It was 2005 when San Francisco rock band Void Where Prohibited started taking up a short summer residency in Durango.
It makes perfectly good sense; Durango is a vacation destination for thousands of people each summer. If you can come visit the Southwest and play some shows, all the better. And those musicians who are tax savvy can even write these trips off; remember, music sometimes is work.
The four-piece band that has been playing familiar rock and roll classics in San Francisco since the early 1980s gets pulled to the area each summer thanks to local photographer and musician Larry Carver. Before he moved here in 2003, Carver was the guitar player and a founding member of Void Where Prohibited. He’ll be sitting in with his former band tonight at the Balcony and tomorrow at the Derailed Pour House.
Carver, whose regular gigs are smattered around town with the Black Velvet duo, trio and full band, was of age at the time when The Beatles inspired everyone to pick up a guitar. Interest in The Beatles lead him to the British Invasion bands that were digging into early American blues.
“If you ask a hundred people my age when they started playing guitar, 95 of them will say ‘when The Beatles came out and took the world by storm,’” Carver said last month at the KDUR studios. “That was it for me. I was interested in The Beatles and all that stuff, shortly after that The Animals, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and all that more bad-ass kind of stuff starting coming out of England. That’s the stuff I like.”
The whole idea behind Void Where Prohibited shows in Durango is a nostalgia trip – getting together with friends from years ago to relive some of the debauchery and fun of the past, whether it be going to old haunts or in this case, playing with former bandmates.
“When you’ve played with a band for 25 years, you have that kind of connection with the frontman of the band. We’ve been together through it all,” Carver said of singer Eric Montizambert. “To all get together again and set up your stuff and plug in your guitars to the amps and start wailing, it’s like no time has passed. Everything just comes right back.”
The fact that everything comes right back alleviates the stress that would be connected with performing in front of an audience, especially what promises to be a packed Fourth of July Balcony crowd. Put the worries aside; this is a performance driven by the pure enjoyment of playing in a band and performing songs the musicians and audience have known forever.
“Usually when we get together after a year, plug in and start playing, we just go through a song and finish with a guitar solo and look at each other and go ‘wow that was killer, why are we even practicing?’” Carver said. “Because its fun. Its pure fun, it’s the best thing you can do, there’s nothing more fun than playing music, especially with your old guys who you’ve been playing with a long time ... It just doesn’t get any better.”
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s best
Friday: Splatapus, 6 p.m., no cover, Moe’s, 937 Main Ave., 259-9018.
Saturday: Void Where Prohibited, 9 p.m., no cover, Derailed Pour House, 725 Main Ave., 247-5440.
