Old Favorites: Living Room Scene

Happy Thanksgiving!! I hope everybody has a great holiday, eats a ton, and then hits the gym tomorrow!!

I am going to debut a new feature and I am calling it "Old Favorites." Three guesses as to what it means. You...in the back...what's that you say? CORRECT! Here I will be talking about old records that happen to be favorites of mine yet maybe haven't been played for a while.

For this inaugural post, I am listening to Living Room Scene by the late, great Dillon Fence. They are a four-piece out of North Carolina who toured the East coast extensively in the early to mid-90s. They never got any national exposure, except for a brief mention in a Rolling Stone cover story about Hootie and the Blowfish. Regardless of that, they were one of my most favorite bands whilst in college. Their sound in kind of typical alternative power-pop from those days. Hootie was one of the bands they were "associated" with; they and other bands from the North Carolina and South Carolina power-pop scene had supposedly made an agreement to take some of them on tour if they ever made it big. Hootie did so they took Dillon Fence with them. That's nice.

Dillon Fence only made three full length records, the mellow-ish Rosemary, the harder edged Outside In, and their swan-song Living Room Scene. I probably like OI slightly better than LRS, but this was the one that first got me into them. The music is earth-shattering but it is really well done. Lead singer and guitarist Greg Humphreys was the soul of the band; his voice is very reminiscent of a rockier, Faces-era Rod Stewart.

I first saw them when they opened for The Connells, another North Carolina favorite, at old WUST Hall, which is now known as the New 930 Club, though it's been there nearly 20 years now. WUST Hall didn't have many rock shows there back then. The configuration was pretty much the same as the 930 is now, but it was much dingier. The coolest part was there were murals of Baptist revivals on the walls. Back then, the U Street Corridor in DC was much more sketchy than it is now. Going down there for college kids was a bit of a dangerous thrill. We didn't know any better.

After LRS came out the band went through a bunch of members. Bassist Chris Goode left to go back to school or something, then guitarist Kent Alphin left to form Granger. Drummer Scott Carle stuck around. I saw the original line-up just once, though I wound up seeing their various incarnations about five times. I remember seeing them at old old 930 Club and meeting the band in the long hallway leading to the club. What was most cool was how happy they were to see me and my friend Eric wearing our Dillon Fence tee shirts. They were genuinely happy about it. I remember seeing them at at the old Bayou in Georgetown where we got to hang out with them for a while after the show. I also saw drummer Scott Carle as a roadie for The Connells and was very excited he remembered us and talked with us for a while. They were very nice guys but seemed bummed about not making it big.

I still spin the old Dillon Fence records, and my LRS tee-shirt is one of my oldest and rattiest but I still like wearing it. Here's the title track; hope you enjoy it!