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ShareRoger Clyne and the Peacemakers w/Shurman, Sunday, March 1, Houston, TX@ The Continental Club
Roger Clyne seems to hit Houston’s Continental Club about twice a year. And for the third time in his last four appearances, he was playing the club on a Sunday night. After going to a few Clyne shows in Austin and at Gruene Hall on weekend nights, it seemed like a little bit of a letdown to go to another Sunday night show where the crowd could be counted in the dozens instead of the hundreds. And at first, it seemed like it was gonna be roughly the same 80 people who always come out to the Continental Club. By the time the Peacemakers got started, though, there were well over 100 people in the crowd, many of them ready to sing along.
First up, though, was Shurman. This was our third time seeing them open for Clyne, and their fired-up country-rock is always a nice way to start the show. Shurman has recently relocated from Los Angeles to Austin, and their drummer stayed behind. So Peacemakers drummer P.H. Naffah filled in for the band’s 40-minute set. The set was typical, which is to say a lot of fun. I don’t know all of Shurman’s songs yet, but I always enjoy seeing them. The highlight of the set was probably a cover of Elvis Costello’s “What’s so Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?” Not just because it was a strong cover, but because the guy standing next to me was so excited that he was about to explode. Shurman playing that song seemed to blow his mind.
Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers hit the stage at about 10:45, a little later than planned due to the doors opening about an hour late. They opened the show with “Wanted”, a live staple that is generally the only song in the set to come from the second Refreshments album, The Bottle and Fresh Horses. Right away it was noticeable that despite wearing a similar black cowboy hat, the band had a new guitarist. Original Peacemaker Steve Larson has left and been replaced by Jim Dalton, a strong guitar player in his own right. Dalton’s influence was felt early on, as he sang a lot more backing vocals than Larson, and even used his microphone to speak occasionally. Clyne is often the only person talking onstage, so it was nice to have a bit of banter for a change. Dalton was also responsible for putting “Tributary Otis” in the set, a rare second song from The Refreshments’ second album. Later on, the band also pulled out “Sin Nombre,” an unprecedented third song from The Bottle and Fresh Horses. Seeing as that album is right at the top of my list of favorite Clyne albums, it was a nice treat.
The rest of the set was mostly standard-issue Peacemakers, which isn’t a bad thing by any means. The sweet “Down Together” featured the first of many great singalongs from the audience. Live staples “I Don’t Need Another Thrill” and “Mexico” also had excellent audience participation. This paved the way for Clyne to take an audience request, which led to the band playing relative rarity “Easy” for the first time with Dalton- they said they hadn’t even rehearsed it together. But it still sounded good.
A woman in the crowd spent most of the night yelling at the top of her lungs for “Green and Dumb”, the beautiful love ballad that doesn’t usually show up until late in the set, but is almost always played. She should’ve saved her voice, because, sure enough, the song showed up in the encore, great as ever. The band closed the show with their cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and said goodnight shortly after 12:30am. At a scant one hour and 45 minutes, this made it the shortest Peacemakers show I’ve attended- the band almost always goes over 2 hours. But since the show started late, it was a blessing that the band got finished (relatively) early, because I was able to get 5 ½ hours of sleep or so and actually function the next day.
