Streets of Laredo at 529, Atlanta, July 5, 2014

Last night, the Fifth of July, New-Zealand-by-way-of-Brooklyn's Streets of Laredo played at 529.  In what may become an annual tradition, Atlanta's Book of Colors opened.

Book of Colors is the project of vocalist/guitarist André Paraguassu.  It was exactly one year ago last night - July 5, 2013, to be exact - that we last heard Book of Colors, coincidentally, in the very same room. Members of Little Tybee, including Brock Scott and Nirvana Kelly, were in the audience for last year's performance, but they're now on tour now somewhere out west.  

Photo by Alex Weiss

Last year, Book of Colors had a violin and lap steel to flesh out their songs, and flautist Teresa Lemaire was off somewhere in Brazil. Last night, she was back with the band, but this time the violin was absent and the band was supported by lap steel and flute.  The set was good, but the volume was higher than it needed to be for a folk-rock set, and André's vocals and guitar drowned out most of the rest of the band, muffling the textures and flavors that the other instruments brought to the songs. 

Chesapeake, Virginia's The Hunts were up next.  The Hunts are a family band consisting of seven siblings, Jennifer, Jessica, Joshua, Jonathan, Jordan, Justin, and Jamison, and play folk rock in the style of Freelance Whales and The Lumineers.

They all appeared to be about the same general age (young), and it was a little hard for me to reconcile how they all could be siblings.  However, according to a 2013 profile, the oldest are twins, the two girls, Jenni and Jessi, and are now 24.  They're followed chronologically by brothers Joshua, 22, Jonathan, 21, Jordan, 19, Justin, 17, and Jamison, 16, so I guess it's possible for one mother to have birthed so many children.

I was surprised by how much I liked them. When it comes to folk rock, one of the things that I like is diverse instrumentation, and The Hunts played guitars, banjos, violins, mandolins, and a few stringed instruments I didn't even recognize.  I like harmony and when you have a seven-member family band, harmony pretty much goes with the territory.  I like good songwriting, and despite their tender age, they've written some pretty good songs.  One of their songs, Make This Leap, has even been picked up for a Milk Bone commercial.

They have a certain youthful wholesomeness that I thought might be disguising some sort of evangelical bent, and my radar started to go off when they announced that one song was based on a Bible story, but it turns out that the story was just The Prodigal Son and their take on it was that as a sibling band, they're always ready to take back an errant brother or sister.  So that was okay and they didn't start passing out copies of The Watchtower or the Book of Mormon or anything, and didn't sing about Jesus, so everything was cool.

The Hunts are currently touring with Streets of Laredo and after their set, they took a group picture of the two bands on the tiny 529 stage.

  

Frankly, I thought the youngsters stole the show from Streets of Laredo, who are also a seven-piece band fronted by family members, a husband and wife, and the brother of the husband.  The Streets play a more rock-influenced brand of folk rock, accentuated with electric guitars and drum pads rather than Appalachian string instruments, but the inventiveness of The Hunts' instrumentation and songwriting and harmonies had me won over. 

For what it's worth, the audience seemed to prefer Streets of Laredo, and were whooping and hollering and dancing along from the very first song.  "You're the flint that started the fire," percussionist Dave Gibson declared, but apparently they say that at all their gigs. 

It didn't take too long for me to get caught up in the audience's enthusiasm, and during one song, members of The Hunts came bursting out of the dressing room and danced along with the Streets' music at the front of the stage.  They disappeared soon after into the warm Atlanta night, but the audience kept the energy level up, dancing and buying shots for keyboardist Sarahjane Gibson (it was her birthday) and surprising the band with a two-beat clap-along to close out their set.