The Delta Bombers and the Lucky Cheats at the Sand Dollar, Friday July 29, 2016

The Sand Dollar celebrated their 40th anniversary with a week's worth of cool shows ranging from traditional blues, rock'n'roll and this evening's festivities of punk rockers playing rockabilly'n'blues with an edge.

The Delta Bombers are fresh from a couple month European tour and packed the place to the proverbial rafters with fans welcoming them back. They got everyone up dancin'n'shoutin', drinkin'n'carousin'! Their sound has evolved from a more'r'less traditional rockabilly combo to a rock'n'roll quartet mixing bands like The Gun Club, the Cramps (I heard a snippet of "Can't Hardly Stand It" in one song), CCR (they do "Run Through the Jungle"), Bo Diddley (they use "his" beat on a call'n'answer song that everyone joined in on) and lots more. Leader growler Chris can truly sing when he wants, channels Howlin' Wolf at times and truly commands the audience to an extent that you rarely see these days. The crowd wouldn't let 'em go after their regular set and they did a three song encore (including their take on "Smokestack Lightnin') that brought down the house and shook up the beer! Truly the best time that I've ever seen these cats - they were on fire!

Unfortunately, we were both a bit under the weather (I ended up in bed the entire next day) and couldn't stay for all of my favorite band in town, the Lucky Cheats' two sets. What we saw sounded amazing, as always - super-charged blues by some of the best musicians in the city. I've ranted'n'raved about them more times than I can count, but they don't play as often as they once did so I was super disappointed that we couldn't stick around. Hopefully, they will be back out there soon!