Girlyman

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No, I’m not looking to pick a fight with you. 😉

Girlyman is a fantastic acoustic group (well, they do use an electric guitar more as a bass, but essentially, they are acoustic). I had never heard of them. Once we locked in the tickets for Spamalot and decided to do a matinée, I searched a bit for something fun to do Sunday evening.

Lois and I both really love Joe’s Pub. It’s a really small venue, so every show there is intimate, and they are rarely too loud, which is one small complaint that we have from some other venues. So, one of the first places I checked was their site. Sure enough, they had a show that wasn’t sold out, Girlyman. I probably noticed it in my original scan of things to do for the weekend, but since I didn’t recognize them, and didn’t know whether we’d do Broadway in the evening, I didn’t focus on it.

This time, I went to their website (linked above with their name), and the music instantly started playing (Joyful Sign, the title track of their new CD). I was mesmerized. The other songs on the site are really great too, so you can freely discover this great band for yourself.

Lois and I are nuts about beautiful harmonies. In fact, one of our complaints is that many groups that excel in harmonizing, think it’s more appropriate to be understated in its use, a point with which we vigorously disagree. Little Big Town (blogged about in my Martina McBride update) are one exception, a group that understands the harmonies as one of their big strengths.

So too with Girlyman. The three of them sing so beautifully together, that it would be a shame for them to spend too much time singing solos. They pass the solos around very generously as well (none of them hog the mike), but they spend more time singing harmony than solo (both two at a time, and mostly three at a time). Wow.

Knowing absolutely zero about them before the show, it was reasonably obvious to us that they were gay when they came on the stage. At least two of them were obvious, but I’m betting all three are gay. They didn’t abuse that fact and turn the show into a political opportunity, but they sprinkled their show with enough humorous comments as to be proud of who they are, without offending anyone who would rather not know (at least, they didn’t offend any of us in any way).

One subtle example: when they introduced the song Through the Sunrise (also highlighted on their myspace site), they first said it was Bluegrass. Then they corrected themselves and said: “Or in our case, we like to call it Pinkgrass.” After people chuckled a bit, they went on to play the song, and the entire audience (us included) clapped the beat for them the entire song. Tons of fun!

They used to live in NY (Brooklyn to be specific) for a number of years. At least two of them moved to Atlanta recently. They joked that it was ironic that they were playing more often in NYC now that they lived in Atlanta. Someone from the audience yelled out “Move back here!”. To which they quickly (and wittily) replied: “Why, you want us to play here less often?” 🙂

We bought two of their three CD’s after the show, and our godson got them to autograph the latest one, which is cool. We look forward to seeing them again, as soon as they’re back in NY!