andrew stockdale
The Hair Bear Bunch

Last month, I went with my friend Kris to see Wolfmother at The Depot here in in Salt Lake City, UT

I had seen Wolfmother twice before, but this was Kris’ first time seeing the band. The last two times I saw them, they were a trio and they rocked hard. A ton of energy and the awesome sounds of their debut album were great to hear live. Since then, the band pretty much split up, but then was brought back to life as a foursome, leaving Andrew Stockdale as the only original member left. While I had my apprehensions about how they would sound now, I had hoped that they would still rock.

And indeed they did. Yes, it was a bit different sounding, but not much. They released a new album called “Cosmic Egg” and while it’s not as good as their first release, it’s pretty good. Songs like “New Moon Rising”, “White Feather” and “Phoenix” are really good, but in my opinion, are still not as a good as “Joker and the Thief”, “Woman” and “White Unicorn”. Still, I thought they had a great energy on stage and they kept the crowd in a musical frenzy throughout their almost two hour set.

Mr Harrison Takes The Stage

The opening band was Thenewno2, which I had never heard of before. After doing a bit of research on them a week before the show, I found a nice surprise in one of their members.

dhani harrison
Yep, that’s George’s son

Dhani Harrison, the son of George Harrison [guitarist for The Beatles, for the very few of you that didn’t know], was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Now I was more interested in seeing them.

Turns out Dhani inherited his musical talent from his dad. The construction of the songs was very grunge-like, sounding a bit like The White Stripes. Their set was extremely short (six songs), but packed with energy.

After their set, I wandered over the merchandise table and met and shook hands with Dhani and the other band members [No pictures, per their manager]. Dhani was very nice and gracious when I told him it was nice to meet him.

Good Bastards

heartless bastards
I liked these Bastards – and that’s a positive comment

After going back to my place on the crowded floor in front of the stage, I was treated to a rousing performance by another band I hadn’t heard of before. The Heartless Bastards started off a bit rough, but they rolled right into an hour set of songs that rocked big time. “Early In The Morning”, “Wide Awake” and “New Resolution” were belted out in loud fashion by their lead singer Erika Wennerstrom, who was the blonde version of Chrissie Hynde [from The Pretenders, for those of you that didn’t know] in both stage presence and hair style.

All in all, a great show, incredible music and really great to meet the son of a rock legend.