The All Togethers, Melanie and the Midnite Marauders and the Gentlemen of Four Outs at the Pioneer Saloon, Saturday Sept. 26, 2015

A number of friends/bands made the road trip out to the Pioneer Saloon in order to celebrate our friend, Nikki Ruffling's birthday. While the Pioneer had some issues this evening that cut into the festivities, still, there was plenty of great music and fun festivities.

The All Togethers was the band that was "officially" scheduled to perform for the evening and they started things off in a fine fashion with their terrific take on "hillbilly jazz". The band now includes Brandon Madejek, the talented singer/guitarist behind the recently departed Whiskey Breath, and he is a fine addition, indeed, adding his superior vocals as well as guitar to the tune.

As usual, there were some more recent numbers that I was not familiar with, plenty of their superior originals and a cover of "Folsum Prison Blues" with Brandon & Ken trading lead vocals (as Whiskey Breath used to cover it, as well) and "Baba O'Riley" with Ken doing keyboard parts on his banjo and the lovely ladies doing choreographed moves. Super fun, as always!

The debut of the new high-energy honky-tonkin' combo, Melanie and the Midnite Marauders (again, featuring me and my lovely wife, Melanie, along with husband'n'wife rhythm section, Clay and Denise Heximer) followed, as we did a quick set of Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, Dave Edmunds and more. Everyone, including the group, seemed to enjoy themselves on this one!

Then, things kinda all went screwy, but eventually the All Togethers got to do another, abbreviated set followed by another long break and then the Gentlemen of Four Outs managed to get in about 20 minutes worth of tunes. People were clappin', dancin' and singin' along, until we got shut down.

It's too bad that the Pioneer let things kinda go to heck for the crowd that came to see the bands and for the groups themselves since this could have been a truly wild party night. As it was, there was lots of fun to be had, but, too many long breaks that annoyed everyone.

In any case, we all wish our friend Nikki a happy birthday celebration!