This weekend, western Connecticut will be getting one highly anticipated night of music and arts—so anticipated its already sold out. We’re about Le Getaway, which takes place Saturday October 17 at Club Getaway in the Berkshire Mountains.
This day long event will see trip-rock trio lespecial and four-member jamband Eggy perform back to back sets of live music on stage for a socially distant audience. Patrons of the show will be able to either stay for the day or overnight in specially prepared cabin rentals, as well as take part in a number of campground-style activities.
Le Getaway will be the latest recent live appearance from lespecial, who have performed a number of drive-in shows in the past few months. Just this past weekend, the band literally performed a drive-in: screening a visual of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari behind them, they played an original, improvised live score to the classic film. Eggy, on the other hand, will be making their first appearance in front of a live audience since February, and the foursome’s speedily growing fanbase is certain to be amped up for this rare 2020 showing.
We at The Poke Around are also very excited for this special musical pairing, and to fuel our readiness for the week ahead, we’re listening back to some of our favorite live selections from each band’s performance pasts. Check ’em out below! To find out more information about Le Getaway and about lespecial and Eggy in general, visit their websites here and here.
lespecial: “Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy” @ The Acoustic Cafe
October is “spooky season,” a time in which it is socially acceptable to have fun with your mischievous side— a description that often fits for live lespecial jams. To kick off this list, let’s throw it way back to 2015, where the trio performed a version of “Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy” with special guest keyboardist Scott Hannay that was both deliciously dark and groovy at the same time.
Eggy: “Shadow” @ The Orpheum
Just before the pandemic hit this year, Eggy was riding high on a tour opening for west coast jamband Spafford—a big career notch for the Connecticut foursome. Eggy made a great impression early on in the tour by playing an all-timer version of one of their newer, and most popular songs, “Shadow.” The hard hitting jam on this one surely must have won over some Spafford fans pretty quickly.
lespecial: “Thela Hun Ginjeet” @ Cervantes’ Other Side
A proven master of many musical disguises, three-headed lespecial has put their modern muscle into tributes to a number of different influences, from Primus and Tool to more recently artists like CKY and Kanye West. At a performance at Colorado’s Cervantes in Janurary 2019, the band surprised all with a tremendous version of King Crimson’s “Thela Hun Ginjeet.”
Eggy: “Boom or Bust” Live From The Egg Crate
Despite being robbed of many touring dates this past summer, Eggy made productive use of quarantine time and live-streamed full length, multi-camera sets of music from their home. Going “live from the egg crate” let the band comfortably showcase top-notch renditions of their music, some of which this summer were debut songs. “Boom or Bust” was one such livestream debut, which kicks off with some truly righteous B-3 organ.
lespecial: Donut Ghost House II @ lespectacle 2019
Every Halloween season, lespecial treats their fans with a yearly event called lespectacle, an all night party they headline along with some very cool additional musical artists. What better jam to pull from that than one of the bands more recent compositions, “Donut House II,” which comes off their most recent studio effort, Cheen. This lespectacle performance of the song masterfully coalesces hip hop beats, guitar space, and piano into a thing of etheral, eerie beauty.
Eggy: “BubaGum” @ Stage One
On a list of other scene favorites like moe. and STS9, Eggy have generated smart demand for rarely occasioned acoustic showings, delivering material from their songbook in stripped-down fashion. The end of last year was one such occasion, in which the band performed an entire acoustic set at Fairfield, CT’s Stage One. From that one-of-a-kind performance, check out this brilliant take on the band’s heady instrumental “BubaGum.”
lespecial: “A Fistful of Dollars” Livestream
This past weekend, lespecial performed an original livescore to a backdrop of the 1928 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. No, we don’t have audio to that yet. But, in the meantime, check out this little something of a similar coolness. Back in the spring, in the beginning of the livestream music game, the trio recorded a wicked take on “A Fistful of Dollars” from the timeless spaghetti western The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Perhaps at Le Getaway we will get the early Halloween gift of more lespecial movie music magic.
Eggy: Skin It Back @ Pacific Standard Tavern
Eggy does their own pretty impressive covers from time to time, never least of all which is Little Feat’s “Skin it Back.” Stemming from a full Little Feat tribute the band performed years back at the legendary Toads Place, the band pretty much always delivers the jamming goods on this one. This version from a sold-out show at Pacific Standard Tavern last year is one of their best renditions of the classic jam.