(photo credit)
What happens when a band rolls through town on a Monday night without having put a new album out in the last two years? You end up with a small crowd even in a place like The Mad Hatter… just ask The Whigs. While there was not a ton of crowd support on this night, The Whigs still brought energy and passion to the stage that seemed contagious in the room. But before there was The Whigs, there was The Features.

This four piece band from middle the Tennessee area had quite a stage presence and played a solid forty minute set for the Covington crowd. They have an album that came out in July called Some Kind of Salvation on the Kings of Leon label Bug Music, and the set focused mainly on this sophomore release. The one thing really stood out about The Features was the way singer Matt Pelham used distance from the microphone for different vocal effects. There were times it seemed he was two feet back from the mic, but singing loud enough that it would come through faintly with the rest of the music. Other times he was so close to the mic you thought he was going to eat it for a late night snack. Not having heard The Features a ton before the show, they were quite impressive and left me wanting to hear more from them after seeing the live performance.

After setting up, The Whigs stormed the stage and opened with the title track to their upcoming release, “In the Dark”. The first thing that was noticeable was they brought along quite a light show with them, especially for a place like The Mad Hatter. They were also clearly going to keep the promise that Tim Deaux made ENS during the interview a last week: it was loud and they were energized! The show here in the Cincinnati area was one of the first for the band on its current tour, and so we were treated to quite a few songs. We were even treated to “Its Automatic to Me” and “Someone’s Daughter” which were both played live for the first time. All of the new tunes are right in line with the previous work from The Whigs which definitely makes In the Dark a nice release to look forward to in early 2010.

Aside from testing out some new ones, The Whigs did also play a mix of songs from their first two albums. One of the highlights had to be “Production City” which they changed up a bit to reveal more of a ska influence than it seems to exhibit on Mission Control. Singer Parker Gispert revealed a sweeter side on a somewhat toned down “Right Hand on My Heart” which was the show stopper in my book. It was really interesting seeing this three piece in such a small setting, even for this tour. They are slated to play bigger rooms along the way, and while they could have mailed this one in, they didn’t and their passion rubbed off on the crowd. The band wrapped up with a one song encore featuring “Need You Need You” and flew off the stage just as fast as they came on.

On this night, neither band let the small crowd impact their show and those that were in attendance seemed to really appreciate and understand the effort that they gave. As a writer, and someone that represents the Cincinnati music scene, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was disappointed in our area for staying home on a Monday night. In my eyes, live music is so important to the fabric of a community and when people don’t come out to support it like you think they should it makes you wonder. There were a lot of things working against these guys on a Monday night, but even still one of their impressions of the area is that they had little support which makes them unlikely to come back through town anytime soon.

-Dave Rolfes