Drive By Truckers –Kafe Antzokia, Bilbao Spain

A visit from my crazy brother Andy prompted a week long trip to Spain (Bilba and San Sebastian) planned around the kick-off show for the Drive By Truckers European tour in Bilbao on 23 March – before Andy flew home to Australia the next day.

Non-musical highlights out of the way first – how good is Spain? Buying meat over the bar…. mmmmmmm Jamon Iberico (“the rolls Royce of meat!”) mmmmmm. Ok so onto the show –

The venue itself was fantastic. One large room – that appears to be a restaurant during the day – with a very high raised stage, that has steps leading up to it (handy for sitting on before and after the show).

Andy is the Drive By Truckers afficianado – I only know a few songs – but they played a bunch from the brand new album “A Blessing And A Curse” – plus a few “classics” – of which I really liked ‘Carl Perkins Cadillac’. I was surprised how hard rocking the show was – I was thinking it might be a bit more country – but the boys (and girl) rock hard. The ended with an encore cover of Jim Carrol’s ‘People Who Died’. After the show fans (including my brother!) mingled pretty freely with the band, and they were extremely happy to pose for photos.