John Doe and the Sadies - Rumba Cafe

Decked out in a sharp-looking brown suit, John Doe welcomed the Rumba Cafe crowd to a “country-western Sunday jamboree” on Mother’s Day evening. And that’s pretty much what it was, as Doe led his backing band—immensely talented Canadian roots-rockers the Sadies—through a set of songs by country royalty like Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard.

Doe got his start back in the late ’70s playing bass and sharing vocal duties in X, one of the most influential and critically celebrated punk bands to come out of Los Angeles. Cult followers of X shouldn’t be too surprised to see Doe leading a country jamboree. X routinely used dashes of country and folk in its punk-rock recipe, and when the band reincarnated briefly as the Knitters (with Dave Alvin on guitar instead of Billy Zoom), it was more Carter Family than the Weirdos. And Doe’s first solo outing, Meet John Doe, cast off all punk leanings for a rootsy vibe.

Fast-forward almost 20 years, and the 55-year-old Doe has finally put out an album of almost entirely classic country songs. Country Club, released last month, pays tribute to the big boys, but Doe’s distaste of melodrama and the Sadies’ fiery musicianship and knack for nostalgic-yet-subversive arrangements allow it to be much more than a cover album.

The live show rose far above any cover-band cliché, as well. The band kicked off the night with Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone,” speeding up Cash’s signature boom-chicka-boom into a rollicking number. Doe’s worn voice was rich as a strong cup of coffee, and it fit this song and all the others perfectly. He joked that his acoustic guitar’s strings were just there to protect the finish, but it still added a nice texture.

The real guitar work, though, came courtesy of brothers Dallas and Travis Good. This was my first time seeing the Sadies live, and good golly can they play their instruments, which made instrumentals like “Sudbury Nickel” just as interesting as the other tunes. (It helped to have a near-perfect sound mix, too.) The brothers’ vocal harmonies also were spot-on; Dallas even took lead on a couple of tunes and showcased a shockingly good baritone.

Everybody on the stage was a showman, too. Doe has had decades to master communicating to a crowd, not to mention dozens of bit parts in movies and TV shows, and the Good brothers played all their parts with panache—even meeting at center stage to play each other’s guitar at one point.

Whatever kind of country floats your boat, John Doe and the Sadies played it, albeit filtered through their own signature sound. There was ’70s Nashville (Tammy Wynette’s “‘Til I Get it Right”), outlaw country (a smoking version of Waylon Jennings’ “Stop the World and Let Me Off” and an ever-so-slightly psychedelic take on Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make it Through the Night”) and Bakersfield honky-tonk (Haggard’s “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good,” with the timely line, “Wish a Ford and a Chevy could still last ten years like they should”).

While Doe mentioned a few different times how disconcerting it was to have the sun shining through the window while the band played (it was an early show), the whole experience was anything but disconcerting. Rather, it was one of the most fun, refreshing shows I’ve seen this year.

Lohio, Karate Coyote, The Randys - Rumba

In the middle of Lohio’s set at the Rumba Café on Friday night, lead singer Greg Dutton led the band through a song called “You’ve Got a Lot of Nerve,” during which he repeated this sentiment several times: “I can tell you’ve got some things to learn.” Each time I heard it, I couldn’t help thinking of that adage about the pot and the kettle.

Lohio has much to learn. The Pittsburgh fivesome is pleasant enough on record, merging the squeaky-clean indie pop of bands like Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin with intermittent doses of introspective folk-pop. But onstage it was all quite bland—not awful, by any means, and certainly not devoid of talent. There just wasn’t anything the least bit distinctive in the performance to set the group apart from countless other bands charting a similar course. Lohio is so safe that it’s entirely unremarkable.

The band was at its worst during the slower, more folk-leaning songs, which highlighted the weaknesses in Dutton’s voice as he sang in a low, unconfident register. The band was at its best during more upbeat songs like “Modern Days,” adding some much-needed energy to the performance. But regardless of range or tempo, Dutton was pretty much devoid of charisma, which enervated even some of the band’s bounciest songs.

