Spanky & the Bears, The Skellys , and Dead Spin Show Review
Spanky & the Bears, The Skellys , and Dead Spin Show Review
Written by William Morton
Show lights and a disco ball catch your eye as you enter the Wild Buffalo House of Music. The friendly security guard ushers people through the front door and the room buzzes with anticipation.
An oval-shaped bar sits directly in front of the entrance. A merch table sits to the right, a coat check area to the back right, a sitting den with three circular tables to the left, and a stage, with a dance floor at the very back of the room. A couple of people hackey sack at the center of the dance floor before the show starts and groups clump together, catching up.
At 8:48, Dead Spin took the stage, a three-piece rock band all donning sleeveless shirts; the drummer in black, the bassist in tie-dyed blue, and the guitarist and vocalist in a red and orange vintage tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt. Dead Spin had a 70s, jammy, and psych-rock feel. I’d pair Dead Spin with about half a gram of mushrooms and a coffee mug of red wine.
William Kettle, guitarist and vocalist of Dead Spin, mentioned they've been together for three to four months, and it’s their first time playing the Wild Buffalo. Despite Kettle’s guitar signal getting disturbed a couple of times throughout the show, Dead Spin kept the crowd active with jumpy bass lines, upbeat drums, and single-serve guitar licks.
After the show, Kettle explained that the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets and Jimi Hendrix are big inspirations for them. As a jam band, they lean towards the improvisational side of playing when they can. I would characterize Dead Spin as having a clean bass tone and a crunchy guitar tone. The guitarist clearly had chops and wasn’t afraid to show them. Physically, the three of them condensed towards the middle of the stage, covering about one-third of the large Wild Buffalo stage.
“Does anyone have any favorite cheeses?” Kettle asked the crowd towards the end of their set. Provolone was the most pronounced response, but Pepper Jack and Cheddar also made intelligible appearances from the crowd. “We love cheese…and this next song is dedicated to cheese!” Kettle screamed, going into one of the best cheese-themed songs I’ve heard in a while. They ended with a song that reminded me of Maggot Brain guitar combined with Rush-style keyboard playing.
At 9:27, the Skellys took the stage, a four-piece band fronted by a man in a green shirt. They had running, pushing drum beats with a more general alternative rock feeling. Easy listening. Flowy soundscapes. Major and minor sevens set a jazzier chord feel. They reminded me of sitting by the ocean with a beer, what I would squarely define as college rock, or a summer night drive, windows down, with the warm breeze circulating the salty smell of the ocean through the car… if you were to let your vision blur and allow the astigmatisms from the street lights to completely flood your field of view. Reminded me of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Tame Impala.
A couple of songs after the beginning of their set, Keenan Patrick Hansen, the guitarist and singer, picked up a mysterious box that made alarm-sounding beeps and wet-sounding plunks. Using this mystery machine – what I later found out to be a sampler – they grooved out a very enjoyable tune. During the last song, they said their outro over a jammy synth background, then after chants, played an encore of King Harvest’s classic, “Dancing in the Moonlight.” Hansen has been playing music most of his life and explained that the band name originated from him calling skeletons “skellys” as a child. “We’re [also] all bony white dudes,” Hansen said jokingly, adding one more layer of relevance to the band name the Skellys.
After the Skellys, the headliners for the night, Spanky and the Bears, took the stage. A four-piece band wearing shades. The crowd ebbed. They had a crunchy and funky tone. People were doing macarena-esque dances on the dance floor as the booze-fueled looseness from the beginning of the night was compounding. Their guitar tone and style had hints of the band Wire, and their stage presence, although not as many members, had a Talking Heads sort of aesthetic. Towards the end of the set, they busted out one of the funkiest wobbly-goobley synth solos I’ve ever heard. They reminded me of swimming underwater in an ocean of teal.
“We gotta figure out who here knows how to groove,” began one of the Spanky and the Bears members. “Spanky here is gonna give us something to groove with,” the same Spanky and the Bears member stated as a kick-off to the next song. I would characterize Spanky and the Bears as a full-stop band, leaning into one of my personal favorite moments in a song, when the whole band lines up at a full-stop. This gives a moment of silence and an auditory contrast that can’t help but get you excited about the eventual return of the music. Finally, Spanky and the Bears did an encore of a song about being 21 and not knowing how to drive.
Overall, the night at the Wild Buffalo House of Music was an eclectic mix of rock, psychedelia, and funk, leaving the audience satisfied and eagerly anticipating the next show.
Links:
Dead Spin: https://www.instagram.com/dead_spin/
The Skellys: https://www.instagram.com/the.skellys/
Spanky & The Bears: https://www.instagram.com/spanky.and.the.bears/