Review: Ernie and The Automatics at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton MA

Date of concert: January 30, 2011

Ernie and The Automatics is a blues-rock band composed of members of formerly successful bands, the most notable being Barry Goudreau on guitar and Sib Hashian on drums, both formerly original members of Boston. The story and soap opera of Boston is best described on other web sites, so it's best I get on with reviewing the actual show.

Local band Damon Reeves and the Love Thieves, or just The Damon Reeves Band, opened the show. They delivered a decent half-hour set and proved themselves to be one of the better local groups. Reeves is a pretty decent guitar player, and their set was enjoyable.

Ernie and the Automatics is Brian Maes on vocals, Tim Archibald on bass, Michael "Tunes" Antunes on saxophone, and Ernie Boch Jr. on guitar, as well as the aforementioned members. They're all great musicians, but many tracks from their first album were mildly dissapointing. Live, many of them have an extra air of life to them, but they still aren't really great songs, save "The Good Times (Never Last)" and "Tappin' On An Empty Head".

Luckily, this night they decided to debut some tracks from their upcoming album, and all of them are markedly better than what came before. I can't recall any specific song titles, as many were very new, including one they said they wrote while getting ready to perform.

They did a great version of the J. Geils' Band "First I Look At The Purse". Archibald and Maes both formerly toured with Peter Wolf in his solo band. The highlight of the show has to be the "Boston Medley" they play. Composed of "More Than A Feeling", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'" and "Foreplay/Long Time", it's great to hear Goudreau play the solo in "Long Time" just as he played it on the record(Tom Scholz handled the majority of Boston's studio guitar work). They are not able to play any more Boston material for legal reasons, but what they do play sounds great.

A very good show, and all of the band members are friendly guys who are great to talk to. Tickets for these guys aren't usually very expensive(This show was $1.02!), so I recommend them!

"Tappin' On An Empty Head" perfromed live: