Cowboy Mouth at Antone's

Tonight I went to see Cowboy Mouth at Antone's. I'd never been to a concert there, though I've walked by it numerous times (it's near a club I visited during our customer conference last spring), and it always sounds like good fun is going on inside. I had seen Cowboy Mouth before, but last time it was at La Zona Rosa, which has some similarities to Antone's as a venue. I think the stage is higher at LZR, which worked well with CM. But I digress.

The opening band was called Johnny Sketch, and they were amazing! I love to see band members that look like they are enjoying themselves, and this was definitely the case with this group. Add to that fact the non-standard instrumentation including a tenor sax and a trumpet (they said flugelhorn, but it wasn't that big), and you find yourself in one rocking ensemble. We were a little late arriving at the show, so we missed probably 15 minutes of their set. Regardless, they were a lot of fun (you know that's the case when you remember the name of the opening band at the end of the show).

Then CM came onstage. They have a new bass player since I last saw them, but they seemed like they've been playing together forever. Fred (the drummer/lead singer) will not allow the crowd to just listen -- the audience is part of a Cowboy Mouth show. You have no choice but to get involved: singing, jumping, clapping, screaming -- it's all expected. Fred threw a half dozen sticks into the crowd, and Johnny even threw out his pick. It was tons of fun, especially watching the people who were there. After two solid hours of "Southern Louisiana Rock" I walked back to my car trying to learn how to hear again. And we didn't even stay near the speakers where we started out.

Ah, good fun. And all the better to enjoy with your girlfriend when both husbands are out of town. It's mostly nice just to pretend we aren't normally in bed by 9:30.