I had some pretty serious concerns about Kelly’s since A) it’s downtown (so lots of suburbanites and little parking), B) the website brags about the quantity of motorcycles on the ceiling, and C) I had been warned it would be exceptionally smoky. Really, it wasn’t nearly as bad as expected. I found easy parking right around the corner. The motorcycles (and most of the smoke) were in the main room of the bar, and the room with the stage was pretty nice. Decent sound, reasonable layout. No real complaints, aside from the smoke.

We arrived immediately after the first band, which seemed like excellent timing as BOAT was scheduled to go on second, with Minmae headlining. There was a last-second change, and Minmae (which wasn’t actually the band, but just Sean Brooks) went on before them. I’m not particularly familiar with Minmae’s work, but his solo material was not compelling at all. One friend commented it was reminiscent of Willie Nelson, which I can kind of hear, but is also kind of insulting to Willie Nelson.

BOAT took the stage quickly and proceeded to rock put on the loudest show I’ve heard them play. My ears were ringing for a couple days afterwards. This was the same lineup as we saw a few months back, but much higher energy.

Honestly, I find it kind of hard to keep writing up BOAT performances without sounding like a drooling fanboy. Also, it’s hard to distinguish between different levels of awesome. Perhaps I’ll just include the video that Curt shot and leave it at that.