The Drowning Men Concert Review

DROWNING MEN

Colorado Springs City Auditorium, May 4,2011

John C. Drew

The Drowning Men, a five man band from Oceanside, CA., opened the concert

show, Wednesday night, at the City Auditorium in Colorado Springs. This very interesting musical combination merges a punkish rock n' roll touch with an Irish folk flavor to produce a very unique, intriguing and captivating electric and acoustic sound, accented with powerful song lyrics and, sometimes, melodically haunting vocals. Drowning Men belted out songs from both of their discs, Kill the Matador (2007) and Beheading of the Songbird (2009), to a very enthusiastic and "highly charged" audience at the City Auditorium. These musicians very successfully combine a variety of some rather unusual instruments, such as a bouzouki and synthesizer, with more traditional electric guitar, keyboards, mandolin and drums for a very impressive musical sound and fantastic stage performance. Drowning Men are Nato Bardeen, Vocals/Guitar/Keyboardsi Mandolin/Synthesizer/ Bouzouki, James Smith, Acoustic and Electric Lead Guitar, Gabelani Messner, Keyboards, Todd Eisenkerch, Bass Guitar/keyboards, and Rory Dolan, Drums/Percussions.

I thoroughly enjoyed Drowning Men, and found their sound quite enchanting,

particularly with the keyboard instrumentals of Bardeen and Messner. The singing was

both delicate melodious, as well as powerful hard rock n' roll! As Drowning Men is

relatively new to me and I have not seen them before, I am surprised that they have not to my knowledge, as yet, received more notoriety in the public and musical world.

However, the Drowning Men in concert do not present to me as overly impressed by, so

called "fame" or public image, and probably just prefer to say it all with their music. This

they do extremely well! Drowning Men certainly provided me and the audience with a

premiere performance of an unusual dynamic mix of song and sound.

In summary, the Drowning Men are a very rich celtic/electric musical entity, neatly

opening the road for headliners, Flogging Molly, at the City Auditorium last Wednesday

night. In future, I would be content with attending a special evening ofjust Drowning

Men in concert, as their opening performance on Wednesday simply left me only wanting much, much more of the same.


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