Redwood Bar: Vigil of War with Chump, The Great Sadness and The Dead Coats

I caught Vigil of War for the first time last year. I saw them twice in 2018, but the last time was way back in June. That meant over a year had gone by since I last saw the band. About a month ago, I ran into Alicia, lead singer, at The Satellite. She mentioned to me that she was playing the Redwood Bar. I looked up the date on the Redwood Bar's website and immediately entered it into my phone calendar.

This band brought their metal rock to the tiny Redwood Bar stage. I just love Alicia's vocals. At one point, those vocals snarl and at another you get a power vocal that ranks up there with the the best '80s metal bands' power ballads. My experience seeing them on the Sunset Strip is that this band loves to move, which was restricted by the small stage of the Redwood Bar. They did their best with their lead guitarist busting some knees on the wood stage.

The band has replaced one of their guitarists with another, Kiki Wong. I'm not sure when exactly this occurred, but obviously within the last year.

There were a number of photographers in the audience. All of us; however, were the old guard. I wonder when the young guard of photographers will discover this band.

Vigil of War

Opening the night was Chump. I caught perhaps half of their set. Their Instagram indicated that this was going to be their last set ever. If so, they killed it. Their bassist/lead singer sprawled himself across the floor, putting on some Dr Jekyll shifts to Mr Hyde like moves. Or maybe I should say he was going from Banner to The Hulk. What I did find interesting is how he played the bass for part of a song. He grabbed it by the neck and then tossed it in the air a few times, grabbing it by the neck again while making sure he shook those strings. 

Chump

The Great Sadness is a band I've come across a few times. They're a band that seems to play with many of the bands I follow. I've seen them do some art-type shows. Other times, I've seen them go with just some straight up desert psychedelic rock. On this specific night, they went with the desert psychedelic rock. As always, they had some devoted fans in the crowd. And I do believe they won some converts, as well.

The Great Sadness

The Dead Coats was closing out their west coast tour. This is a band from Austin, Texas. This band loved to tell the jokes and actually explain the idea behind each of their song titles. It was actually pretty cool. For example, they have a song called "Coke." They mentioned that every band has to have at least one song about cocaine even if they'd never used cocaine themselves. Yeah, as they mentioned, they were stand-up comedians. I couldn't help, but notice how excited their lead singer came across. There was a sparkle in her eye throughout the set. She was playing one of the smaller venues in Los Angeles, but she looked so thrilled by the fact she was playing the Redwood Bar.

The Dead Coats