One of the first nights in recent memory featured three great bands performing at three different venues in Little Rock. Fayteville's Benjamin Del Shreve at Stickyz, Austin's Graham Wilkinson at White Water and Little Rock's The Munks at The Afterthought. After already seeing BDS and Wilkinson play this past year, Lee and I decided to check out The Munks.
I first heard about the Munks right around when we were getting this web page started. I had listened through all the bands playing last year's Riverfest and The Munks were set to play the final day of the three day festival. Something came up and I wasn't able to get there in time to hear them take the Triple-S Alarm stage. It would be one missed chance I would later regret. Apparently lead singer Aaron Grimm currently lives up in Rogers and The Munks are only able to reform every couple of months, usually at the Afterthought, and usually un-rehearsed. I had never been to the Afterthought, nor seen The Munks so I figured it was a good night to kill two birds with one stone. I got to the show during the last song of their first set and could already tell this was going to be one hell of a night. The Afterthought was completely packed with the broadest age / demographic range I have seen in a long time. Normally The Afterthought is notorious for booking jazzier soulful bands that never seem to quite make the grade. It seems like lately, the venue has decided to branch out a little more and include some other genres on their calendar. Jeff Coleman and the Feeders have a date scheduled there later this month.
It was easy to see why such a large and diverse audience made it out for The Munks. The band performed almost all of their original songs plus some impressive Nirvana, Radiohead, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Haggard and Warren Zevon covers. The instrumentation was absolutely phemonemal and several of the songs were lifted into a loose improvisation that extended well past the ten minute mark. Normally I'm not into bands that go too far out of bounds but The Munks kept things simple and kept most audience members attentive and entranced. The crowd stuck around for all three sets of music and most were there when the band announced they were done around half past midnight. Between Aarons piano, Bennet Ryel's violin and Rich's walking bassline most of the songs had a strong "Desire" era Bob Dylan sound. I listened to their older album "Heartbreak Numbers" on the way home and could not be more impressed. The piano comes through a lot more on the album and so far I haven't heard a bad track. The Munks have been playing off and on over the past couple of years and have a small yet devoted fanbase. Most of the night was spent with the band catching up with old friends and new friends that were glad they were back. Now that Aaron has decided to move back down to Little Rock we can only hope that The Munks will be playing in town a lot more. If you are unfamiliar with their sound or just want to catch up, shoot them a message on their Myspace page.
http://www.myspace.com/themunks1
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