Wylder - Justin Trawick - Annie Stokes -- Rock'n'Roll Hotel - Apr 22 2016

Annie Stokes - Actually it is the Annie Stokes band which is good since it is Friday night at the Rock'n'Roll Hotel where acoustic music usually turns into a chorale of conversation. As it is, it is still not enough volume to drown out the crowd. The electric guitar and rhythm section do add enough to push this folk rock forward and into a decent live sound. Annie Stokes leans toward blues at times, but then adds a touch of Country&Western in another cut, which adds to the variety while keeping her personal style intact. There is enough of an emotional core in the songs to make Annie Stokes and her band worth another visit for me.

Justin Trawick - Trawick plays in various combinations around town and tonight he has a standup bass, violin, and mandolin accompanying his vocals and acoustic guitar. It is a bit too acoustic to fully cut through the crowd noise, but the strong lead voice and full four-man chorus helps out quite a bit. These guys can play and the mandolin and violin solos show off some flashy technique. He brings up some guests at the end, but it is still a bit hard to focus fully on the music with the Friday night crowd.

Wylder - This local band formerly known as Save the Arcadian is celebrating their new album tonight (which will be reviewed here in a bout a week). They have a bold sound that pushes what others may call folk-rock into bigger pop rock areas. They are slick and professional and I like their sound tonight even more than I did on their album as everything was balanced nicely. They have a violin, which always adds a good dimension for a rock band as well as keyboards and the usual guitars, bass, and drums. It is still outrageously noisy in the back, so I move a bit closer, although there is a sizable crowd packed in tonight, which bodes well for this band. They appear to have the drive to back their big sound with a strong effort on stage, which mains they could well obtain some national prominence. Time will tell.

Photo Grab of the Night: This looks like an old typesetting error from the days when people typeset.