The Band of Heathens at Solana Beach’s Belly Up Tavern with Watson Twins opening
The Band of Heathens brought their long overdue West Coast tour to the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. The crowd was eager and expectant and the night had an almost magical feel to it from the very start.
The Band of Heathens is on the road promoting their latest album just out this year Simple Things. But the band, made up of founding members Gordy Quist (guitar and vocals) and Ed Jurdi (guitar, vocals, keyboard) along with Trevor Nealon (keyboard), Richard Millsap (drums) and Jesse Wilson on bass, played songs from throughout their entire 20-plus year career. They started the set with the up tempo “Dare” from the 2020 album Stranger. The next couple songs were from the new album Simple Things: “Stormy Weather” and “Heartless Year,” the latter a story about the hardships and struggles everyone faced during the pandemic lockdown.
Other songs in the set included “Golden Calf,” and Gillian Welch’s “Look at Miss Ohio.” The band took a short break while Gordy and Ed did a 2-song acoustic set of “Green Grass of California” and “Deep is Love.” This brought different more subdued emotions from the crowd, and a look of thoughtfulness descended.
The rest of band came back up on stage and performed “I Got the Time” before being joined on stage by the opening act, The Watson Twins. They performed a rousing cover of the 1964 Marvin Gaye hit, “Don’t Do It.” They ended the show with “LA County Blues,” “Simple Things” and possibly their most popular song to date, “Hurricane.”
As mentioned previously the opening act was The Watson Twins, whose recent release was the album Holler. These identical twin sisters started their set with several acoustic songs and then wrapped it up with a full band made up of mostly local Southern California musician friends from the time that the twins lived and played around Southern California. The setlist included the songs “Southern Manners,” “Two Timin’” and “Honky Tonk Heart.”
Find more information on the Band of Heathens at there website here: https://bandofheathens.com
Check out the Watson Twins here: https://www.thewatsontwins.com
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: The Band of Heathens “Simple Things”
and here: REVIEW: The Watson Twins “Holler”