It appears that even Blaine Cartwright, seminal rock savant in redneck metal clothes and Bon Scott-meets-Molly-Hatchet screeching, has trouble drawing a crowd on a Sunday night. Fronting the usually popular, well-attended last night at the , Cartwright and his uber-sexy teen dream (Katie Perry be damned) guitar goddess wife just didn’t seem to be able to fully engage the small audience that was there, let alone attract enough to fill up the empty two-thirds of the Marquis’ space last night.
The crowd that was there, though, were treated to a solid, metal meets hard rock — fried in the South, of course — meets AC/DC concoction that threatened to explode, and bring the stage with it. Last night was the last stop on the band’s current tour, and they could almost feel Cartwrightap anxious yearning to get back home.
Which is not to say that the band didn’t put on a solid set. They played a good 80 minutes, and never once showed any indication that they were anything but consummate rockers. Through songs off the new album “From Hell to Texas” like “Why, Why, Why,” “Late Great USA,” “Ain’t Your Business” and “Drunk Drivin’ Man,” or older classics like “I’m So High (I Gotta Look Down the See the Sky),” they put on a solid show, complete with tongues flailing from frantic mouths, to provocative posturing while playing perfect, searing leads.
Ruyter Suys, smoking sexy lead guitarist, was joined by Denver’s own Karen Cuda — who had just last night returned to the tour after leaving due to a family emergency not too long before — in blaring out the ripping hardcore rock that the group’s been famous for since their 1998 inception.
Cartwright and Suys, as ready as they appeared at times to be happy to end this tour, nonetheless exhibited an easy abandonment as the show wrapped up, and seemed all too happy to walk off stage and call this tour over. Simple, yet learned, proof that rock ‘n roll, as glamorous as it may seem, will always yield to exhaustion, and provide an out, just before getting staid, plastic or old. And thatap a good thing.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
Tina Hagerling is a Denver photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. Check out more of her .
