Quick Thoughts On Vedora At Manhattan Pizza Tonight Feb 23

Words by Tim Lewis.

I just got home from seeing the mighty Vedora at Manhattan Pizza.  They played a nice long set and then a shorter set, and rocked the place.  At the end of both sets the audience was going with it, so they kept playing. They opened the night with Basalt, which sounded sweet.  The hard rocking trio played most of the first album, and a chunk of the second (as yet unrecorded????). They added an interesting selection of covers.  The second set had Caroline O’Connor on sax for I’m on fire and Dancing in the Dark (and there wasn’t even a band on before them that played the same songs).  They played a new instrumental, that I don’t think I’ver heard before.  They played a Hank Williams song that I did not know and a Missy Bly song that I did not know, but who knows?  I’ve seen Missy a couple of times over the years, so I might have. A few songs into the first set, something seemed a bit less than it could be, but then they played Sober and locked in.  Matthew Hastings killed it on guitar, as always.  It has been ages since I’ve heard Once Upon, and I think tonight’s was my favorite band version.  I got to know it as just Caroline on acoustic, and the band treatment hasn’t always found the right feel.  Tonight it sounded sweet. The drop from In the Pines into Chain was perfectly done.  And, there’s that tiny part that I never write about that was cool.  Come out to the show to see what I mean. The Caroline on guitar set, contained epic versions of Ritual, To Send You and Solution.  Picture Tim in a very happy place. They Played for a long time, starting somewhere around 10, and it was 1:10 when I was walking up Church st.  There was a break, probably 30 minutes or so.  It’s hard to tell.  I was chatting with Jeff LaBossiere about the Channel, Def Leppard and the Who.  And after that, he got up, and the band picked up where they left it in the first set.  They found a groove and people started dancing.  The room seemed filled with fun.  You know, a Vedora show. When finished, I said a quick good night.  The walk home was not as icy as advertised, and I found a great walking groove. Ringing through my head was, No More No Less.

This post was originally published by Tim Lewis at his personal blog, https://timstriangletribune.wordpress.com.