Dairy Family, Midwest Experience Rock Rumba Café
* All photos shot by Dennis McAfee (@photosbydgm)
This past Thursday, February 16, the Rumba Café was graced with a surprise show from two Columbus indie rock darlings. Being a Thursday night in a dive bar, the scene was fairly intimate, but you wouldn’t know it from the musicianship on display.
Before I could have my face shredded off by the Midwest Experience, I was enveloped in the smooth melodies of Dairy Family’s eight-piece ensemble. They filled the space with a rich soundscape, taking advantage of the somewhat muddy acoustics to totally engross me. Their set of mostly original songs was heavily jam-based, letting each song play out through gripping shifts in time and key. The energy on stage was really a highlight of Dairy Family’s set. The band is clearly made up of talented musicians, and there was a palpable love for the music on display. This is definitely a band that needs to be seen in a live setting.
Dairy Family includes founding members of Columbus music collective TeamBall, who have taken the city’s music scene by storm recently. Both the band and its parent organization will be exciting to watch in the coming months.
Next came Max Lew and the Midwest Experience, whose set felt like a classic rock-n-roll show through and through. The band interspersed original songs with indie rock anthems from Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto” to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend.” Their final song got everybody in the crowd shouting along to gen-z crowdpleaser “Everybody Talks” by Neon Trees.
The guitar tones throughout the show felt alive and dynamic. The band was careful to constantly keep the momentum going, having the drums consistently vamp through Max’s intermissions and drowning the ambience in reverb and feedback. Parts of the show grew into extended experimental jams of interlocking guitar harmonics, before suddenly dropping right back into head-banging riffs. The energy throughout the set was consistently killer.
Live music in Columbus has been in something of a transition since TeamBall’s beloved Cellar house venue was shut down in October. “A lot of people got down from the Cellar closing,” says titular frontman Max Lew, “but we’ve still been getting out all the music we can and keeping the scene alive.” This show in particular was proof enough for me that the scene is very much alive and well, and will continue as long as there are passionate artists willing to put themselves out there. According to Lew, “The best way to support music right now is just by going to these shows and supporting TeamBall.”
Max Lew and the Midwest Experience will be performing again at Ace of Cups on March 10th. Lew will also be supporting Adam Paddock on guitar in the upcoming ‘Columbus Against the World’ concert at the Newport Music Hall on March 4th.