Last night I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Ant House. A longtime favorite house-show venue. It’s been several months since there has been a show. The stage is down in the basement of a house on a very busy street corner. The basement has really good sound for with a better than average P.A. system. Jordan has also put together a great light setup and I was really impressed that he took care in making sure isolate the amplifiers to their own circuit-breaker. It’s all about putting proper load on the electrical system to keep everything safe. Everybody I talked to was so excited to see a show in the basement of this little house in the Whit.
This seems like the perfect spot for a punk-rock show. It was a great time, I really needed to see a show like this. I can go to any venue in town, every night of the week, but there is nothing like a great punk-rock house show. I caught four bands; Brother Husbands, I Want the Knife, Nopes, and The Critical Shakes. When a band plays for an appreciative audience, they tend to play harder!
I was able to get to the house a little early and Jordan gave me a tour. Normally I would not shoot with a flash, but despite all of the colored lights it was still very dark. I grabbed by Speedlite and a remote trigger and found a spot to tuck the flash out of the way. Although I moved the flash to the top of the loud speaker and naturally somebody bumped into and I managed to get it before it hit the floor. I set the flash to 1/64th power setting, so it wasn’t too distracting.
I hope this means Ant house is back!
Tom Chamberlain is a photographer and content creator. He was a junior-high / high-school band-geek and later studied classical guitar. He studied commercial photographer in art-school and eventually found a love for music photography. Tom has photographed musicians all over the country, but has a special love for the music scene in the Pacific Northwest. Tom is a photographer, writer, blogger, video maker and all-around image creator. Lover of all things analogue.