I had the chance to attend a rare night out of live music with friends Caleb and Lydia last night. We arrived at 5:45pm for a 6pm start time expecting to hear four bands on the evening. We were surprised to see that three local bands would act as openers for the main billing of bands, Everett, Comrades, Levi the Poet, and Listener. I decided to attend the show at Caleb’s invitation with no prior knowledge of any of the bands except a song or two of Levi the Poet. Below is my band by band take on the evening…

Venue: Crowbar Bar Ybor City, Tampa

Local Opening Bands:

Orion – 4 songs. Sloppy. Lead singer seemed A little off or checked out. Bassist was wearing pajama pants which I thought a weird choice of stage apparel. Band was lacking in passion and stage presence. Lead singer forgot the lyrics to two of the four songs. I would venture a guess this band hasn’t been together very long. 


Shurwood– 5 songs. Dual vocalist, neither great both were off key for a majority of the set. They had a tight Emo/post hardcore sound musically. Passionate and unpolished with a punk rock attitude to match. 

Vitalist – 5 songs. Lead singer alternated with melodic singing and screaming. Drummer sang background. Lots of instrumental guitar solos by lead singer. Tightest sounding band so far, lead singer very talented. 

Main Bill Bands:

Everett – 6 songs. Introverted indie/rock band. Used breakdowns and pauses to great effect. Played to drummer with back to audience a lot. Polished and rehearsed enough to sound like a professional band, but still rocked out. 

Comrades – 6-7 songs. Three piece. Female bassist and melodic singer. Drummer does contrasting screams. Lead guitarist sings background and play ambient tones with lots of technical ability contrasted with the screams. Used pedal board to loop some ambient guitar licks. Made a great amount of delicious rock n roll noise for a three piece band.

Levi the Poet – 4-5 songs. spoken word artist to hip hop beats. Ending song “Keep forgiving” a capella spoken word stood out. Very artistic and made great use of projected pictures behind him. Dramatic and moving. 


Listener – 10 songs. Spoken word with full rock band for musical backdrop. Lead singer played bass and trumpet on two songs. His vocal cadences were unique; think a western Nicholas Cage alternating between mumbling out of one side of his mouth and shouting periodically. This band rocked pretty hard and is unique to my live music listening experience, can’t say I’ve ever heard anything like them before. 

Overall it was a good night of entertaining live music and fine company. Though my attention span started to wane midway through Listeners set I definitely enjoyed the experience and would see shows at the Crowbar in the future. Shows ended around 11pm and we hit up Waffle House for a late night meal of breakfast goodness.