Two Nights at the 40 Watt and a Basement EP Party: Your Jul 31–Aug 1 Plan
Here's the thing nobody tells you about an Athens summer: the quiet weekends are the good ones. No line down Washington Street, no elbowing a freshman for the rail — just the town's own bands playing to the town's own people. This weekend, Jul 31 through Aug 1, delivers a tidy little three-show run, and two of them land at the same address.
That address is 285 W. Washington St, where the 40 Watt Club is running back-to-back headliners. Friday, Jul 31, it's the Rick Fowler Band, the kind of veteran blues-rock booking that fits the room like a broken-in boot. The 40 Watt has held roughly 460 bodies and every ghost of R.E.M. and Pylon since it moved out of a certain apartment lit by a single bare bulb, and a Friday-night guitar band is exactly what those walls were built to amplify.
Then don't go home Saturday, because Aug 1 brings the Randall Bramblett Band to the same stage. If you've spent any time in Georgia clubs you know the name — Bramblett is a songwriter's songwriter, and catching his band in a room this size, on a sleepy August Saturday, is the sort of low-key privilege that makes staying in town for the summer worth it. Two nights, one club, zero reasons to complain.
But the story I'd actually plant my flag on is happening a few blocks east, in a much smaller room. Saturday, Aug 1, at Nowhere Bar (240 N. Lumpkin St), The Grawks throw a release party for their new EP, Magnificent Little Deaths, with No Kingdom and Dead Eggs on the bill. Doors are at 8pm. Nowhere is the cozy townie pool-hall bar that keeps local rock, jam, and metal alive all summer, and it's precisely the right box for a scrappy EP party — close, loud, and unpretentious.
The Grawks' EP runs four tracks and includes a cover of the Flamin' Groovies' "Slow Death," which Flagpole's Gordon Lamb described as "so full of energy you'll sit straight up." That's a hell of a pull quote to carry into a room the size of Nowhere, and it tells you exactly what kind of evening this will be: fast, sweaty, and over before you're ready for it to be. Get there for doors — small rooms fill from the front, and you'll want to be inside the noise, not outside politely nodding at it.
So there's your calculus for the weekend. The 40 Watt gives you the marquee comfort of a proper club and two names worth the ticket. Nowhere gives you the actual pulse of the local scene at 8pm on a Saturday — three bands, one new record, and the specific thrill of hearing songs live before anyone's had time to memorize them.
You could, of course, do all three. Fowler on Friday, then a Saturday that starts polite at the 40 Watt and ends feral at Nowhere. That's not a weekend, that's a personality test, and Athens in August is exactly the right time to fail it gloriously.
Whichever way you cut it, this is the kind of weekend that rewards the people who stuck around. The tourists and the students will be back soon enough, cramming the sidewalks and acting like they discovered the place. Until then, the rooms are ours. Go fill them.
Sources: JamBase — Concerts in Athens; Flagpole — Homedrone