A Night in the Box

Green Bay Band Reviews
A Night in the Box Band Review Live at Baba Louie's in De Pere, WI

By TJ
April 1, 2010
After some late night shenanigans my friends and I headed down to Baba Louie's to catch a band we have been waiting to see. We have been anticipating the return of A Night in the Box, an original band hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have never seen such mix of blue note elements being put together so ingeniously. Throw in blue grass, some delta blues, add in some deep motor city garage rock, and maybe a pinch of Dixieland and it might come out sounding like this. A Night in the Box is a four piece band with Clayton Hagen on vocals and Gibson acoustic/electric guitar, Travis Hetman on vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, banjo, harmonica and mandolin, Alex Dalton on drums and Kailyn Spencer on violin. The Baba Louie's bar was packed, it was a beefy $8.00 cover but worth it ten fold to see such amazing bands up close and personal. I was totally blown away by Clayton Hagen's soulful vocals and range, and he played some awesome slide blues on his full body acoustic guitar on an overdriven retro fender amp. The tone was so fat and warm it was just so great. Travis Hetman, the multi musician in the band, was switching up the instruments constantly adding the elements that give this band a huge range in sound; he was a master at all of them. My particular favorite was when he was plucking on the banjo! Alex Dalton was a master multi-tasker. Most impressively was his ability to switch from light percussion and tambourines and instantly get heavy on the kit when the band kicked into hard rock! Kailyn Spencer added some gypsy and Dixie tone with the violin over the many layers this band puts out. A Night in the Box has so many different textures that complement one another, this music can be good old fun or extremely emotional and downright haunting at some points, the vocal harmonies could easily be fitted to a scene from the movie "O Brother Where Art Tho." A Night in the Box is from a music genre that is clearly bluegrass in a modern era. Beyond that, they create their own inspiration. The band played with huge energy. Travis was continually interacting with the crowd often getting bounced back on stage while Clayton was standing on the drum riser singing at the top of his lungs. The crowd gave all that energy right back to the band. A Night in the Box certainly has a bright future ahead of them; they are signed to Afternoon Records and are on a Midwest tour right now playing nearly every night. More than likely they will be coming back to Green Bay in the near future and if you get a chance go and see them. My two favorite songs of the night were "Broken-Down Radiator Romance Blues" and "Death Letter." Click here to check out their music online. They played for about an hour and I could have listened to them all night, but bands at Baba's usually wrap up around 12am.