Chuck Ragan – Tim Barry – Blag Dahlia – and Kevin Seconds – at The Beauty Bar – Las Vegas, NV

One great thing about Punk Rock Music, is that it transcends genres, languages, styles, and even national borders. The Punk Rock Bowling Music Festival is a stellar example of the diversity in which I am speaking. This year's festival provided every different genre of Punk Rock one could imagine.

There was a lil something for everyone, the Skins, The Jocks/Bros, The Straight Edge Hard-Core Kids, Thrashers, OC Punkers, British Punks, Rude-Boys (Matt Skiba brought some Satanic-Emo Punks out of the woodwork). Celtic Punks, and for of course the Folk-Punk enthusiasts.

Sunday night at the Beauty Bar, Kevin Seconds, Blag Dahlia, Tim Barry, and Chuck Ragan gathered together for an All-Star, All Acoustic, Folk-Punk performance.

Kevin Seconds, from the band 7Seconds, opened up the night as the crowd started to trickle in. As always he played a great melodic set. Apparently his solo music is getting pretty popular, and it showed as many people in the audience sang along to his tunes. With as much as this motherfucker tours, people better know his material. He is definitely a Punk Rock hero in his own right.

Blag Dahlia from The Dwarves was up next. His tongue and cheek humor had people rolling. His was  enjoyable on the ears and funny as hell. If your into lude humor, this would be an act you wanna check out. He sang a song about his love for "Anne Frank", a song called "Bitch I Love You", and great little diddy about terrorists in his song "This Jihad".

By the time Tim Barry was set to go on the crowd had thickened immensely and for good reason. Tim Barry who is well known for being the front man for Melodic Hard-Core band Avail. He is also known even better for his solo Americana style music. He is a true, down to earth, amazing singer and song writer. The charismatic nature in his personality rallies the masses and forms something communal. He brought his guitar into the crowd and sang  "Idle Idylist" along with his fans that surrounded him. If his cord wouldn't have kept getting pulled out, I'm positive he would have stayed there through his whole set. During "Avoiding Catatonic Surrender" Chuck Ragan joined him on stage and played a harmonica solo.

Tim got the house revved for Hot Water Music's, Chuck Ragan. He joined the stage with fiddle player Jon Gaunt and upright bass player Joe Ginsberg  in a revival tour style set. Chuck  played for about 45 minutes for a packed house of fans who could follow ever lyric with him in unison. He played many songs off his "Gold Country" and "Covering Ground" albums, including a beautiful song called "Rotterdam" that he wrote and dedicated for his lovely wife Jill.

Sunday night was bitter-sweet. On one hand, I saw the show I was looking forward to the most, and on the other hand, I had the realization that PRB was almost over and I would be going back to my routine life. The thought inspired me to party harder the rest of that night and through to morning than I had all weekend! Thanks to Kevin, Blag, Tim, and Chuck for a great show and the inspiration to party my ass off for the rest of my vacation.

 

More photos of the show can be seen HERE

 

-J.Moncrief-

Big Wheel Staff Reporter

       

 

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