Washington DC is a long way from Texas but I can tell you first hand, the crowd showed up ready to party. I got to see
Treaty Oak Revival open for
Koe Wetzel this weekend at The Anthem in DC and right from the jump I knew it was going to be one of those nights. Treaty Oak has been on my bucket-list for so long (they were 4 of my top 5 songs on Spotify last year) but I was shocked to see how many people not only knew about the West Texas boys but knew every word to every song. Over an hour before Dylan Wheeler walked out to start the night there was a winding line of guys in boots, jeans, and Hooey Hats accompanied by ladies in bandana tops and ridiculously short shorts crowding onto the brick marina walkway of The Wharf, an upscale, stereotypically expensive place for consultants and government employees to cut loose after a long week of doing whatever it is they actually do. We were all out of place but it didn't matter one bit because the marquee sign announced to the public that, if only for tonight, country-rock was taking over. My wife and I got to skip the long line (shoutout to Koe's team) and I couldn't believe how packed it already was, especially considering the hundreds of people yet to get in. Ushers and security were running back and forth, directing people out of bar lines the length of football fields to the upper levels, where lines were (slightly) more manageable. With four Miller Lites in hand, we made our way back down to the floor and tried to get close to the stage, but there was no chance that was going to happen; people were packed in like one of those online order mattresses and just as ready to explode. When Treaty Oak's intro music started playing the buzz can be described as nothing less than electric. Girls were hoisted on shoulders, groups of dudes slapped backs and screamed into each other's faces, and the first notes of distorted rusty strings drove straight through the chest of all 6,000 souls like an adrenaline shot. Now, The Anthem is a great venue, I've always loved it there, but they have this somewhat strange recycled cup program and only serve beers in decently heavy plastic cups that you're supposed to drop in the yellow bins next to the trash cans. It's good in theory and worked just fine when I saw Trampled By Turtles and Greensky Bluegrass, but the attendees of this show were a much different breed. It didn't take long for those cups to start getting flung towards the stage as Treaty Oak played banger after banger, which caught the attention of frontman Sam Canty, who's been known to toss a beer, N/A or otherwise, at the crowd. Before they played "Boomtown" from their debut album
No Vacancy , Sam addressed the crowd and said something to the extent of:
"Oh so you like to throw sh*t, do you DC? Well, if you're gonna throw sh*t than do it to this song" As you might expect, that opened the floodgates and just seconds later hundreds if not thousands of beer cups were getting thrown, from the balconies, to the balconies, at the stage, and everywhere else you could think of. I was able to grab a video from the back and let me tell you, if anything it undersells the sheer volume of raining beer receptacles.
Another video taken from the balcony shows just how many cups made their way on stage and I hope they brought their snow boots because it looked like a late winter Colorado blizzard had touched down.
It was an incredible moment, but I do feel bad for the poor workers that had to clean it all up and the fans who weren't expecting it. By the time Koe came out on stage the crowd was three sheets to the wind and wanted to keep up the cup tossing, but he was much less accepting. More than a few times, he addressed the crowd, once to say that the guys who got in a fight near the front were idiots for spending money on a show then getting kicked out, and a few other times time to cuss out the "b*tches" who kept throwing cups at the stage. I didn't get a video and can't find one posted but he more or less said:
"All you in the back who are throwing cups are f*cking punk ass b*tches. We're up there trying to perform for y'all and you're throwing sh*t, f*ck y'all." That did calm the cup throwing down, not completely, but it wasn't snowing anymore. Some people said he cut the show short but I don't know how much truth there is to that. The setlist obviously changes a bit with every show, but there were a few big ones that got left out ("Austin" and "Yellabush Road" come to mind, again not saying that he was going to play them anyway) and he didn't come out for an encore, which is probably the main reason people are saying he ended it early. Before playing "Something To Talk About", one of the last songs of the night, he joked to the crowd that he needed to have a barrier put up if he was going to come play DC again:
"If y'all come back next time we're gonna have chicken wire put up here, alright?" I don't blame Koe for getting a little pissed off at a bunch of cups hitting him, the band, and the people near the front while they tried to play and don't for a second think he didn't give it his all up there. I've been at shows where he was wilder for sure but he sounded incredible and my wife and I (and everyone around us) had an absolute blast and left with nothing but giant smiles on our face. Safe to say, this concert, which was a bucket list item of mine, was happily crossed off and I'm already planning another trip to go see Koe and Treaty Oak because those boys know how to throw down. But next time we'll try to be a little better behaved... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3BKxTEj4mk
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