Rock Review
| Courtesy photo |
Meet Erik Huey. Entertainment industry lobbyist for Venable LLP by day, rock god by night.
Or so it was this weekend, as Huey and his band, the Surreal McCoys, held the latest of several reunion “tours” since their heyday at Notre Dame Law School. The two-stop tour began in Georgetown on Friday night in the vacant, graffiti-covered space at 33rd and M streets that formerly housed Staples. Before about 200 friends and associates, the band breezed through about 90 minutes of “cowpunk” covers — “Think Johnny Cash crossed with The Clash. … And we’re still alive,” they say — and a few originals.
Another local, Washington Life editor Michael Clements, sat in with the band on harmonica.
Then, Saturday, it was into the tour bus — OK, so it was a van — for more of the same at Fontana’s Bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
After not playing for several years, this kind of quick tour has become de rigeur for the band’s six members, who went their own ways after law school.
Last year, they played a smattering of bars in the Midwest, including in South Bend, and capped things off with a gig at the legendary Viper Room on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip.
“Being a rock star is not a dissimilar skill set to being a lobbyist,” Huey said. “It comes down to connecting with people.”