A bad mix could have been part of the problem here. Dutton’s voice was always soft, and the bassist’s harmonies (I assume?) were inaudible. But here’s the bottom line: There are some bands that can convincingly and engagingly pull off a song with a chorus that consists only of “Hangin’ out with you.” This was not one of those bands.

Despite having shared the stage with bands like the Avett Brothers and American Music Club, Lohio looked and sounded bush-league. And it seemed even more bush-league following the Rumba’s early-show act, the Randys, which kept a shoulder-to-shoulder happy-hour crowd dancing and grinning.

The Randys are actually the perfect happy-hour band, despite the fact that you might not recognize a hefty chunk of the songs they cover from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. No matter. The band has a way of resurrecting genres you may have mentally discarded (e.g. polka). On Friday, the band even strung together five or six Hawaiian tunes with spot-on harmonies, ukulele and lap steel guitar. Quite impressive.

The Randys manage to do what so many cover bands (a misleading label) can’t: that is, conveying authenticity for whatever period they tackle while also allowing the songs to be influenced and strengthened by their own musical histories and attributes.

Karate Coyote closed down the night on some high and low notes. With only one EP out (Move E.P.), the young band made the odd decision to start the show with old and new songs that aren’t on it, none of which I was particularly fond of.

Sound problems didn’t help here, either. The second guitarist was lost in the mix, and despite having the strongest pipes of the indie-pop collective, female vocalist Sam Corlett was barely audible. Even so, I much preferred the songs she led to guitarist Ryan Horn’s tunes.

I was happier once “Move Yourself,” the strongest EP track, came along. “So Far So Good,” a song CD101 has been pimping, sounded pretty good, too, as did “Incogneat-o.” But the band has some more work to do before its stage show does justice to its recorded material.

(Also at The Other Paper)

Tim Easton - Rumba Cafe

Even though Tim Easton is an Akron native now living in Joshua Tree, California, it always feels like a homecoming when he comes back to Columbus, as he did for a show at the Rumba Cafe Saturday. And judging from the bursting-at-the-seams crowd, Columbus, in turn, still embraces Easton like a native son.

The man has certainly spent plenty of time here, dating all the way back to his days at Ohio State playing with Kosher Spears, then later during his stint fronting edgy, alt-country favorites the Haynes Boys, whose 1996 album Guardian Angel continues to feed crops of roots rockers.

Easton kicked off the night with just his acoustic and a harmonica, playing a couple of new songs from a home-recorded bootleg called Highway 62 Love Songs, which he had on hand. Before a drummer joined him onstage, he also played “Next to You,” a soft ballad from 2006’s Ammunition. It’s a song that shows Easton’s super-sensitive, gushy side that has surfaced more often in recent years. The tune even inspired a young couple in front to slow dance in front of the stage. You could almost hear them whispering, “This is our song!” into each other’s ears.

Needless to say, I prefer his grittier material, and he more than obliged as his ladyfriend drummer from Bucyrus pounded the skins the rest of the night. It was a new, unpracticed and probably temporary incarnation, but even with the dropped beats now and then, she gave songs like “Black Dog” some teeth and a fresh, forceful pulse to go along with Easton’s pleasantly croaky vocals.

He played a packed concert for a packed house, with two sets split by a break long enough to span just about all of Wilco’s Summerteeth over the PA, and both sets showcased Easton’s ability to appeal to just about everyone while still retaining every bit of his artistic integrity. He can go seamlessly from honky-tonk to blues, folk-rock to fiery roots rock. You could see it in the makeup of the crowd, too: old, young and in-between, equal parts hipsters, bumpkins, suburbanites and rockers. In fact, the most passionate front-row fan was a dude who looked just like the singer from Disturbed, faithfully hoisting the rawk hand multiple times during every song.

The Rumba crowd was also treated to an impromptu reuniting of old Haynes Boys drummer Jovan Karcic for a rendition of “The New Franklin County Woman.” Of all the songs off Guardian Angel, the tune has a punk ethos that shows Karcic’s overlap with former Columbus pop-punkers Gaunt wasn’t that big of a leap after all.

