Two Cow Garage's Micah Schnabel paints the real America with fiery Midwestern storytelling

THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Micah Schnabel, Dial Drive, Houston and the Dirty Rats and Sticky Steve and Uncomfortable Dave, Will’s Pub, Jan. 27

Like Jon Snodgrass individually and Drag the River collectively, both Micah Schnabel and his Ohio band Two Cow Garage are national acts that have shown Orlando lots of love with a long history of visits. On his own, Schnabel taps the same vein of rootsy Midwestern grit as Two Cow Garage. But while his main band often rolls with a wide-open rock twang, his solo stuff has an even more pronounced spoken-word edge that injects nerve, angularity and urgency into everything.
Beyond just sound and feel, Schnabel’s work pulses with a charged raconteur heart propelled by as much passion as message. With tales that not just examine the American heartland with rosy romance but embody it in all its truth and spectrum, his solo show is a storyteller experience with folk honesty and punk voltage. It’s a raw lens that’s at once narrative and commentary, radiant in its own fire and humanity.
The rest of his support bill, however, was much more ordinary. Although their music is boilerplate pop-punk, Orlando band Dial Drive at least had the goods to be a tight and large-sounding unit.
While they sound like unsavory dinner company on paper, local cohorts Sticky Steve and Uncomfortable Dave were complementary performers trading off simple folk-punk jams of melody and humor.
Touring opener Houston and the Dirty Rats from New Jersey played generic street punk with a drummer who tended to fall behind and a degree of showboating that sometimes bordered on canned corn.
But that Schnabel, man, he’s an inspired force.
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