The Dusthorses
Thurs Oct 3 at the Little Red Hen.

The Little Red Hen is the cozy kinda dive that decorates with pull-tab ads and Christmas lights. The bar is tucked behind a Baskin-Robbins, a welcome oasis of hard drinkers from the sports-bra set half a block away at Green Lake.

Staged before a painting of rock 'n' roll chickens (and next to the chicken wallpaper, but kinda catty-corner from the paintings of cowboys in the Old West), the Dusthorses played four sets the night I hit the Hen last Thursday. This was only their third show, guitarist Theodore Sun told me afterward, but the band played well, wandering between spacy electric blues and cowboy stompers with ease. The Dusthorses threw a little Hank, Johnny, and Willie into the mix, but their most interesting choice for a cover was a slowed-down, country-fied version of Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me." Stretched out across a wailing guitar and pulled from the heartstrings of singer/bassist Bradley Hooper--who effortlessly hit every note he crooned--the finger-snapping, snotty pop coating was stripped from the song. Instead, the band accentuated the inherent yearning in the lyrics, Hooper adding a sad sincerity to lines like "I'm beggin' you to beg me" while drummer Matthew Burgess kept simple time behind him.

The Cheap Trick classic was the highlight of the set I saw, but the Dukes of Hazzard cover wasn't bad either, although it turned into a double-time honky-tonk barnburner midway through. The rest of the set was nothing showy, a mix of psychedelic blues (what Sun called "Pink Floyd country," aided by his box of effects pedals) and songs about the perils of a working man ("Red-Eyed Saloon," about getting heckled by a drunken crowd, and another, called "Blood from a Stone," which lamented the nine-to-five grind).

In an atmosphere that called for skill over flash, and ease over pretense, the Dusthorses stepped to the plate with comfort and charm, and now I'll never hear that Cheap Trick classic quite the same way again.

The Dusthorses play Mr. Spot's Chai House Sat Oct 12.