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Marah plays an inspired set for a privileged few
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Marah On Tour: by Laura Guerra
Marah rolled into Memphis Tuesday night for a show at the Hi-Tone on Poplar. The night before, the band played in Oxford as a two-piece after van trouble left bassist Johnny Pisano stranded, but he was back for the Memphis show along with lead singer and guitarist Dave Bielanko and multi-instrumentalist Christine Smith.
Before the show, the band was tired and road-worn, but they took the stage like warriors, playing a short but inspired set to a very small crowd. Opening with “Limb” from their first album, Let’s Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight, the three-piece moved quickly through a string of beautifully stripped down versions of “Round Eye Blues,” “Angels on a Passing Train,” “City of Dreams,” and “Body,” which Bielanko described as a murder mystery that could easily take place in Memphis. About halfway through “Coughing Up Blood,” the first track on 2008’s Angels of Destruction, a string broke on Bielanko’s guitar, and no one could find a replacement. Therefore, the show was cut short after a pair of closing numbers on the banjo, a slow-burning “Long Hot Summer” and the great “Faraway You” from Kids in Philly.
The Memphis performance proved that whether there’s five people or five thousand people in the audience, Marah is a band that plays it like they mean it. They play music because it is what they love to do, and it shows. After the performance, the band seemed disappointed about not playing their full set, but they remained optimistic about the rest of the tour and the new album that they plan to release sometime in the fall. Marah continues their current outing tonight at The Basement in Nashville, which will be a full band performance with drums.
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