Georgia Music

I started in Dahlonega and have made my way down to Atlanta over this week. It was a beautiful rainy that started in Ft. Payne, Alabama from the night before. The Crimson Moon in Dahlonega was a really nice little cafe. It's where Shawn Mullins and Zac Brown played in their earlier years. I showed up for the "Open mic" night. "Open mic's" are hard for me to sit through in Nashville. Sure enough it was a "Waiting for Guffman" scene until Riley Biederer gets up. A 14 years old who's got a lot of potential as a singer and writer. I spoke to her dad (Frank) for a while and really didn't know what to say other than I hope he keeps her focused on doing "her thing" and not to get too caught up in people telling her how to do it. Who really knows, though. Really talented though for her age.

The next day I drove through more rain to Atlanta. There I FINALLY saw Jonathan Tyler and The Northern Lights at Smiths Olde Bar. Funny, after 9 weeks in Texas, I'd kept missing them (their outta Dallas, TX). I think I'd heard too much hype about them cuz I thought they were good but not great. The singer's got a really good voice but his tone is pretty nondescript to me. Really good band, though. LOVED the bar!. 3 separate rooms from what I can gather in walking through and the "band room" sounds great and plenty large enough for a coupla 100 people.

The next night I went to Vinyl (in Center Stage bar complex) to see "Band to Band Combat". Kind of a battle of the bands with the proceeds going to charity. 5 bands of a LOT of screaming (or at least for the last 4 bands). Shoulda been called the "Battle of ear fatigue". There was an 80's "hair band" cover band that was understandably screamers but the kids that were even doing the country stuff screamed their asses off way too much for my taste. Maybe all the kids in the crowd like all of that nowadays but their ain't a LICK of tone that comes through when they are doing that (and all the voices all come off sounding the same because of it). "Dallas" (as in Dallas, GEORGIA I found out ) was my favorite band and screamed the least and was actually pretty good. Been together 6 months. Wore the same typa shirts and baseball caps like all the Texas acts seemed to do (Rita, it's spreading damn it!). A lot of potential in their songs, the singer and the band. They worked hard at entertaining, as well :) I'm off to find more and gonna be in this area for a few more weeks...