Dillon Warnek Brings G Love Together With Bright Eyes at the Can Can Last Night

Dillon Warnek--a man with enough contorted facial expressions to make John Mayer blush--is a better guitarist than he is a singer and songwriter. That's not a shot, that's a compliment.

There are myriad melodies in town drifting around atop passable musicianship, wanting for a spark out of the guitar. Warnek's growing from the other direction. His musical base and proficiency on the acoustic guitar will serve him well as he moves forward.

Last night at the Can Can, during an early show that wrapped at 10 p.m., Warnek played a pair of sets of his G Love meets Bright Eyes, acoustic folk rock. At times he flirted with Simon & Garfukel territory, but his voice is deliberately coarse where S&G is smooth. And there was a hint of olde-time, barroom drinking songs filtering through most of the songs. He covered Dylan ("Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"), and Townes Van Zandt ("Dead Flowers"), and talked about heading to Idaho soon to finish his next album.

The baby-faced Warnek is starting at a good place, and is full of the right ideas. He has years to sharpen his execution.

Reporter's Notebook:

The Crowd: About 25 strong, almost everyone had an Australian accent. I think they were staying at the Green Tortoise hostel.

Overheard In the Crowd: "Let's get some girls drunk!" OK, that's paraphrased, and was delivered ironically. It was a sausage fest in there, and the guys at the bar were talking about getting some girls over from the hostel. The real quote may have been more along the lines of, "Where the girls, mate? Let's get 'em, and get 'em some drinks, then."

Random notebook dump: Tall cans of Rolling Rock were $2.20, and happy hour runs all night Sunday through Thursday. It's mostly food specials, which I'll try next time.