LIQUID GINGER
At 9 p.m. Thursday, June 9
Rock House, 1518 Butler Ave., Tybee Island
Also: At 9 p.m. Saturday, June 11
Rachael's 1190, 1190 King George Blvd.
It's been 11 years since Liquid Ginger first arrived on a Savannah stage; it didn't take long at all for the hard-hitting band - fronted by honey-haired vocalist Ginger Fawcett - to become one of the city's most popular and enduring rock ‘n' roll attractions.
Fawcett's played one or two acoustic shows - sitting "gingerly" on a stool - since the April 26 birth of her son, Ridge Bunger. These two early-June gigs will also be acoustic Ginger; she won't get back to full-out rocking until sometime in July.
"I actually took off the first three months, then I came back and worked a little bit in the second trimester, doing some acoustic stuff," Fawcett explains. "And I took off pretty much the whole third trimester."
With the right attitude, rock ‘n' roll is a happy addiction. "I went back two weeks after he was born," she says. "I missed it that much - and I was ready to go back to work. Not only did I need the money, being off that long, but I missed it a lot. I felt like he was ready; I felt like I was ready. And I've got really good support from family, so I felt good about it."
Along with frontwoman Fawcett, the band includes Barr Dylan Nobles and Rick Betz (guitars), Zak Nash (drums), Derrick Huff (bass and vocals) and Tara Panzo (vocals and percussion). Most of them have been in the band for a lengthy stretch, some since the very beginning.
"Over the years, we've experimented with a lot of different things," laughs Fawcett. "We've changed it from the big party-band thing with the keyboards, and ‘Play That Funky Music' and all that, to the more guitars, more rock-edged kind of stuff. And now we've gotten back to where it's a big, huge mixture and it's always a lot of fun for everybody."
The band, which plays a cross-section of classic covers and high-energy original material, was more or less on hold during Fawcett's pregnancy. "I haven't played a full band show since America's Home Edition came here and we did that," she says. "And I was very pregnant."
For this week's gigs, Fawcett explains, "My doctor hasn't given me the go-ahead to jump around onstage yet. I wanted to be able to jump.
"She said wait six weeks, then you can go back and do your thing - and the six weeks is just about up." See reverbnation.com/liquidginger
MEGAN JEAN & THE KFB
THE DIRTY BOURBON RIVER SHOW
At 8 p.m. Thursday, June 9
Live Wire Music Hall, 307 W. River St. $7
From Charleston, mega-voiced Megan Jean (playing guitar) is accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Byrne Klay for a neo-gothic and heart-stoppingly dramatic tour of the deep-sleep south. Megan and Byrne, who got married a few months ago, were the core of the Klay Family Band (KFB, get it?) which now, apparently, is just the two of them. They've played Savannah numerous times, and I'm here to tell you, no one can scare up an old-time murder ballad better than M.J.
New Orleans' Dirty Bourbon River Show is fronted by Charles "Big Charlie" Skinner (he's billed as both "vocalist" and "ringleader") and multi-instrumentalist Noah Adams. The band is a like a traveling gypsy burlesque road show, combining theatrical Vaudevillian camp, lounge music, Dixieland, avant garde, hot jazz and - in the words of a critic from Offbeat - "A circus-like barrage of sound serving as entrance music for a magical mystery tour of whiskey-soaked French Quarter back alleys." Couldn't possibly have said it better ourselves. See meganjean.net, dirtybourbonrivershow.com
