When most of your influences are almost a century in the ground and you have more in common ethno-musically with the South than with San Francisco, you make San Francisco the new South. Named after a short story from James Joyce’s Dubliners, Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel – otherwise known as Two Gallants – channel Mississippi blues man Skip James and legendary guitarist John Fahey, as well as authors like Rimbaud, Faulkner and Thoreau for inspiration.

I don’t know if it was the very recent controversy following the band from the show in Houston or having toured with the Cold War Kids for a considerable amount of time, but a lot of people turned up to see Two Gallants, Langhorne Slim and The Trainwreck Riders on Tuesday night at Solar Culture.

To read eyewitness accounts and see pictures or videos of the Houston show that went horribly wrong, go to the Two Gallants’ message board here. The Pitchfork article is also very pertintent to the issue and has an interview with the band. I won’t be writing about it because it’s mostly hearsay at this point, but I would like to offer the bands involved good luck and thanks for the “Show-must-go-on-in-Tucson” mentality.

I arrived late and missed The Trainwreck Riders’ whole set, but fortunately I caught Langhorne Slim and the War Eagles setting up a stand-up bass, drums and guitar.

Langhorne Slim sang all-inclusive songs about having fun and not being left out. Their first song was about the inevitability of death, yet insisted there’s always, “time to get a little happy along the way.” The singer encompassed the positivism of Van Morrison and Cat Stevens as he confided in the audience to, “Lean on me, ladies and gentlemen,” when he wasn’t fervently licking his lips and knocking over his microphone stand.

Langhorne Slim sang many upbeat songs including one probably named after the chorus, “She’s Gone I’m Staying”. After the reprise to the song finished, Slim accidentally almost jumped right on the stand-up bass from the top of the kick drum. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to come down on ya,” was Slim’s apology to bass player Paul Defiglia who is no stranger to having his bass broken (See 2gs message board). Slim ended with a solo acoustic piece while Adam Stephens got onstage and played harmonica for their final song.

Two Gallants set up their equipment dangerously close to the edge of the stage as audience members vied for better spots in the huge group of shifting bodies. The set started off loud as hell and mixed low emphasizing the kick drum and Stephens’ vocals…oh wait, that’s just the drunk ASU girl yelling to every song right into my left ear. I was immediately annoyed with the crowd when during the first intermission people yelled obnoxious questions about what happened in Houston. I looked around for the retardedly drunken reporter from MTV News, but it turned out to be 50 bros constantly raising beer bottles to toast a band trying to distance themselves from their recent past as well as their immediate future.

On their sophomore record, What The Toll Tells, Two Gallants took the roots rock revival genre and opened it up like a big hug to embrace label mates Bright Eyes and Cursive. Fans instantly recognized “Las Cruces Jail”, which follows the formula for jailhouse rock song to a T – a woman, the gallows and plenty of rock. The Two Gallants sounded like a cross between the raw minimalist garage duo The White Stripes and emotionally countrified rockers Uncle Tupelo breaking out of jail late at night to go drink in a rundown bar until morning. What The Toll Tells is a fervently passionate album, which makes it Saddle Creek friendly, but at the same time is overflowing with enough Delta blues and whiskey to make California realize it was once part of the Old West.

The band played a number of songs from the album, including the beautiful ballad “Steady Rollin’”. The song sounded like an ode to Charley Patton resting in his grave somewhere in the Mississippi Delta.

The rock continued with “Long Summer Day”, a song about an angry slave who sees the injustice that surrounds him and decides to kill his lazy white master. If you needed any more evidence that Two Gallants identify more with the South than anywhere else, look no further. This song uses the ‘N’ word more than Dr. Dre, but the Two Gallants come out sparkling clean. They don’t sugar coat their music or history lessons, instead they make the suffering of one, everyone’s. It’s the same earnestness and emotion that inspires listeners to dig up old memories and forgotten pasts of others as well as their own.

Stephens introduced “Reflection of the Marionette” by entreating the audience, “This is a true story. I hope you all can find something that you like about yourself in it.” The song had the most beautiful chorus, “I don’t want to see you fall / I just want to see you fail,” but most of the depth and meaning of the song was lost as people cheered for lyrics like “If alcohol’s a lover than I’m a whore.” It was like hanging out with drunk 16-year-olds. At least I hope they were drunk…oh gosh, what am I saying?

From playing technical drum rhythms so fast you constantly battle with your long hair to sweet, weeping, four finger-picked guitars, Two Gallants are an amazing band, both live and on record. What The Toll Tells is a delightful album as long as you pay close attention to the lyrics, don’t let centuries of injustice (or really annoying fans) get you down and enjoy it in its entirety, for the Two Gallants in all of us.