Band You Should Know: The Fourth of July

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

Never trust a published set time. That was the lesson of last night’s sojourn to Lawrence. According to the Granada Web site, a line-up of the Whigs, the Spinto Band and the Fourth of July was supposed to kick off at 8 p.m. That’s about what time I arrived, relieved at the early set time on a Monday night. But then a door guy informed my crew that the show had been pushed back to 10 p.m. due to the KU basketball game. Now, I know basketball’s big in Lawrence, but it seemed unlikely that many sports fans would decide to hit up a rock show after the hoops. And we sure didn’t notice any blatant basketball fans in the paltry Granada crowd when we returned from two hours of drowning our bitterness in cheap booze at the Replay Lounge.

Oh, well. I’m actually glad that show didn’t start early. If it had, I would have missed the best band on the bill – Fourth of July. Considering my colleague the Wayward Son has been singing the Lawrence band’s praises for half a year, I feel guilty for not checking it out sooner. Kind of like the Republic Tigers did once at the Brick, Fourth of July had me at soundcheck.

The band played all the way through “Long Gone,” a song I’d never heard before but which now blares from my profile on MySpace because Fourth of July is the kind of band I want all my friends to know about. Singer Brendan Hangauer’s voice and turns of phrase reminded me a little of Conor Oberst. So many lyrics I picked out last night felt like sandpaper against my bruised, old heart. Example: I can’t change what you decide, but that can’t stop me from trying. And those raw observations are set to head-boppin’ guitar rhythms and the occasional toot on a trumpet, plus the intense look on Hangauer’s face as he sings about wishy-washy women and the messed up situations they create.

The Fourth of July: “Long Gone” MP3

From The Fourth of July on the Plains (2007, Range Life Records)