Easton took some requests during the second set, and they ended up spanning his career. Highlights included “Rewind,” a song off 1998’s Special 20 that Easton said he wrote on High Street at 3 am, along with “Poor, Poor LA” off Break Your Mother’s Heart, showcasing his knack for turning a memorable phrase (“You don’t have to break your mama’s heart to change the world”).

But of all the songs, there was probably one that carried the most significance for Easton’s one-night stand in Columbus: “Just Like Home.”

mp3: Tim Easton - Stones Throw Away (previously unreleased, off Highway 62 Love Songs)

Bombadil - Rumba Cafe, 5/15

The four lads in Bombadil dress up in authentic suits and fedoras from Bolivia when they perform, an homage to the country two band members’ visited while studying abroad. For the band’s early show at Rumba Cafe last Thursday, one of the Duke grads was even decked out in matador-esque attire.

But it’s also worth nothing that they constantly lost their hats mid-song. It must have happened 10 or 12 times. And that’s a good thing. The whole Bolivian-look-alike schtick had the potential to be annoying or pompous, but these guys were so frenetic and playful onstage that it all came together in an entertaining package that was a treat for the sparse crowd.

The band shares three vocalists who are all mild mannered and fairly dorky (“Bombadil” is, after all, a Lord of the Rings character), yet charming and exceedingly animated. They sounded strikingly similar as they jumped from mic to mic, properly enunciating in a classical, vaguely European way reminiscent of The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy.

They also happen to be superb songwriters, crafting mounds of melodic hooks amid the band’s various influences--Piedmont blues, Latin American folk and world-music appropriations. One of the tunes was a lively, childlike song about a Polish bear named Otto. You wouldn’t think a song like “Johnny” could be just as fun and boisterous with lyrics like, “He tried to fill the void in his life by writing on his arm with a knife.” But it was. File it under “Playful Songs about Attempted Suicide.”

The Bombadilians switched instruments constantly, employing keys, guitar, drums, trumpet, xylophone and various pieces of percussion with aplomb. The insertion of a traditional Venezuelan hymn was nice and, not surprisingly, decidedly un-hymnlike compared to the Presbyterian ones I grew up with. Another tune was entirely in Spanish, but the basic gist of it, according to the band, was that “somebody screwed somebody else over.”

In case you were curious, Bombadil’s favorite southeast Asian country is Malaysia, as they noted before a song about the country and its capitol, Kuala Lumpur. “So much to say, Malaysia, so much to say,” the song goes. But other than “monsoon winds will take you home,” the song doesn’t say too much about the country. Bombadil cleverly realizes that the energy and spirit of the music can, and sometimes should, speak for itself.

“Cavaliers Har Hum,” off the band’s outstanding debut album, A Buzz, A Buzz, released in late April, is a rousing anthem with lyrics that mirror the Cleveland Cavs’ rise and demise this season: “Cavaliers, sing out in glory, har hum/Cavaliers, it’s the same old story, har hum.” “Julian of Norwich,” about a female English mystic from the 14th century, and “Buzz, A Buzz” were equally spirited and off-kilter in all the right ways.

The set was also interspersed with some low-key pieces on guitar and keyboard that were usually performed solo by Matador Man (my term, not theirs). They weren’t quite as successful as the rollicking songs but did serve as a nice breather now and then. “Smile When You Kiss” had an old-school folky feel that was juxtaposed with present-day sentiments such as, “Get off your cellphone ‘cause they’re tracking you home.”

If anything, the split sets suffered most from the tragically small crowd and an unnaturally early show, two surefire vibe killers. (Seriously, Rumba--a 6 pm scheduled start time?) But with an album as strong as this band’s debut, and a live show that’s even more engaging, a buzz around Bombadil is sure to come. Jump on board now and watch as that little buzz turns into a noisy swarm.

mp3: Bombadil - Johnny
mp3: Bombadil - Get to Getting On