To celebrate the release of his new album At First There
Was Nothing, Anthony D’Amato performed at Mercury Lounge on
Saturday with some friends, onstage and in the crowd, helping out with
singalongs. The early show (7pm start time) necessitated a tight set with
little chatter between songs as the band and D’Amato got right to business.
Opening the same way the new album does, the five piece band dropped into “Long Haul” with D’Amato pledging his allegiance around a big kick drum keeping time. “Ships In The Night” used a folk rock groove, highlighted by tight pedal steel work while “Kinda Strange” deployed distorted electro-keys around Anthony’s lyrics of racial strife.
The first singalong commenced with “The Oyster and The Pearl” as the band fully locked in and delivered one of the highlight jams of the set to end the tune. Both “Everything Does” and “But I Go” started soft with acoustic strums before slow builds to dynamic full band crescendos.
D’Amato then decided to focus on solo songs as the band took a break, “Ludlow”
was a heartbroken break up song that D’Amato said was written close by and was easier to play with people clapping at the end, while “Passing Through” was a
new, unreleased song in more upbeat fashion.
The heavy drums kicked back up for “Was A Time” before “Good
and Ready” floated on a distinct Bruce Springsteen “Atlantic City”
vibe. The power strums of “If It Don’t Work Out” were strong while “Ballad of
the Undecided” wrapped up the set with a stomping folk throwdown.
The encore found a few of D’Amato’s fellow bandmates in Fantastic
Cat join him as Mike Montali and Don DiLego came on stage (along with opener
Matt Sucich) to excellently sing a cover of The Traveling Wilbury’s
classic “Handle With Care”, wrapping up a solid set of folk rock and solo
acoustic numbers highlighting his newest release and older favorites.
Support the artist, buy his new album and peep some video below:
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