A Portland Debut

After months of anticipation and a postponement due to inclement weather conditions in December, the time had finally arrived to witness the Ben & Jon's first concert. A-Mac and I met up Wednesday afternoon and caravanned down to Portland for the show that night.

The show was held at a small venue in Multnomah Village called O'Connors. After helping the band set up and doing some sound checks, A-Mac and I settled in to keep an eye on the equipment as the band made a quick trip home to do some last minute things before the show.

Side note: My attempt to stay on the Paleo diet died here. It's doom came at the hands of two orders of hush puppies, two orders of wings, a hummus plate, and a tasty micro brew. While I fully intend to pick the diet back up now that I have returned home, the rest of the week was filled with even more horrible non-paleo foods that my body hates me for right now.

Around 8:00 the band had returned and had gone about mingling with the growing crowd of friends that had come by to see the show. By 8:30 the place was nearing maximum occupancy and the band had moved to the stage.

The set started with a song called "Mixer," which I recognized from one of the band's practice sessions. I can't recall all of the song names but it was one of my favorites along with "Bonnie and Clyde" that followed shortly after.

About half way into the show, the inevitable question was thrown out from somewhere in the crowd

"What's the name of your band!?"

In the hours leading up to the show, the guys were still going back and forth between some of the possible names and hadn't been able to nail one down. Previously, they had settled on "Brother Brother," but no one seemed quite content with that. This was mostly because there are three of them (with their new drummer Chris) and that name only really worked for two.

After taking a few suggestions from the crowd and opting to remain undecided on the matter for the time being, they continued on with a few more songs before moving into two cover songs. One of these was "Starlight" by Muse and it was done exceptionally well.

The second to last song of the night was called "Wonderful" and was most definitely my favorite. This was another one of their songs that I heard them practice a few months ago when it was a work in progress at the time. It was great hearing how it came out.

As an encore, Ben and Jon performed a song so new that that it didn't have a name (unless "New, New Guy" counts) and their drummer Chris hadn't had a change to hear it yet. It was a slower song and seeing them perform it while sitting next to each other on the same piano bench made it a fitting end to a night that had been so many months in the making.

I'm looking forward to the many more great shows to come and hopefully they will be able to start recording some of their stuff in the near future. Ben indicted that recording might occur in the next week to two, so hopefully shortly after that! I'll post a link whenever that happens.

-dunkie