Review: Geoff Farina + The Dropout Patrol

Although this was quite a while ago, I still wanted to say a few words about it. The people from mOck have been putting up small and cozy house shows for a while now and even though their taste matched mine pretty well most of the time I actually never made it to one of these shows until this one. So we made our way to some part of Berlin that I've never been to before to attend this house show.  Since the original show had been been fully booked pretty fast another one had quickly been organized and we were lucky enough to be part of this second show. 

The Dropout Patrol played first and presented their stripped down and intimate take on a mixture between 'slowcore' and singer/songwriter music. Similarities to and influences from bands like early Low, Ida or even the Secret Stars can't be denied, however they manage to keep an original approach and likable attitude. Also they were a perfect fit for what was coming up next. 

I've seen Geoff Farina play in very different settings and one thing all shows had in common was that they sounded completely different every time. This one was no exception, Geoff Farina played a great show with songs that sometimes were very different from each other stylistically and also concerning their background and origin. Yet if you recapture his musical output over the years all of this somehow made sense and blended together into a beautiful journey through old Secret Stars and Karate songs, even older traditional Americana Folk and Blues pieces and songs of guitar players that seemed to have had a huge impact on Farina's taste and style. In-between songs he told funny anecdotes about the songs he was about to play or about his experiences on the road. All of this made for a great concert and possibly my favorite time of seeing Geoff Farina solo.

The m0ck guys were kind enough to put some filmed songs from the show on youtube, watch them below and click here for some more plus two Dropout Patrol songs of the same evening. They also wrote that 'chances are high, that we'll see Geoff again in these rooms'. Well count me looking forward to it!

Review: Geoff Farina and Chris Brokaw

I was sort of looking forward to this one because I really like Geoff Farina. I saw him solo twice before and have these concerts in good memory, so I was excited to see what he does together with Chris Brokaw.

We arrived somehow early at Madame Claude and hung out a while until the door to the concert room got opened. The room filled quickly, we reserved some good spots in the front and waited for the first guy to start playing. Which he eventually did. I'm not going to say much about him, I didn't like at all what he did. I didn't find him funny (which he sort of tried very hard to be) and musically this was just lame indie folk acoustic guitar strumming with annoying lyrics to me. Normally I would have left and waited until he finished but I didn't want to lose my premium spot at the front, so I had to sit it out...

When he finally finished playing Geoff Farina and Chris Brokaw set up. They started by playing some songs together from an album on which they covered old American folk songs together. Then Geoff Farina played some of his own songs alone. After that Chris Brokaw took over and played some songs alone (including a great Evan Dando cover of My Idea, which somehow was better than the last time I saw Evan Dando in person playing) and finally they played another bunch of songs together, often taking turns singing. Overall, especially the songs they played together were very country blues like, which I liked sometimes but which was also too much guitar tootling for me. I had hoped to hear some older Geoff Farina songs but unfortunately he didn't play any. However I was pretty positively surprised by Chris Brokaw's solo stuff which I didn't knew before. So I'd say this was well worth a Madame Claude visit. Now I'll just go to sleep listening to 'The Bed is in the Ocean'...