Chaos A.D. : The Highs and Lows of the Third Annual Midpoint Festival - from The Dayton City Paper
...Most venues were jumpin' and kickin' out jams, some fuller and more
rockin' than others. We didn't have time to check out every band at
every venue, of course, but of all the places we went, we did notice
this: With the exception of maybe (repeat: maybe) Cincy natives The Ass
Ponys, no venue was packed fuller than The Courtyard Cafe at 10 pm.
We tried to squeeze into the completely packed venue to see Shrug. We
got in and squeezed tight around 150 other people who wanted 50 ccs of
emotional rock and heartstring-manipulating lyrics. People were piled
on top of one another on the stairs. There were about three people per
every square inch, and the club owner was squeezing more in with a
crowbar.
Shrug played some material from the upcoming album that the fellas are
hard at work on now. They were even passing out some promo CDs of very
mouth-watering demos. Shrug had technical difficulties all through the
set. There was a power outage and someone at the venue even turned the
jukebox on "accidentally." Shrug played brilliantly well despite this,
considering some bands don't even play well without the detriment of
jukebox heroes.
Later, I ran into my old friend from sonicbids.com...and he told me
that Shrug was by far the best act he'd seen all weekend. He'd never
heard them before, but peeked in to the venue to see what had so many
people captivated.
"I saw that Rhonda Everitt and members of Buckra and Sleepybird and
other bands were in this bar and just knew whoever was playing had to
be the real deal and they blew me away," he said.
Tim Death
The Dayton City Paper