Tonight I went to see
Down Town Brown's show, The Future of Rock'n'Roll in the comedy festival. It was quite entertaining, as DtB shows usually are. It didn't differ much from a regular DtB show, save for some interludes, some extra costume changes, and the emergence of the anti-DtB, three highly dodgy geezers with suspenders and bad haircuts/teeth who wowed the audience with a harmonica/guitar/washboard performance and some enthusiastically daggy tap dancing. Anyway, Down Town Brown said that they're extending their season for an extra week (i.e., next Thursday to Saturday), so if you missed them, you can catch them then.
(And it's about time someone brought back the washboard as a deliberately daggy musical instrument, used more for its ironically self-deprecating semiotics than its expressive qualities. Perhaps that would make it a more rootsy/alt-country answer to the Casio keyboard...)
"rootsy/alt-country"? Is that approaching C.W. Stoneking territory? (Old Bar, Sunday evenings) - he's more trad-old-style-delta-blues? I get awfully tangled in these classifications. But nonetheless he often has a washboard as accompaniment, played by a grey-ponytailed gent whose name I wish I knew so I could name-check him here (also plays banjo).