Furthermore Beer apparently wants to prove that not only that its new Makeweight brew tastes good, but it's also a brewery with good taste. Featuring the Black Eyed Snakes, Decibully and Scag 48, their second Brew Ha Ha (dubbed 2 Ha Ha) Saturday night at the High Noon Saloon made a very good case for them.
This Saturday night event celebrated the release of their newest brew, Makeweight, a triple pale ale that boasts an imposing 8.5% ABV, and they couldn't have chosen a better bunch of bands to help welcome it.
Scag 48, a three piece country/blues/rock band from Madison, introduced every song in their opening set as being about drinking even though the group quickly revealed that they might be a little deeper than that. They opened with the dirty blues of "Whippin'" before mixing things up later in the set with a Spanish-flavored tune complete with lyrics in need of subtitles and a cha cha cha ending. They followed that with a Stray Cat-ish "Kitty Come Back" before sneaking in Charlie Feathers song. The band is as much fun to watch as to listen to thanks to the single stringed washtub bass that provides the low end.
Milwaukee's Decibully topped Scag 48's commitment to the theme by changing the names of many of their songs to those of Furthermore beers. "This is a new song for us," lead singer William J. Seidel declared, "It's called Makeweight." Another song was introduced as "Fatty Boombalatty," while the title track to "Sing Out America" became "Drink Up America."
With three guitars on stage, I expected the sextet to rock more, or at least more often. Instead, they tended more toward the quiet introspective stuff they mostly forsook in a torrid opening set for Califone at the High Noon Saloon last year. Even before their unexpected endings, many of the songs never really seemed to gain momentum.
