A good 40 hours removed from Poor Man’s Whiskey’s performance of “Dark Side of the Moon Shine” at the Domino Room Saturday night, an Americana-laced version of “Breathe” is still bouncing around in my skull.
The show, which if it wasn’t sold out was pretty damn near, judging from the mass of costumed but mostly un-costumed fans that packed themselves into the club, was much more than the bluegrass take on Dark Side of the Moon it was billed as.
First off, Poor Man’s Whiskey, although opening with a largely bluegrass set as The Wizard of Oz played on an entire wall of the venue, played a hell of a lot more than mere bluegrass – touching on plenty of rock, funk and electronica.
But secondly, the show as a whole is much more than I, and many others, expected. It’s a musically masterful performance of a classic piece of rock and roll history that doesn’t take itself seriously – at all. The costumes are hilarious and the lights and lasers instantly remind you of staring at the ceiling of one of America’s many laser domes at any given point of the last quarter of the 20th century.
What Poor Man’s Whiskey has done with this project is take the first recognized and respected piece of psychedelic art and dragged it across the cultural divide, into middle America. It takes the UK-made album to Kansas where the picking of mandolin and stand-up bass melt into Floyd’s wailing guitars and spacey effects. And the result is not just intriguing, but so entertaining that it – almost impossibly – a stands alone as a piece of its own. And again, it's also incredibly humorous at times.
As the band, with Eli Jebidiah and Jason Beard shredding at the front of the stage, wrapped up “Eclipse” and thus the entire album, they launched into a funkier, more rocking, more jammy conclusion that kept people dancing – including the 4 Peaks Festival founders who had organized the show and appeared on stage (all in Oz costumes) near the conclusion.
Check out the video and hit up the print edition of The Source for a full review.
