INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Three Piece Suit
Blain Crawford and Pierce Duncan of Three Piece Suit rock out.Indianapolis Sports Park
Saturday, June 16
www.myspace.com/tpsband
After a long, hot day of cornholing, Three Piece Suit delivered — wait, wait, let’s try again ... Cornholing was the order of the day as — oh, God, I could go all day with the cornholing jokes, but let’s just skip to the review.
Anyway, as the closing act of the Indianapolis Cornhole Festival, Three Piece Suit — winners of this year’s UIndy Battle of the Bands — delivered a rollicking classic-rock set of covers and their own material. (It’s a bit hard to do a crowd sing-along of “Hard to Handle” with 10 singers in the crowd, but you make do with what you’ve got.)
Their originals are what really stand out, though; songs such as “Tyrant’s Fall” could easily come from the grand epic concept albums of the early 1970s. They have a clean, sharp sound in the style of bands you’ve heard from eras you don’t remember — Rush before they got all sci-fi, Journey before Steve Perry. (You’re probably just going to have to trust me on that last one.)
And the showmanship! Given that the show was laden with disaster after disaster — sound going in and out, broken guitar strings and toppling mic stands — the band kept rolling on with great aplomb; when guitarist Pierce Duncan’s string broke, Blain Crawford fired up a Les Claypool-style bass solo while they searched for a fix. The show must go on.
The guys are going back into the studio this month to record their next album — one of the perks of the UIndy win — and more likely than not, they’ll continue to seal their status as one of Indy’s bands to watch.