Burgers, brews, and tunes

Last night Jen and I met our friends Pete and Jen out downtown for the Matt Costa concert at the Casbah. We decided to grab a bite to eat in Little Italy beforehand, and we were going to meet at Filippi's for pizza, but it was slammed so instead we wandered down to Burger Lounge. I'd never been, but Jen had been once in Coronado, and she said it was good. It's a trendy little burger place with modern orange lighting, microbrews on tap, a minimalist menu (just beef burgers, turkey burgers, and veggie burgers), and hefty prices. Jen and I each had a burger and a beer, and we split an order of fries/onion rings. The total price tag: $33. Yowza! It was a good burger, though, and the company was great, so it was well worth it.

After dinner we shot over to the Casbah for the show. Doors were at 8:30pm, which seemed late, but we figured the opener would go on around 9:00 or so, so it didn't seem to late. Once we got inside the doors we headed to the little bar in the back to hang out, have another beer, and wait for the show to start. And we waited. And we waited. The opener, Wire Pony, finally went on around 11:00. They were a pretty good alt-country band that sounded a lot like Ryan Adams. The coolest part of their show was that the lead singer was the rhythm guitarist's dad. Matt Costa finally came on around midnight. He played the first 5 or so songs acoustic, by himself. I was extremely impressed. He's eccentric, but more than anything he's an entertainer and extremely talented. Over the course of the set he played the guitar, piano, trumpet, and harmonica, and his bandmates swapped instruments after almost every song. They played a bunch of new songs, and I'm really excited for his new album. It reminded me a lot of The Shins last album; very few of the new songs have typical poppy 3 or 4 chord progressions, and the instruments, even live, layer in an interesting way. The Casbah's a great place to see a show anyway, since it's such a small venue. We were probably 15' from the stage the entire night. The sound was less than great, but it was a great show, and I'll trade a small venue with crappy sound that gives you a great experience for a large venue with great sound that keeps you disconnected from the artists. If I wanted great sound I'd play my iTunes through my stereo. Thanks Pete and Jen for a great night. We'll have to do it again some time.