As Nappy Head Jackson might say, I was feeling a little bit froggy last week and decided it might be fun to go check out some live music in Deep Ellum on a Thursday night. I figured I could worry about those little details that tend to get in the way of week night outings (like work….) at some other point in time. The show that caught my attention was Chris Holt and The Slack at Club Dada, and I figured it might be fun to head down that way to see how the Thursday evening night life was. After all, I hadn’t been to Dada in a long time, and I was way over due for an evening there.
I have to admit that it was pretty cool to hang out down there on a non weekend night. The traffic was almost non-existent getting down there, and parking was in no way an issue. There was still plenty going on, but compared to a weekend night, things were pretty quiet. The same held true for Dada; it was pretty quiet, but that made it easy to get a good seat close to the stage if you were there for the music, or a nice spot back in the corner if you were there to just hang out. The drinks specials were good, and the service was fast and friendly. It was pretty cold that night, but somehow the back patio looked really inviting and like a fun place to hang out. Not inviting enough for me to go out there…but I think it is probably the place to be in the summer.
I’ve heard about Chris Holt and his music for a few years now, and I have never had the pleasure of watching him play. I’ve heard great things about his voice and skills with a 6 string. That night he was playing with 2 of the guys from The Slack (Eric Neal and Steven Luthye) . They said they were not feeling well, but you wouldn’t have known it from their performance. Eric, Steve and Chris all played very well together and were highly entertaining. They played some of their own music as well as a few cover songs from Pink Floyd and Lead Zeppelin. While I really enjoyed the origional music, the cover songs where what really impressed me the most. Every band who has ever had an electric guitar has played Lead Zep. covers at some point in their career. Typically they can manage to pull off the mucisial portions of the songs well enough (ahhh.. I can hear stairway to heaven in the background now!) but usually fall flat as soon as the lead vocals try to sing like Robert Plant. Pink Floyd is hard to try to recreate or cover no matter what because of the style and recording methods used to get their very unique sound. However, that night at Club Dada, The Slack didn’t have any trouble with the songs at all. In fact, I think they probably had the best covers of Pink Floyd and Lead Zep that I’ve seen live. If the show that I saw was just half of the band, and the guys who were there were sick, I would love to see these guys play at full strength.