The Moondoggies, New Lagoon, put on a great show

Audience members resisting the urge to dance Sunday night did not stand a chance once The Moondoggies hit the Belltower stage.

Opening bands New Lagoon and Cody Beebe & the Crooks built up the energy to that perfect point where everyone in the room couldn’t help but move, rounding out the kind of lineup that makes for a good show. The energy of the show even inspired a local artist to set up in the corner to paint throughout the evening.

“Good music makes for really good art,” DeeDee, the artist, said. “I really like painting at live blues shows, and doing portraits of the bands and this was the perfect place to do it.”

The first night of the Birds on a Wire Mini-Fest had an impressive turnout — with half of the crowd just sitting and enjoying the music, and the other half consisted of showgoers who grabbed the first person they could find to dance with.

“The show was amazing. Overall, so many people showed up, and it would not have been the same without them,” said Madison Hayashi, the Belltower Street Team coordinator. “I could not have asked for a better night for the bands. They needed this crowd.”

New Lagoon started off the festival, debuting their music to Pullman with their first show ever as a band. The supergroup consists of Luke Taklo of Moss Campions on vocals and guitar, Sean Knox of Buffalo Death Beam on keyboard, vocals and guitar, Ted Powers of Yarn Owl on drums and Bart Budwig on bass. Though they were two members shy of the rest of the bands in the lineup for the night, their sound was just as strong.

“Everything went really well,” Taklo said. “It felt like it was a really good start for us.”

Cody Beebe & The Crooks attracted a strong local following — including a rather large pack of girls chanting Cody’s name before the songs. Despite their country-rock sound being a bit out of place among the other bands of the evening, they delivered strong technical ability and enough energy to really inspire excitement to keep the evening going.

By the time The Moondoggies made it to the stage, the crowd was incapable of containing excitement. The quartet appears to have expanded into a sextet, led by Kevin Murphy on vocals and guitar, and jumped right into utterly danceable blues-rock, however much of an oxymoron that description is. The band’s tight harmonies and stunning bass lines proved that The Moondoggies are a band that makes an already great sound even better in live performance.

“We definitely take this whole thing seriously, where maybe we didn’t before,” keys player Caleb Quick said. “But we play music like we’re playing in a garage — when you’re in a garage, sometimes it comes out dirty, sometimes it comes out clean and you don’t know why. You just have to go with it.”

The Pullman show was the last night of their tour, and even Quick admitted that the whole band was exhausted, though you would never guess from watching them play. The tambourine player, who doubled for backup guitar for a few songs, made tambourine alone look like an art and definitely covered more of the stage than any other band member that evening. His energy was easily matched by the crowd, which eventually included dancing members of the opening bands.

“This has just been amazing,” Taklo said. “As far as the Moondoggies go, I have a story to tell my
grandchildren.”