I ventured out on a week night to see Sonia Tetlow at a dive
near my house, the Somber
Reptile. I don’t venture out on many week nights, but tonight I
did. Her show was really good, even though there were like 7 people in
the joint. The drummer of the headlining band was yelling
encouragement like “Holy shit, this chick is on fire! She’s a freight
train!” after some of her songs. Without a doubt, I have never heard
one person with an uneffected acoustic guitar so completely fill up a
place. She plays loud and hard and just plains kicks the proverbial
ass. David Ryan Harris comes close, but he does it with effects and
finesse, Sonia does it with sheer sweaty raw power. It’s
phenomenal. Afterwards I got a chance to buy her a beer and chat for a
while with her and her partner. I like her a lot. As much as I like
her music, she really impresses me with her work ethic. She plays a
lot of shows, she records CDs and presses them herself and keeps
going. I bought “Songs in Solitude” and the “Chicken Fingers EP”. I
already have some of the songs off the latter from the demo she was
selling last time I saw her. I listen to her music frequently and I’ll
rip these and add them to the repetoire. I’m really looking forward to
hearing her rendition of Nirvana’s “Come as you are.”