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The Silos

Filed under: Imported

In the summer of '99, Walter Salas-Humara's band played a little club called Home in Davie (just west of Fort Lauderdale—and home to Vanilla Ice). The venue had only been open for a few months, but had quickly establshed itself as the most reliable space around town to catch live rock n' roll. Not exactly a heroic accomplishment: the music scene in South Florida sucks. The staples are Jimmy Buffett covers, arena shows, and B-level  blues bands. Most touring groups without the backing of corporate sponsors don't bother with the long journey down from Atlanta.

I'd been a Silos fan since hearing the band's 1987 release, Cuba. The Caribbean island from which the album gleans its name (and from which Salas-Humara's parents emigrated) is never mentioned, but the songs are suffused with meditations on home and place. Each track is a minimalist portrait of day-to-day domestic life: marriage, parenthood, love, loss. Granted this sounds about as rock n' roll as a Barney disc, but that's what made it exceptional. The music threads a path somewhere between X and Uncle Tupelo, with flourishes of strings and horns rearing up against screaming guitars.

The Home show was a sort-of homecoming for the band. Many of the group's early songs were first recorded in Fort Lauderdale and nearby Deerfield Beach. I expected a decent crowd would show up to catch the local kids made good.

There were roughly 10 people in attendance. I was the only one paying any attention to what was happening on stage. The rest of the crowd was gathered by the bar, or at the back of the room, conversing as if the music was coming from a jukebox. I don't remember much about the show, except that I left thoroughly depressed. About a month later Home closed. A few months after that I moved to Minnesota.

I caught the Silos again in December, 2000, at the 7^th Street Entry. It was one of the bitterest cold nights of the year and I'd taken the bus downtown by myself. Earlier in the evening Alejandro Escovedo had put on his standard dazzling performance in the main room. As midnight approached and the Silos took the stage, Escovedo could be seen drinking a beer in the back of the 7^th Street Entry.  

Walter Salas-Humara and his two cohorts were in fine form, ripping through their two-decade catalogue of songs to an enthusiastic crowd. Considerable alcohol intake prevents me from providing exact details. I loaned $20 to my colleague Pete Scholtes and spent my last five bucks on beer.

It was a brutally cold walk home, but worth the pain.

To quote John Doe and Exene Cervenka: "I wish that it would snow, or at least rain and hail, rain and hail, rain and hail in Fort Lauderdale."

Posted by Paul Demko at April 30, 2003 5:33 PM

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