We picked up Sam from Toad’s Place, where he had just finished his sound check with Tally Hall, at 5:30 p.m. and made our way to Modern Apizza.
There was, as always, a wait, but we were seated relatively quickly and our waiter was attentive. We ordered bruschetta and two large pizzas. One plain cheese and one with cherry peppers. We fully understood that we would have extra pizza, but we wanted Sam to have some leftovers to bring back with him so the band would know what they were missing. Our food arrived quickly and we were able to stuff ourselves completely with time to spare before Sam had to be back at the venue to prepare for the show.
We found a parking spot directly in front of Toad’s Place and were able to catch the last two songs of The Republic Tigers’ set. This was ideal for me as it gave me a chance to get an idea for the type of lighting in the venue, which was quite nice. There was a good variety of lights on all sides of the stage, with gels of different colors and a few moving spotlights that provided nice angular lighting. I didn’t get a chance to get much of an impression of The Republic Tigers’ music, but what I heard was good.
After a quick set change, Tally Hall took the stage. First, a projector played a video that exhibited some of the other content that can be found on their website. When the group came out, found a few different spots from which to photograph and began snapping away. Their music clearly has a variety of influences and the band members themselves have a lot of fun being on stage. They don’t take themselves too seriously, which makes it much more entertaining when they break into spontaneous bouts of old-school hip hop (Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend”, specifically). They closed their set in a particularly nice and unique way, which was to descend from the stage and have the entire audience sit around them in a circle while they played a few acoustic songs.
We had a great night, both because it was good to see Sam again and because we had a lot of fun at the show. Hopefully he and Tally Hall will roll through the area again one of these days.
Here are tonight’s photos. Click “there’s more to…” to see them all or visit my SmugMug.
Continue reading ‘Tally Hall & The Republic Tigers’
