I allowed myself to get sucked into promoting this show locally due to some sense of loyalty that I think I alone feel. I mean Chamberlain are home town boys and I've known 'em since their first show 10 years ago but I'm not sure how good of friends we ever really were. I once read something about people who give you nicknames being your real friends and I'm not sure I agree but I spent a few days hanging up posters and passing out flyers just the same.

Ryan, Nessa and I headed out to Westport to do some last minute flyering and then ducked into the club and caught up with David who got us in. I looked up at the gear on stage and thought the band order had been changed but instead it turns out that Chamberlain has changed drummers since their last show here a month ago.

The new drummer is another Indiana native who did a tour of duty in local cover band The Oliver Syndrome in the late 80s and early 90s. While he was playing to the teeny bopper crowd, Split Lip were starting the straight-edge revolution in Indy. With the exit of Chuck, Chamberlain has no original members of Split Lip left (Dave joined after the first demo and Adam after the demise of his band, Decrepit).

The band started their set to about 10 people standing by the stage and another 30 in the main bar. Who knows how many dozens of people were out on the patio listening to the DJ. Their set contained three or four songs from the last album and about five new ones.

I've described the band's sound a few times before but the short of it is Indiana roots rock, with the first song sounding so John Cougar that it hurt [so good]. The songs are good but the band just didn't have much energy. Luckily Dave still seems to have quite a bit of heart about what he's doing which keeps the band honest.

I asked Adam a few questions about the band and he confirmed they've been through too much recently to break up now and talked a little about making a new album. Don't look for it on Doghouse though, he said the band (as we all expected) had pretty much run their course with Doghouse. He also mentioned press had been good lately and the gigs had been going well. Rumour is Chuck and Curtis are playing together currently, can Clay and Steve rejoining them be much behind?

Ryan and Nessa wanted to split after Chamberlain played but I talked them into staying around to at least hear Lawrence's Arthur Dodge. However after one song the kids were pulling at me to leave and after two we left. From what I could tell the band is very similar to Chamberlain (both in line-up/instrumentation and sound) but since I wasn't around for much I'll just leave my review at that.