Skinny Molly Herney Hill Nov 15th 2008

This band were advertised as Southern Rock with an ex-Lynryd Skynryd player in it so we thought we’d give them a go. They had been doing the Feenstra circuit for a while and seemed regular visitors to these shores. We were at the pub quite early in order to get a table and were in the second row with virtually an unrestricted view to the stage only feet away.

There was a support act and as usual Pete Feenstra gave them a big introduction. They were Four Wheel Drive, all youngsters and unfortunately they had chosen a name that comes up about 10 million Google hits so I can’t give much detail about them.

As I said they were young and it looked like they had got a diploma in rock bandsmanship. Apart from the invisible drummer there were twin lead guitarists who competed in gyrations and hair tossing. The curly fair haired one played a black Les Paul and the curly brown haired one had a Strat.

They both played very loud and looked like they were having a whale (wail?) of a time. The bassist lacked the curly hair and facial hair so he made up for it with quite a bit of grimacing and posing at the front of the stage with one foot on a monitor. He also handled the lead vocals with the other 2 chiming in.
We had a set of loud fairly self indulgent heavy metal type rock that did grate after a while, OK after about 30 seconds then.

Teresa quickly went from being amused at their youth to how much longer are they going on for quite quickly? As she said – when all else fails play loud and take your shirt off. The Strat player did just that.

They got a good reception from the easy to please crowd and Pete Feenstra thanked them profusely (they probably played for nothing). After a short interval on came Skinny Molly with the ex-Lynryd Skynryd Mike Estes resplendent in a Tom Petty style top hat. That only lasted for one song and we had a set of good American blues rock.

I’m not very familiar with either their repertoire or that of Lynryd Skynryd apart from the couple of big hits so can’t comment on the individual songs but they were very proficient and quite relentless. Mike Estes played his lovely old 1959 Les Paul Junior double cutaway all through and looked like he seriously knew what he was doing.

The other guitarist, Chris Walker is actually English although he fitted into the band perfectly and with his long hair (frequently tossed of course) and shades and looked the part. He played a Strat with a foray into a Gretsch and another Strat (both the Strats had the middle control knob removed for some reason). On bass was Luke Bradshaw and Kurt Pietro handled the drumming. They were good and tight and Four Wheel Drive could certainly learn something about doing a good set from them.

We had some obvious Lynryd Skynryd songs and of course Free Bird was the encore. I thought that despite their obvious proficiency there was just a touch of been there before about them. I don’t know what their tour schedule is but maybe they were coming to the end of it and were slightly going through the motions. The audience loved them and I can’t say that I was at all disappointed.

Teresa was not totally happy with Free Bird as it went on for quite a time and ended up a bit of a messy jam. I think she prefers her classics not to be messed around with. The set finished well after 11 and in seconds the bassist was out from behind the stage with the CDs for sale. I thought them worthy of a bit of extra cash so bought the CD and a shot glass as well. For some reason I only got 3 of the band to sign the CD cover. Maybe the drummer couldn’t write! Very enjoyable.


http://www.skinnymollyrocks.com/
There are good band biogs on the site & some links to myspace pages for some of them.