The BellRays "Have a Little Faith in Me" from Have a Little Faith Live at High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 23, 2006

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I wasn't planning to go to this show until I got into SSM, but I wind up enjoying the BellRays' set quite a bit. They bill themselves as "rock & soul," which I think is mostly accurate. I don't necessarily think just having a vocalist that sounds like Tina Turner is enough to be a "soul" band, but their rock certainly is soulful and draws on soul music in the same way the band's proto-punk forerunners did. To be honest, though, I did leave the show a song or two before where I expected the end of the set to come. With two shows in two nights, and one of them in Milwaukee, I was just dead tired, and after 15 or so songs, I was starting to hear them all melding together. They're a lot of fun to watch, but I think their show would have a lot more appeal if they re-incorporated some of the jazzier sound that their very earliest material has.

The one thing that really surprised me about this show (and later, about the fact that I couldn't find the second song from yesterday's clip) is that they seem to have a well established fanbase, at least here in Madison. By the time they came on, there was a pretty full crowd on the floor and the people I talked to before their set were really excited. I find this interesting mainly because they exist so far out of the spheres of influence that are successful in the indie rock touring scene right now. Their sound, their image and their age would seem to put them at a major disadvantage compared to a band like the show's first openers, the Dials, but here they are, getting it done and causing skinny, little, button-down-shirt guys to bounce around for a solid hour.

(The Dials were pretty good too, BTW, but I don't know if anybody but me was paying attention.)