Ladybird
Vanish Brewing, Leesburg, VA, September 15, 2024
My friend Kevin moved out of Washington some years ago, well ahead of the pandemic, and became an unabashed Milwaukee partisan. I share his fandom for the Upper Midwest, both in the glorious summers and the snow-filled winters, although I don’t know as much about the music scene there. But sometimes he’ll feature a Milwaukee band on his podcast and I’ll make an effort to check them out, like his
recent feature on Ladybird.
Ladybird is basically a sardonic country-rock band, and as it turned out, their songwriter and lead singer Pete McDermott is from the upper Potomac where Leesburg, Virginia is oddly proximate to Frederick, Maryland, two metropolitan areas that I don’t frequent. But it was a lovely Sunday so I proposed a drive out to the country to combine some errands including the Leesburg outlet malls with a daytime gig from Ladybird in front of McDermott’s friends and family members.
Vanish is a big brewpub with associated weekend-in-the-country amenities — a petting zoo with goats, pumpkin patches, mediocre pizza, tolerable burgers, etc. It’s a weird place to see a band, but they have live music almost every weekend in the summer and fall, so it’s not outlandish that a rural-influenced band might do a show there during a rare East Coast swing.
Ladybird describes its influences as John Prine and Drive By Truckers, and has a record out called
Amy Come On Home that shows a strong Uncle Tupelo jones. There is a bleakness and a sense of resignation to the lyrics of the record that is skewered periodically with wry self-deprecating humor; this is an Upper Midwestern specialty that the Replacements and Violent Femmes also mined. What I liked in the show at Vanish was the sense of humor; they did a rowdy song called “Short King Shuffle” about 5’6’’ guys, and I felt awkwardly seen. But in the frenetic energy of the good-natured live performance with songs like “Honky Tonk Mama” it can be hard to fully appreciate the underlying desperation of the Springsteenian vibe of songs like “Kemp Lane,” where a tale of young lust is cast against a barren economic and cultural landscape. (The band alludes to Springsteen directly on more than one lyric.)
Alongside McDermott on guitar and lead vocals, the scruffily tattooed ensemble put in as much drive as you could in an outdoor daytime gig, although it’s hard to maintain energy in a that kind of setting. But there were a surprising number of folks who had come to support the band — in this context, a few dozen was a surprise — in their “band that made Milwaukee famous” t-shirts.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2024 04:29PM by zwirnm.
