Written by James Killen

Skip down a few shows from my last post on Levy Park and I’m to be found at a regular watering hole for me, The Americana. Rachel Laven and her New Grass boogie band, Sweet Shine and Honey are set to play an early start this Sunday afternoon. Normally, Sundays are low key around here. There are a few football fans glued to the screen, one of the local performers comes in and does a few songs in a laid back atmosphere, but that was not to be what this Sunday was like.

Laven is a Kerrville award winning song writer and this band, including Addison Freeman, Steven Sellers and wildman bassist, Sam Snavely has been churning up the waters in South Texas for months now having featured prominently in 2017’s SWRFA line up. This evening they were joined by Houston pedal steel player, Mark Stevens, for the show here in Northwest Houston, decidedly outside the loop.

The band slid into the set gently, moving quickly to a cover of the Steel Drivers’ “The Reckless Side of Me” with Addison Freeman tearing it up on fiddle. The deeper into the set the band got, the quicker the room filled up with folks, many of which were visiting The American for the first time. By the fifth number, a cover of John Lennon’s “Stand By Me”, the room had begun to fill up significantly. As Laven and company covered Susan Gibson’s “The Wood Wouldn’t Burn” the room was churning with activity. A group from a prominent house concert series in town popped in that included Libby Koch, Chuck Hawthorne, Pete and Crystal Damore, Tommy Lewis, Jen Grove, and Sheron Taweek after the Ordinary Elephant show had broken up to catch some of this Sweet Shine and Honey excitement. Before the evening was over, singer songwriters Matt Harlan, Jordi Baizan, and Sam Walker were in the house (not to mention bar owner, Mark Zeus, a singer songwriter in his own right).

There was a lengthy intermission as old friends from the music business hugged and talked. The second set soon rolled on, however, featuring Laven’s “Gypsy Soul”. Addison Freeman sang a high although not necessarily lonesome lead vocal on one of the numbers before Libby Koch, joined the band for “Angel from Montgomery”. The band covered another of Susan Gibson’s tunes, “Perfect World” before covering the title track of Rachel’s solo disc, “Love and Luccheses”. The band continued to roll through a three hour performance that finally ended with a cover of Gillian Welche’s “Tear My Stillhouse Down”.

The Americana was the third stop on a tour that swept the southern states, featuring Sweet Shine and Honey. It was my fifth stop on a weekend of fantastic Houston music experiences and a fitting end to one of the greatest series of fellowship and talent that I have had in a two day period. Do not miss the chance to catch Rachel Laven , especially if she is accompanied by Sweet Shine and Honey. If you’re on the northwest side of town, stop in at The Americana. You never know what might be going down there.