The ladies hit the stage with Shelley King’s “How You Make Me Feel” and Carolyn Wonderland adding some tasty chops. Carolyn and Shelley have been touring together as a duet for several years and have developed a real rapport with each other on stage. Cindy Cashdollar, Sarah Brown and Lisa Pankratz formed Dave Alvin’s back-up band, “The Guilty Women” several years back and have a similar rapport.

Sarah took the lead vocal spot on “Bad Things” with Carolyn rocking the guitar lead. Carolyn was up next with the Gospel/ Blues “Ain’t Nobody’s Fault but Mine” with Sarah and Shelley singing backup to her lead vocals and guitar. Lisa sang lead on a country blues rendition of Barbara Lynn’s “Oh Baby! (We Got a Good Thing Going)”. This was followed by an instrumental featuring Cindy’s lap steel leads.

The real chemistry on stage this evening was the way in which each artist took the lead on her song and the rest of the band pulled together behind her. The evening continued with stellar performance after stellar performance of original tunes and revisited standards. “Lonesome Hollow Blues” featured solos by Cashdollar, Brown and Pankratz with Sarah Brown taking the lead vocals. “What Good Can Drinking Do?” featured Carolyn on lead vocals and guitar with some pretty poignant fill from Cindy.

The band put together another jam behind Sarah singing “Pretty Little Poison”, that featured an amazing Wonderland lead guitar and bass and drum solos. Then Herb Remington returned to the stage for a little romp with the girls on his pedal steel. That led easily into Lisa singing Mickey Newbury’s “Tell Me Baby, Why You Been Gone So Long” with Cindy’s lap steel solo.

The show began winding down for the evening with Carolyn doing “I Ain’t Got Long for This World” that featured her and Cindy on dual lap steels. Sarah Brown did lead vocals on “If I Ever Get Right” with Shelley, Lisa and Carolyn backing vocals from the chorus. The main set ended with Shelley King’s acoustic gospel number, “Welcome Home” that really topped off the show with a whole band crescendo. For the encore Carolyn Wonderland led the band in a ripping version of “Judgment Day Blues”.

This was one of those shows that just left me drained after watching highlight after highlight. This band could fill and satisfy any venue in the world if this performance had been filmed and spread out through social media the way things move today. Not one of the band’s members could be replaced by someone else and carry the same effect. I only regret that there hadn’t been a few more folks out on the “Green” Thursday night to catch it for free. Austin’s Mingo Fishtrap is next Thursday’s fare. Get yourself out for a good time.

Opening up for the ladies was current Houston resident and western swing legend, Herb Remington.

Herb Remington was already on stage and dishing out the pedal steel classics from the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys era. He played “Sugar Moon”, what the Edge and Rose call a real smoochin’ song, and “Blues for Dixie” before inviting Cindy Cashdollar to sit in. Cindy sat in with her lap steel slide for the blues standard turned western swing standard, “Milk Cow Blues“ and stayed in the line-up for “Time Changes Everything”.