Honky-tonk havoc at The Uptown

On Thursday of last week I donned my cowboy boots and headed to The Uptown in Oakland for one hell of a musical extravaganza - Petunia & The Vipers, The B-Stars and West Coast Ramblers.

This show was bound to attract a fun crowd, and I had been looking forward to it for a while - in fact, when changing my return flight to London on this trip, I specifically wanted to make sure that I would be here to catch this gig.






We arrived at around 9.30ish and unfortunately only caught the last couple of songs by the West Coast Ramblers, but we saw them the previous week when they played the Burritt Room, and their first show a couple of months ago at The Knockout, and they are great.

The B-Stars were awesome as usual - I really enjoy dancing to their music, and I feel like even if I heard their song Ink Free Baby of Mine five hundred million times, I would still love it.






The venue was pretty full with spectators and dancers, and the atmosphere was buzzing. I was glad to see lots of my friends as it was one of my last nights out in the USA for a while!








The wooden floor was fun to dance on in my boots as it offered a lot of slide and there was enough space to feel comfortable.


Petunia & The Vipers played another great set as their tour returned them to the Bay Area hot on the heels of their show at the Verdi Club the previous week.

They performed a different set to the one they played at the Verdi which was great, given that many of us in attendance had gone to see that show as well.




Their music is so haunting and grand, and yet fun and cheeky. The instrumental line-up features a kazoo, which always reminds me of ducks. Quack.


I got a little carried away experimenting with the different settings on my new camera, trying to take an über-cool, non-blurry, non-flash photograph of the band during their performance - and so of course I then had a gazillion blurry, almost identical photos to trawl through, in the hope that at least one of them came out ok.






I am so glad that this was one of my last nights out on this trip, as it was the perfect send-off and I had an absolute hoot!