Photos by Chris Gray
It didn't look good at the beginning. A few minutes after 9 p.m. Wednesday, the posted start time for visiting Cleveland roots-rockers the Magpies, the "count" at the Continental Club front door was all of 16 paying customers, and the band was nowhere in sight.
Two chicken tacos at Tacos a Go-Go and one Lone Star at the Big Top later, things were much improved. The room was considerably fuller - and would go on to be one of the biggest Wednesday-night crowds Aftermath ha
[A review from the Magpies' January Continental show is here.]
Chris GrayMy son, a guitar plunker raised on huge doses of Rockpile and Joe Ely, tipped me to the Magpies. He saw them at Hayes Carll's Stingaree Festival about a year ago and pronounced them the hardest-rocking band of the whole soiree. Tooling over to MySpace, it only took a brief introduction to the band's work to convince me that he might be onto something.
Not only does the band rock, it has smart lyrics and, with keybo
​Cleveland roots-rockers The Magpies pull into Cactus Music today for an instore performance. They were unable to book a Houston gig during the current swing though Texas and Oklahoma, but arranged an instore anyway because "we need to keep working Houston," according to keyboardist Justin Gorski.
The Ohio foursome stole the show two years ago at Hayes Carll's Stingaree Festival at Bolivar and have been working Houston steadily since. They killed at the Continental in January. If you like your
