The four members of Old Hat. — Photo courtesy of the artists

Two more disparate sets would be hard to find.

Friday night at the Northeast Kingdom Den started with a folk revival trio and was followed by a quartet of rowdy self-professed misfits that would likely revel in being called immune to categorization – which they certainly are.

First up, Holly Overton, Brian Chillemi, and Nick Chiericozzi (each of different bands) have put together a group they call Rockwood Revival.  Ms. Overton, vocalist and guitarist of the wonderful duo Feather & Folly, said the gig at NE Kingdom would be their first together.  Rockwood Revival’s game is traditional folk – Seeger, Sainte-Marie, Woody Guthrie – a bit of a leap from the softer dreamlike tunes she normally plays.

And it mostly works.  The arrangements were great, especially Mr. Chiericozzi on mandolin, and the occasional dulcimer from Mr. Chillemi.  After a brief instrumental number, they opened with "Cripple Creek," which hit all the right instrumental beats, but came just short on the harmonies – damned if they kept getting close, but Mr. Chillemi ran into some pitch problems, and it never quite found its stride.

There are also some spatial limitations here.  The Den is a perfect venue for intimate acoustic sets, but with its lack of amplification, it can be death for anything high-tempo/multi-instrument.  So Ms. Overton’s great voice, try though she might to boom it above the din, was often drowned out.  This is especially unfortunate in a song like "Cindy," where we lose much of the verse-switching and harmonies.

They close with the old Woody Guthrie number "Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad," though, and it’s their strongest of the night.  It’s a more laid-back tune, Mr. Chillemi throws on the harmonica holder, and here they find the right balance of mellow and twang.

The second act of the night is Old Hat, and what can one say?  Two men and two women take the stage and proceed to give us songs divined from their spiritual leader W. Alan Yankovic (who has a blog, and unconfirmed connection to the musical parodist of similar name). 

Songs in Friday night’s set included "Dominic the Donkey," "Uncle Pat’s Pig Roast," and "Fucking Morphine," which was described as "the song about the time we took drugs and nothing happened."  They take breaks in between songs to auction off a macabre painting, and end up taking a collection from the audience – twice, because they weren’t satisfied with the results of the first go-around.

All this, and the music itself was fun, spectacularly entertaining, and very often witty.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone play the acoustic bass with intensity, but that is what Old Hat’s bassist Preston Spurlock did.  Besides being a talented musician, his violent outbursts with and towards this usually-docile instrument were perhaps the most entertaining part of the show.  I don’t know if his rage-fueled bass-playing was part of the act, or just part of an artist’s passion in the moment – I don’t care, it was fucking fun.

These musicians (the others are Dibson Hoffweiler on guitar, Deenah Vollmer on mandolin, and Fran Agnone on drums) smile out the side of their mouths throughout the set, as though they’re getting away with something.  Indeed, at one point Hoffweiler – their sort-of lead man – remarked that they must be doing something wrong, because not nearly enough people had walked out yet.

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