I didn't know much about the Duhks before we were scheduled to play with them at the Independant. During sound check I saw they had no bass and only a percussion player. I thought that was an interesting line up, but would probally be mellow acoustic stuff.
I thought we played a pretty good set. We didn't go overboard with the theatrical side of PMW and just focused on playing a rocking set. Now we have played with some pretty good high energy bands before, but we set the bar pretty high on energy level. We sort of challenge the next act to step it up a notch. Of all the bands we played with this one kicked the most ass!
It was not even minutes into thier first song that I realized that they take no prisoners. The sound was monstruous. The percussion player and the guitarist make up for any lack of bass or kit drums, and the fiddle and banjo player just tear it up. Add the thick vocals added on top of this and you cannot get a bigger sound.
They definately made a new fan that night. I hope we get to play with them again because they raised the bar on rocking acoustic instruments, and I love the challenge of stepping it up.