For many years I lamented that Richmond didn’t seem like a river city despite the wide James bisecting it. Partly, the town ignored its blessings and built out, further into the suburbs. A few years ago, some of my favorite merchants located down on Canal and after the new floodwall and canal embankments were finished in 1999, I’d had hopes that the canal walk would soon be overflowing with restaurants and kiosks and clubs. So several years went by with the lovely canal area standing dead, underutilized, and I rarely walked there except when I visited the modern furniture store.
View of the canal walk.
But last night, I was happy to see that there are two big improvements. They opened a Toad’s Place for music, and adjacent to that is a low country-themed restaurant called the Highwater. I’d been hoping to go see The Hold Steady and luckily my best friend came up with an extra ticket for me. After a long day of work in Charlottesville I hiked over to Richmond and met at his house to get in the mood for music. We had a yummy dinner with southern biscuits and I had shrimp and grits with an unusually good sauce, and we got fried okra and sweet potato fries–mmmmmm—-along with some Jefferson Reserve, one of my favorites. The restaurant had screens to allow you to see what was cooking in the club. There was some opening band that we skipped in favor of trying to eat all our food, which was impossible due to its volume.
It’s a semi-trapezoidal cavernous space with a balcony that only has room for one layer of spectators. So we stayed on the lower level, on the concrete floor, and edged up pretty close. Chris has a great method of scooting to the front via the side, then dropping back through the middle, thus encouraging folks to make space for us without resentment like you’d have if you pushed straight forward. Brilliant and workable like many of his ideas! (Of course he’s mad that I’ve a) given away his secret and b) made him sound like a sneaky bastard!) First up for us was Art Brut, full of humor and pop punk vigor–lots of short, snappy, funny songs and full use of the video monitors for sing along cues. They were fun if not original.
Art Brut.
Next up was The Hold Steady, on their third album, and I liked the last 2 pretty well. By the time they came on, I was just happy, plain and simple, and really liked their show, unpretentious bar band rock. By their albums, I would have expected more posturing but no—they are old school. Good thing, since my best friend and I are also old (school!)
The Hold Steady.
It was a really great evening for me. Seeing a live band, almost any live band, is on my top 3 list of favorite activities. Chris and I have very complementary show-watching styles, just enjoying the moment as it is. Neither of us cares if the other one is dancing around as silly as we want–anything goes. Plus, we never fail to have a good time together and last night, we were just out to have fun and not even talking about work. So I was happy and relaxed and ready for more. Sadly, good things must end earlier than they should when a girl has to go to work the next day!
