Punch Brothers = awesome

You know you’ve gone to a really good concert when the first thing you do when you get home is check to see if you can see the group perform again while they’re on tour. And then you buy tickets for said show. Let me explain.

When I was in college, my friends and I went to many concerts, the majority of which were at the 9:30 Club (now known as the U Street Music Hall, but I will stick with the old name). Once, I saw Nickel Creek on their “Farewell For Now” tour. They had been together since they were little kids and decided that they wanted to branch out and do some other things, but weren’t ruling out the possibility of getting back together at some point in the future. It was a great concert and the mandolin player, Chris Thile, was incredible. It was one of those things that is way better in person.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when I’m going through my email and I see that Chris Thile’s current group, Punch Brothers, is coming to play at the 9:30 Club in February. I told Grant about it and he said if I wanted to go, we could, so I should order tickets. I ordered the tickets and made it “official” by putting the concert on our shared Google calendar (we’re dorks like that). I’m glad we didn’t put off buying the tickets because the show sold out and they ended up adding another show, which also sold out. I was very excited, and not only because I love Chris Thile and enjoy going to the 9:30 Club, but also because Grant had never been there and I knew he was going to love the music.

The night of the concert, we got there in time for the opening band, and the standing-room-only venue was already pretty crowded. We went up to the balcony and managed to find room where I could mostly see. As the title of this post already gave away, Punch Brothers was awesome. As a group, they sound even better in person than they do coming out of a recording studio, which is pretty rare for the overly auto-tuned musicians of today. Thile was incredible, as expected; every other guy was nearly as good. Their music was great, but watching them play it is what was so fantastic. We are looking forward to April, when we are going to see Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau (a jazz pianist) perform.