Eat, Drink, Swoon

When you experience things in threes, they just naturally fall into good, better and best.

After last night's debauchery. tonight's plan was a simple one: meet a friend for food and drink and spend the evening listening to music.

We lucked out by picking Six Burner because my favorite bartender was pulling a rare Tuesday night shift, allowing me to get his take on the Flaming Lips show I'd passed up for the Fleet Foxes show Sunday.

Today's alternately sunny/ stormy weather was very summer-like, so I went with my favorite summer libation, the Broadbent Vino Verde. Seeing it back on wine lists means humidity and daily ice cream are just around the corner.

We were two art geeks meeting to debrief; she had just come back from NYC and going to MoMA and I had to share my trip to DC and the NGA.

She is the only person I know whom I could reference a trompe l'oeil oculus and have her get it, much less care (much less have her say, "I love that you said that!"). This is only one reason why I value our long-time friendship (that and, like me, she eats everything).

So, yes, Tuesdays are a good day to drink half-priced wine at Six Burner, but every day is a good day to eat there and we enjoyed all kinds of  taste delights.

There was the octopus/olive and sweetbread terrine, an item not even yet on the menu, but interesting enough to check out. The artisanal cheese plate featured Cashel blue, Appalachian Tomme and the divine Nancy Camembert.

But the best of the bunch was the duck confit, potato gnocchi, duck jus with blood orange, Parmesan and a dusting of cocoa.

On the occasions that this dish shows up on 6B's menu, I am compelled to order it for the sheer richness of it; the pillowy gnocchi and the fatty duck are a match made in taste bud heaven, with the blood orange and cocoa providing the contrasting tang.

Before we knew it, we were stuffed and she had to go meet a wedding photographer for her upcoming nuptials and I was off to the Listening Room at the Firehouse Theater.

It was a bittersweet evening because Chris Edwards, one of the founders of the LR is leaving for Portland next month so it was his last night as MC. His easygoing and humorous introductions have set the tone for the LR for nineteen months now and he'll be greatly missed.

First up was Charlottesville's Chris Campanelli and the Dusty Jackets, a folk rock band. Campanelli admitted that his first choice in life would be to be part of a Dylan cover band and that "This is what I'm doing until that happens."

With a newly-purchased glockenspiel and two vocalists to harmonize, they played a solid set and Campanelli raved about the LR environment and the pleasures of being actually listened to.

During their set, I did have to play LR attendant for the first time when a threesome in the front row continued to whisper during the band's set.

I figured they were first-timers and just didn't know the rules of the Listening Room. A finger to my lips did the trick. They were very gracious about it and ceased conversation.

After the set, they apologized and said that they were playing  in the third band of the evening. Sometimes even musicians need to be schooled.

Up second was Small Houses, also known as Jeremy Quentin. It went like this: a guy walked onto the stage, started playing guitar and singing, moving closer to the mic to sing and stepping back to play. His voice was at once intimate and intense, as was his stage persona.

Saying that many of the songs had been written while he was living in Boston and trying to convince himself to move back home to  Michigan, the audience was then treated to what might arguably have been one of the top three performances at the LR ever. Ever.

After the first song, a photographer gave me a look of amazement and whispered, "Well, that certainly wasn't what I was expecting!" I nodded. But no one who hadn't heard him before could have expected what we'd just experienced.

His intensity showed itself in his performance, as he rocked up on the balls of his feet when making a point with his lyrics.

Occasionally pushing the thick shock of hair out of his eyes to sing, he came across as a Romantic-era poet. Let's just say he could have worn a sweeping black cape with aplomb.

He asked if we'd prefer a Woody Guthrie or Tom Waits cover and when Waits won, he acknowledged, "Got it. You picked the right one."

But then he followed it by doing the Guthrie cover anyway. Let me assure, you, they were both the right one.

"Tired  and Twenty Cities" was preceded with the comment, "Never leave Philly and hit DC at 5:00." This from a guy who'd been on the road for twelve hours a day the last two days to get here.

The buzz after his set was terrific as the female contingent fanned themselves and the musicians acknowledged the talent of his voice and guitar playing. Some of us did both.

Haze and the Transients were the final band of the evening and the only local one. Their set was wide-ranging, from a song about an eleven day fling ("Sweet as a Margarita") to Shakespeare's Sonnet #50 set to music and titled, "Heavy."

The covered Dolly Parton's "Jolene," mentioning Mindy Smith's cover. Personally, I'd take the White Stripes' gender-bending version over any other, but that's just me. It was an inspired cover to play.

A funny moment came when the band played one of the guitarist's two original songs and he led off in the wrong key. "The guy who wrote that song should really know what key it's in," he joked.

Their last song had the surprise element of a chorus, seated in the first two rows, who stood to do the background ahhing. It was a first for the Listening Room.

That, in fact, is the enduring beauty of the LR. Despite being nineteen months in, they continue to surprise, delight and pique the interest of the attendees with choices of music we might otherwise never hear.

But let's refresh everyone's memory. The first rule of the Listening Room is there's no talking. You could say that the only other rule is to sit back and enjoy and I'm really good at that.

Don't make me go all Listening Room cop on anyone again.