Supergroup Diamond Rugs Play First Ever Show at The EARL on December 29 – Win Tickets!

[ 1 ] December 19, 2011 | Al Kaufman +

Do you know how about 400,000 actually attended Woodstock but a few million claim that they did? Well, lower that down a notch or two and you have the situation at The EARL on December 29 when Diamond Rugs play their very first show. There will be a couple hundred people there, but years from now, thousands will have claimed to be.

Diamond Rugs is the creation of musical savant John McCauley. McCauley fronts the Rhode Island band Deer Tick*, who quietly put out one of the best CDs of 2011 with Divine Providence, a heartfelt, indie rock gem. McCauley also has a side project called Middle Brother, but he found himself with a few minutes of free time recently and decided to record a new CD. While doing so, he went backstage at a Los Lobos show and convinced Steve Berlin to come into the studio with him. Then things mushroomed and Ian Saint Pe of Atlanta’s Black Lips signed on. So did Hardy Morris of the Athens band Dead Confederate and Bryan Dufresne of Rhode Island’s Six Finger Satellite. Fellow Tick Robbie Crowell rounded out the band on bass. The boys discovered they liked playing together and, instead of just serving as an incredible studio band for McCauley, they began working on music together. Their album will be out in the spring of 2012 on Partisan Records. But while we wait, they have released “Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant,” a drunken and depressing acoustic Christmas song which, while fun, is not indicative of the harder edge sound that encompasses the rest of their forthcoming CD. However, it does answer the question of what kind of carol would Paul Westerberg and Shane MacGowan write after going off on a weekend bender together.

McCauley, like all of Diamond Rugs, writes music that pulls at your heart strings and your funny bone, but never forgets about your ears as well. These are great rock songs from what could be the next great rock band.

We have a pair of tickets up for grabs for their EARL show. Just fill out the form below for your chance to win.

*Fun fact — Deer Tick occasionally performs as a Nirvana cover band under the moniker Deervana.