March Veracity with Elbow Coulee, AudioFaction and Mads Jacobsen

We got three bands booked for the March Veracity show and 2 of them showed up around 6, the official load-in time. The remaining act, Mads Jacobsen, is a singer/acoustic guitarist who he didn't have any gear to set up so he showed up pretty close to the start of the show.

Mads was fun to listen to both musically and for the ideas and politics that informed his songs.
He played the guitar, sang, and played the harmonica. The acoustic guitar had a nice clean sound and he was able to chunk out some nice rhythm patterns as he played. He did a great Dylan cover and some originals, I only got a bit on video though.

I enjoyed the fact that most songs had a political point of view and something to say. Nice set!


Next up was AudioFaction. They seemed quite young but they played well, doing a credible job on some covers and some nice original songs.

The lead vocalist displays a solid upper end to his vocal range over a nice guitar hook on this song:

I like the guitar driven music with the classic dual guitar, bass and drums lineup. While they did a fine job on the covers and chose classic that I like to hear, I'm a nut for original songs so I was glad to hear those as well.

Elbow Coulee took the stage for the headlining set. The keyboard player had quite a pile of devices which made him a little hard to photograph. The only good picture I got of the keyboardist left the drummer out, so I'll post 2 different pictures and you can see the whole band between them.


Elbow Coulee played some solid guitar oriented music with the keyboards providing chords in the background, playing with tempo and getting some nice rhythm section work in this number:

I like the backing vocals just kind of "ooh-ing" along and the turnaround back to the slower beat and tempo after the fast bit.

Elbow Coulee varied their sound quite a bit, occasionally bringing the keys out more prominently, playing with various envelope modifications and getting some dramatic effects.

I like the reasonably fast tempo and the good control of tempo they show within some songs, speeding up and then slowing back down for effect. You can tell the band is well rehearsed, they frequently play with tricky rhythmic variations and fast full speed song endings and pretty much everyone nails them.

Elbow Coulee is playing the middle slot at the High Dive on April 5 with 2 other bands for a very reasonable $6, check it out if you get a chance.