Photo gallery: How Denton crowds stack up against other cities on Sugar and Gold’s tour

by Sarah Crisman

We decided to turn the tables on the concert review. San Francisco's Sugar and Gold has been touring across the country (including some dates with Gravy Train and Of Montreal). I asked frontman PAM how the crowd in Denton stacked up to his favorite stops this leg of their North American tour.

You came straight in from Hot Springs, Ark. (after a bit of car trouble). How was your show before the mechanical mayhem?

We played last night at like, this speakeasy. I don't know what it was at one point. It was a sort of private venue. They projected all these videos on the walls. We kept thinking no one was going to come out, and then all these kids showed up on a Monday night. It was really cool.

Good crowd, then?

Yeah, people were really receptive – just dancing, getting crazy, having a good time. I won't argue. Monday night? Okay.

The South can be very surprising like that.

It's cool, it was supposed to be off-season in Hot Springs, there's not much going on.

But there were still people out dancing?

Yeah! Real cool kids, some kids drove from three hours away to come see the show.

What has been your favorite stop along the way so far?

Columbia, South Carolina was a surprise for me. It was gorgeous and beautiful. I'm always attracted to these towns that are sort of haunted and creepy and romantic at the same time. Columbia is like a Southern stronghold. They were a big proponent of the Southern flag, they have a monument to Strom Thurmond erected – it's a pretty Right Wing place. It has this strange darkness to it that's just beautiful. It's creepy as much as it's pretty.

How did you end up there? I imagine you'd play well to the counter-culture crowd there.

The crowd was great. We played in the basement of a bank, it looked like a sunken pirate ship! It was the strangest place. The walls were all green and the lights subdued. They had deer heads and fish on the wall – it was called The Whig. The crowd was nuts. It was one of one of those places where you look around, it's Wednesday night and people are breaking beer bottles. I guess that's the counter-culture. You have this strong Right – I don't want to say repression, because that's too negative. It's not wrong to be conservative.

Well, no, but in some parts of the South it can be a more aggressive form of conservatism. In areas so steeped in heritage, some places don't necessarily celebrate the Confederate flag because of the negative connotation. What we have to remember is it's heritage, not hate.

I agree with that. And heritage is complicated, period.

Right.

I think within the context of the crowd, maybe there is just more tension to dance away. In Brooklyn, you could throw a hand grenade in the audience and the people wouldn't move. It was unbelievable.

Well in Brooklyn, Southern counter-culture is mainstream.

Exactly. There's nothing to resist against. Everybody's just over it. They're just “so cool” and doing something better and smarter and funner than the next guy. Why even try? But in these little towns here, people are excited about life. It tastes sweeter. Memphis was also an incredible crowd, people were really feeling it.

Alright, so what'd you think of Denton?

I love Denton. We think Denton's great. We like the fact that there were a lot of girls. Women dancing, feeling comfortable dancing. The guys were kind of on the sidelines, but we saw some of them moving. A lot of the show, I know for me, is making men feel comfortable about sexuality and making men connect with their female sexuality more. I feel like there's too much testosterone sometimes. There's nothing wrong with being a man and being male about it.

But there's nothing wrong with being androgynous about it either.

Exactly, and I think there's something real important about getting in touch with your inner femininity and just feeling sexy about yourself as a man. You don't have to be gay to be sexy.

And there were some sexy guys out there tonight.

Yeah, that made me happy.

Me, too. I dance around here a lot, and those of us who were on the front row are always the girls on the front row. It's hard sometimes to get the boys out there. It was nice to have them out there with us tonight.

We try to be sort of funny on stage so they don't feel so serious or threatened by us.

It felt like a discotheque in here!