that it was hot. And holy cow was it ever hot.
We went on a mild April evening (temp low 70s) and we arrived a few minutes before Birdwing went on. By the time they started we were both wet from sweat. There is virtually no air circulation (the ceiling fans may have been spinning only because of people fanning themselves).
The show was sold out, although the crowd was still filing in during Birdwing. We actually thought we were going to miss them entirely because of the NFL draft and the fact that the promised on street parking was nonexistent. But we arrived just in time to see the band come on.
I was rather surprised at how many people were crowding the stage when we got there. We usually like to get fairly close, but the front of the hall was pretty tightly packed. And with that heat, we didn’t want to get too close to anyone. So we hang back to the middle of the crowd and waited for them to start.
Birdwing is the brain child of Mike Dvorscak. For this show he sang and played the drum machine (for the first time live, I believe he said). For this show he was accompanied by Evan Michael Marré on bass, Sam Skinner on guitar and Stella Emmett on keys and backing vocals.
Dvorscak was a funny and self-deprecating front man, commenting that he should have thought of banter to have between songs. He joked that many of his songs were about places (as an introduction to “Lake Michigan”), although one was about he last day of the week–he then conceded that maybe many people don’t thin of Sunday as the last day of the week.
The songs were lo-fi and simple but each song had a spark of fun–either a riff or a melody or a sudden tempo change or backing vocal that elevated it above many lo-fi bands. Lyrically the songs were engaging as well.
I really enjoyed their set (about 25 minutes). It was lively and fun and the music was really catchy. I grabbed their CD on the way out so I can recall some of the songs they played:
- Episode II/hgtv
- B4
- Lake Michigan
- Sunday
For the final song (not sure which that was), it was just Mike and Stella in a much more mellow mood. And then the lights came up and that was that.
Except that before Hovvdy came on, Mike and Stella came and stood right next to us (small clubs are so much fun). I took this surreptitious (although apparently not, given that Stella’s eyeing me up).
I talked to them afterwards and they were super nice.
But I feel like somehow I was more sweaty than they were and they were up on stage!
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