{"id":13320,"date":"2012-04-30T11:46:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T15:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=13320"},"modified":"2012-04-30T11:50:27","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T15:50:27","slug":"mike-and-ruthy-with-aoife-odonovan-at-joes-pub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/30\/mike-and-ruthy-with-aoife-odonovan-at-joes-pub\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike and Ruthy with Aoife O’Donovan at Joe’s Pub"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike and Ruthy<\/a> headlined a show at Joe\u2019s Pub<\/a> last night. I hadn\u2019t heard of them (by that name) but I was interested in the show because I had just recently discovered the opener, Aoife O\u2019Donovan<\/a>. When I checked out Mike and Ruthy, I liked what I heard, so that made the decision to get tickets easy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll mention at the bottom why I should have known who they are.<\/p>\n

Mike and Ruthy are married. They have a son and are very close to adding a daughter to their clan. Ruthy was quite pregnant, though it didn\u2019t seem to stymie her performance at all.<\/p>\n

Ruthy sings beautifully and played a tiny silver ukulele, acoustic guitar and fiddle, all very well.<\/p>\n

\"RuthyUngerUkulele\"<\/a>\"RuthyUngerFiddle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mike has an excellent voice and played acoustic guitar (two different ones with very different sounds\/styles), harmonica and banjo. While he only played the banjo on one number, it was a highlight (both the song and his play). He was quite good on the guitar too, finger-picking on many numbers.<\/p>\n

\"MikeMerendaGuitar\"<\/a>\"MikeMerendaHarmonica\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Each sings well enough alone, with their harmonies adding a nice spice to the mix.<\/p>\n

\"RuthyUngerMikeMerendaBanjo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They are billed as a Roots\/Americana\/Folk duo. That\u2019s certainly accurate enough, but they had band support and an additional genre<\/em> last night as well.<\/p>\n

They just released a new EP (it was available for sale at the show and you can buy it on their website). It has six songs on it and they kicked off the show by playing the entire CD (not in track order). At least half of those songs were more bluesy to me (though Roots Bluesy, so they still qualify for the general description).<\/p>\n

Each of them sings and plays instruments well enough that I have no doubt they would do a great job purely as a duo. That said, I\u2019m glad not to have found out last night, because they surrounded themselves with top-notch musicians that added significantly to their sound. Left-to-right on stage:<\/p>\n

Daniel Littleton (easy to find online, but I couldn\u2019t find a good individual link). Dan played acoustic guitar on every number and was fantastic. When Mike played the banjo, they jammed together for a long time.<\/p>\n

\"DanielLittleton\"<\/a>\"DanielLittletonJacobSilverMikeMerenda\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jacob Silver<\/a> on electric bass. Jake was great on the bass. He displaced Ruthy at the mic a few times to answer questions (or to clarify statements) that Ruthy posed. It was an amusing touch.<\/p>\n

\"JacobSilver\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Robin MacMillan<\/a> on drums. Robin was great on the drums.<\/p>\n

\"RobinMacMillan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jake and Robin are both in Aoife\u2019s band, so I had seen them before (and they were an important part of why I wanted to see Aoife again). Mike mentioned that both of them played on the new EP and I believe some (all?) of it was recorded in their (or was it Robin\u2019s?) studio.<\/p>\n

Aoife O\u2019Donovan joined Mike and Ruthy to sing harmony on a few songs (after the EP numbers were over). She was fantastic and the three of them sounded so good together.<\/p>\n

\"RuthyUngerMikeMerendaAoifeODonovan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When their set was complete, the audience didn\u2019t stop applauding until they returned. They played an Etta James song for an encore.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s is their set list:<\/p>\n

\"MikeAndRuthySetList\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aoife O\u2019Donovan opened the show with her regular band (so Jake and Robin were on stage for the entire show). I\u2019ve only seen Aoife once before, five weeks ago, so rather than repeating everything I said about her that night, here\u2019s the link to that post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AoifeODonovanSinging\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ryan Scott<\/a> was on stage for every one of Aoife\u2019s numbers last night. He was great, in particular on Glowing Heart.<\/p>\n

\"RyanScott\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ruthy joined Aoife for her final three numbers. She sang harmony beautifully.<\/p>\n

\"RuthyUngerAoifeODonovan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first of those numbers was a cover of Emmylou Harris\u2019 Boulder to Birmingham. Gorgeous job ladies, but in particular, Aoife, who brought a lot of soul to it.<\/p>\n

Here was Aoife\u2019s set list:<\/p>\n

\"AoifeODonovanSetList\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mentioned above that I would close with why I should have known Mike and Ruthy. They were founding members of a now disbanded group, The Mammals. In 2007 I wrote a very long post<\/a> about how I first heard of The Mammals, but never got to see them (they disbanded after I bought tickets to one of their shows, but before they played it!).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s small-world-ish that I finally saw them at Joe\u2019s Pub, since that\u2019s how I first heard about The Mammals way back then\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike and Ruthy headlined a show at Joe\u2019s Pub last night. I hadn\u2019t heard of them (by that name) but I was interested in the show because I had just recently discovered the opener, Aoife O\u2019Donovan. When I checked out Mike and Ruthy, I liked what I heard, so that made the decision to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[1269,1338,1267,29,1339,1336,1367,1268,1337,718],"class_list":["post-13320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-aoife-odonovan","tag-daniel-littleton","tag-jacob-silver","tag-joes-pub","tag-mike-and-ruthy","tag-mike-merenda","tag-music","tag-robin-macmillan","tag-ruthy-unger","tag-ryan-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13323,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320\/revisions\/13323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}