Daiana Feuer

Country-clad strangers huddled around the bar and red-lit couches, holding beers and cookies rather than guns. The DJ played Hank Williams between bands until they ran out of his material, then Loretta Lynn took over. Chilling on the tiered seating beneath The Cowboy Show’s intimate vibe, the audience sat rapt, almost hypnotized, every time a band took stage.

Amanda Jo Williams traveled west from middle of nowhere, Georgia. She is that small town girl chasing untamable lovers. Her squeaky voice reaches as high as she is tall, with an accent that washes her in the purity of cartoons.  A gently strange man called “5” wearing velour pants, long hair and big sunglasses, accompanied her on electric guitar, as if picking flowers or painting with watercolors. Lauren Brown, of He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister, added tap-dancing on a large box. The rhythm she created for “Nickel On My Back” almost turned the song into a hip hop remix. ONE heckler in the crowd felt the need to repeatedly hoot at Lauren. It can’t be helped. She is a babe. There’s got to be a rowdy cowboy in the bunch.—He’s lucky he didn’t get jumped by banditos.

Horse Thieves opened The Show with tales of raucous forms. Alex Maslansky works at Stories by day, but at night he dons a big jacket, swaggers in with a deep tone, and shakes his hand across his guitar as if it were the rolling hip of Elvis. The bleach-blond Brie Turner O’Banion on piano creates accompaniment for a brawl at the card table while adding poker-faced vocals to Maslanky’s lead. This Bonnie & Clyde had a third but essential wheel, drummer of drummers Nick Murray sat in with the band, contributing his finesse to a magical set.

When Crooked Cowboy & Freshwater Indians closed the night, the room transported to a hallucinated otherland, zenned out on the yelping coyotes of its imagination. Crooked Cowboy has got some soul. His two accompanying lady singers “doo doo doo” more meaningfully than a reverb-laden word or two could possibly equal. The tall one (name could not be found!) grabs her own throat and rattles her esophagus. When with tambourine in hand, her entire body jolted and bounced as powerfully as a wound-up toy. It was a thing of sheer beauty. Crooked Cowboy himself is one of a kind, bobbing his head surrounded by machinery, dueling basses, and a sensibility that’s spooky as a glimmering cobweb in a ghost town.

If only The Cowboy Show lived in a box you could open and partake when needed. These bands fit well together. An essence felt nourished by their crossing. In the saloon of dreams, it was a lovely night.

—Georgia Dorge