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Mile 8 isn't just a mark on Nashville's music city highway but a groovy band whose winding rhythms are pushing the rock, funk, reggae and alternative jam band limits. They played for stationed troops in Greenland, label executives in Los Angeles at the famous Roxy on the unset Strip and traveled back across the country to their home in Nashville for their fans at Dancin' In The District.
I was able to catch the show, which was both energetic and weird. I had never felt so amused. Was it their over-the-top attitude on stage or innovative grooves? The truth is these six guys and their six funky attitudes are far from normal. But who wants normal? And that's the peculiar thing about Mile 8; they're not the average rock band defined in absolute terms. Mile 8 is Randy Boen (lead vocals and guitar), Neil Vance (bass), Caleb Hickman (rhythm guitar), Curt Redding (drums and backing vocals), Adam Livingston (saxophone and vocals), and Robert Knowles (Percussion).
Their show consists of a schizophrenic set list that encompasses songs like, "Waste Away," which opens slowly with trickling wind chimes, hypnotizing saxophone and tantalizing lyrics about letting someone go when you know they'll waste away quicker than the shelf life of a dairy product.
The set then switches gears to the story of a man named Kitty who everyone thought was hip, that's to say with the exception of his jealous friend, who wanted a women, up until a trip to the bathroom when she walked out with "a big surprise hangin' down low right between her thighs." Two completely different songs, focusing on two very different types of sexual or nonsexual relationships, which proves that Mile 8 will use a "Whatever Works" attitude when it comes to grabbing an audiences attention. And is just so happens that's the title of their new album produced by Johnny Neel, former Allman Brother organist.
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