Matt visits New Orleans

I flew to New Orleans yesterday. Widespread Panic is having their annual Halloween show tonight (and an additional one tomorrow) and the mgmt all came down to join the fun.

We landed and found ourselves in the middle of downtown by about 3pm CT. After checking-in and establishing an internet connection (for my own mental survival) at the ol' Iberville Suites, my boss and I went down to Acme Seafood to catch a much-needed meal. What was only going to be an easy shrimp po' boy and a beer turned into two pitchers of the local Abita brew, hushpuppies, po' boys, and six of the biggest half-shell oysters I have ever seen. Stuffed and quite nearly defeated, we left Acme a bit sluggish (and a good bit buzzed) and returned to the hotel

After we got back to the hotel, I went to my room, caught a movie on HBO and napped until dinner time. When I awoke I was still full from Acme Seafood and looking for something to do. The original plan was to head over to Jackson Square and see Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power play at One Eyed Jack's. Mulling it over, we come to the conclusion that we can catch both when they play Athens in February. As an alternative, the band's tour manager calls and has some extra tickets to offer us to the Rose Hill Drive show at the House of Blues. So, of course, we go.

When I first heard of Rose Hill Drive, I only heard their name. I thought they MUST be an emo band or perhaps something like Good Charlotte. I'm not at all knocking that type of music, it just is not my personal cup o' tea. However, I did remember seeing them on Conan months back, but I couldn't recall their sound. So I did what any logical person does these days and typed "myspace.com/rosehilldrive" into the computer and voila: "Sneak Out". They sounded like a nice mix of Stone Temple Pilots and Queens of the Stone Age--thus me being a diehard STP fan and my boss being all about QOTSA, off we went.

The crowd was pretty good--became bigger as the night went on, and these guys didn't disappoint. However, I was a little bummed that we missed the opening act: Colour Revolt (I've heard good things). Back to RHD, they lived up to the one song we heard online and also busted out a pretty decent version of Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun". The bass player has quite a set of pipes on him, and both he (and I think his brother) and the guitar player were well schooled on their crafts.

Afterwards, we went over to a bar called "Alibi" to catch up with some of the road crew as well as meet some new faces that would also be joining the festivities this weekend. One in particular was a NOLA local who has never seen Panic before, tonight being his first show. I always get excited when I meet someone who is about to go see the band for the first time. "You will not be disappointed" is what I kept reassuring him. I don't know if he believed me, but I'm looking forward to hearing about his reaction this evening.

The bar was a simple space, but the ceased to stop playing Panic on the stereo the whole time we were there--which was really weird and ironic. I'm not one of those people who listens to only Panic leading up to a show. In fact, I'm the complete opposite: I listen to anything but. It ruins the performance for me if I do.
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I was up at 8am this morning to catch and early-bird breakfast in the lobby and the complimentary USA Today. I've got to catch up on a little work and make sure all my ducks are in a row for the show tonight, and hopefully catch a nap before I head to the venue at 2. But I wanted to type a good bit about my trip.

I'll be back with more later.

*Rose Hill Drive and Colour Revolt will perform at the Melting Point in Athens next week on Thursday Nov. 6th. You should go.