"I Can't Stop Smiling." Velocity Girl Headlines Night #2 of the Black Cat 30th Anniversary Shows

On Friday and Saturday nights, the Black Cat nightclub in Washington, DC, celebrated its 30th Anniversary with two nights of special shows featuring bands with strong ties to the community. The sold-out shows included the debut of Birthday Girl as well as a reunion of the late eighties and early-to-mid nineties indie-pop act Velocity Girl. Other bands who performed over the two nights were Ex Hex, The Owners, The Messthetics, Bad Moves, Flasher, Hammered Hulls, Gray Matter and Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. Although we had tickets for night one, previous commitments kept us from attending. Our tickets did not go to waste however, as a local friend found a good home for them.

Night two began with the threat of on and off again rain showers. The line in front of the Black Cat started to build within minutes of our ducking into Ted’s Bulletin across the street, to dodge a rain shower and to enjoy some pre-show drinks. Despite the persistent rain, we made our way to the line for fear of missing out on a great spot at the front of the stage. Doors opened promptly at 7pm and the crowd filed in. There was quite a bit of merchandise for sale upstairs for the 5 bands set to perform as well as an array of Black Cat anniversary themed merchandise.

The Owners, who are quite literally “the owners” of the Black Cat and include club owners Dante and Catherine Ferrando with Laura Harris and Alec Budd. Although they’ve been playing shows for a couple of years now, this night was our first time seeing them perform. They played eight songs, five of which are on their self-titled debut LP. Standouts for me were the songs “200 Rounds”, “Ride” and “Wrecked The World”. Their music had a seventies guitar rock vibe and lyrically they mix it up between overtly politically charged topics and day-to-day life minutiae. You could hear the emotion in lead vocalist Catherine Ferrando’s voice while introducing the track “200 Rounds” while recalling the horror of receiving a phone call from her child, who had survived a school shooting incident.

Hammered Hulls followed The Owners. It was my second time seeing Hammered Hulls and ironically, the first time was also a Black Cat anniversary show. In a testament to the bands efficiency, their setlist had all the track times written next to the song names with several crossed off, which appeared to have been done to squeeze in as many seconds of music that they could into their succinct 11-song, 40-minute set. Lead vocalist Alec MacKaye paced the stage back and forth, moving mic stands around from one spot to another and turning monitors on-end and facing them toward the crowd while bassist Mary Timony and drummer Chris Wilson hammered out a tightly syncopated beat. Guitarist Mark Cisneros layered sharp stabs on top. Favorites for me were “Hardest Road”, “Pilot Light” and “Written Word”, all from the bands only full-length album.

Although the next act, Bad Moves has already released two full length LP’s and two EP’s, this was my first time seeing them live. They were a lot of fun and were likely the most danceable of all the acts that evening. The 4-piece played a 8-song set consisting of songs from both full-length LP’s as well as one track from their self-titled EP. Stylistically, they played indie-pop-punk in the vein of Superchunk and at times reminded me of a rockier version of Mates of State minus the keyboards. The trio of vocalists Emma Cleveland, Katie Park and David Combs either traded on/off or harmonized, while drummer Daoud Tyler-Ameen kept a solid and steady beat on their infectious songs, which included standout tracks “Toward Crescent Park” off of their most recent LP Untenable and set closer “The Verge” off their debut EP.

No strangers to the Black Cat stage, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists played what I would arguably consider to be the best set I’ve ever seen the band perform, this despite the absence of two Pharmacists due to health related concerns. Their energy was high and Ted’s guitar was up loud! They opened the set with “Leaving River Road” from the 2022 digital EP “For Coit and Killie”. The band reached all the way back to the The Tyranny of Distance record for “Biomusicology”, “Timorous Me” and “Under The Hedge”. They played a great rendition of “Can’t Go Back” from Leo’s only solo record, The Hanged Man, and a totally on fire take of “The Sons of Cain”.

To round out an already amazing evening, Velocity Girl returned to the stage for the first time since 2002. Guitarist Archie Moore addressed his teenage daughter from the stage assuring her that the show was just like Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. They opened with “Drug Girls” which was quickly followed by “Audrey’s Eyes”. Vocalist Sarah Shannon was all over the stage throughout the set and was frequently as close as she could get to the crowd without leaving it. They played about an evenly split number of songs from their first two Sub Pop released albums Copacetic and Simpatico as well as a few early tracks like “Warm/Crawl” and “I Don’t Care If You Go”. About midway through the set, Archie Moore and Kelly Young switched off instruments to which bassist Young comically interjected that, “Now you’re really going to see some guitar playing”. They closed the set with a two-song encore of debut album title track “Copacetic” and the single “Nothing” from their final album, Gilded Stars and Zealous Hearts.

Throughout the evening, every band remarked about how special the Black Cat is to the community. I personally cannot count the number of bands I saw for the first time on the stages of the Black Cat over the years. The club truly is a pearl. Clubs come and go all the time, but through it all the Black Cat has been a bedrock in the DC community for cultivating new local acts and showcasing National and Worldwide touring acts. No one does it better than the staff of the Black Cat. Here is to 30 more years of the Black Cat!

UPDATE!!!

UPDATE!!! Velocity Girl has just announced a new show at The Black Cat on December 2nd with Tuscadero and Pohgoh. Purchase tickets here while they last! While you’re at it, check out Velocity Girl’s new digital EP Setting The Night On Fire With Rock And Roll and buy a newly designed Tuscadero T-shirt from Teenbeat Records here.

Enjoy the photos and videos from the evening courtesy of Shantel Mitchell Breen.