Yesterday at NX35: Horse Feathers at Sweetwater

By Lance Lester Sun., Mar. 14 2010 at 4:11 PM

Band: Horse Feathers
Venue: Sweetwater
Time: 1:30 a.m

At first, as the band set up its equipment, I thought Ron Howard had suddenly quit making movies, grown a beard and ditched his cap and decided to make folk music. But, alas, it was just head Horse Feather Justin Ringle setting up his equipment.

As the band launched into its set, it was fitting that its plaintive, harmony-laden version of folk was closing out the second night of music finely.

If you walked in and saw Ringle singing into a sock-covered microphone and not knowing the story behind it--it wasn't grounded properly and prone to shocking it's singers--it wouldve been hard to take the earnest folk of Horse Feathers seriously.

But, as the band played, it was easy to see why anyone would take it seriously. The crowd, in turn, was on its church-like best behavior, only to be moved to, well, moving, as the drums kicked in for the band's third song, "curs in the weeds."

Like the majority of the band's set, it was a crowd pleaser, luring the crowd out of its gracious silence and into an approving roar.