Petunia and the Vipers live at the Rio! Plus guest appearance by Sinéad X. Sanders (in my photo, anyhow)

Sinéad X. Sanders and Petunia! All photos by me. 

Great night! Petunia was happy with my Straight piece and the band was in fine form. Spank Williams, who I had never seen before, was great, too -- loose and exuberant while Petunia was vastly more controlled (but still joyful!). Lots of 20somethings on the dancefloor, which is nice to see (we older folks filled the seats); I don't think 20somethings of my day were into this kind of historically and culturally rich smorgasbord ("mixed roots music," so to speak); they wanted Twisted Sister and AC/DC and Led Zeppelin or maybe the Dead Kennedys but none of my friends had heard of western swing, for instance... It's one of the things that gives me hope about these kids, as is the number of same-sex and gender-neutral pairings on the floor tonight, unremarked upon by anyone except old farts like me lookin' to get hope from the young'uns. It works!  But mostly I just danced, and shot some photos, and shot a li'l video too, without worrying too much about how I was going to report about the night. Gotta check out that Fred Eaglesmith song about trucker speed that Spank covered, tho', I really dug it! (Rowan Lipkovits tells me that there is a rumour that Eaglesmith was the inspiration for Geoff Berner's "Phony Drawl"). Spank covered a Geese song, too! He and Petunia did alternating sets, Petunia first, then Spank, then Petunia, then Spank. I gather Spank lives in Montreal now so I'm real glad to have finally seen him; he did a song about being able to buy alcohol in convenience stores in Montreal, which is a civilized thing indeed (it was that way in Japan when I was there, too; my gal at the time and I would walk from the train station to my apartment and hit every 7-11 for a juice box of sake, and we'd be quite pleasantly buzzed by the time we got home). 

Petunia left "Bible Preacher" off his set but he did "Mercy" with a giant free jzz freakout as his closing number and that was magnificent. There was also an "Inside of You" with a full band arrangement, as discussed in the Straight piece, which I was very glad to hear. Later, as he was signing my records, Sinéad X. Sanders came over and we got a photo of them together! (I wrote about her here). 

Anyhow, like I say, great night. Been too long since I've seen Petunia (who will be back doing Mondays at the Princeton presently, but I'm glad it didn't stop anyone from coming out tonight). I'll be back at the Rio for their New Years Eve celebrations, which includes Kitty and the Rooster and Melody Mangler (written about here). Noah Walker, in the house tonight, tells me there's a new Kitty and the Rooster album coming soon, but shh, that might not be for public consumption yet. Apparently Jodie took the cover photo on the previous Petunia album (the heavy and lonesome one).

Best of my photos are here.  I bought one of the shirts with the snakes on it. It's like Petunia knows me or something (he kinda does, a little). 

Tonight was the first time I ever noticed that Petunia looks a bit like John Cazale, at least when Cazale wasn't wearing a horrible haircut (he has bad hair in so many of his movies it's kind of unusual to see him looking handsome, but he could). Mind you, I don't think Cazale ever wore one o' them fancy bolo ties, though he did wear a bowtie in a movie once. Am I off base?