Excelsior Mill

Don't be alarmed: appearances to the contrary, I was not driving into on-coming traffic (the picture was taken from the back seat while we were stopped at a traffic light).

Last evening, I went out with some friends - actually a bevy of very attractive women to whom I was introduced by a mutual friend - to Atlanta's Masquerade to hear a performance by Clay Evans, a singer-songwriter from Nashville. Several of the women in the entourage apparently knew Clay, and rounded up the group to support him at his Atlanta gig. He performed a great set, although the stage lights were on the audience and not the performer and he was largely ignored by the noisy crowd. After Evans set, half of our entourage left but I stayed with four others to sample the music in the rest of the club.

Masquerade is situated in a former industrial building, the old Excelsior Mill. I used to go there back in the early 80s when it operated as a pizza restaurant and have some wild and crazy stories I could tell about being a young man in his 20s partying at the Excelsior Mill. But by the time I entered my 30s, Excelsior Mill became The Masquerade, and with its all-ages shows, foam parties, and young clientele, I felt too old to go there and feared I would be out of place. I avoided going back until last night, fortified as I was by the company of six to eight pretty women.

Masquerade has kept the post-industrial look of the old mill building with its stone walls and remnants of industrial machinery. The club is divided into three floors: a downstairs (Hell), an upstairs (Heaven), and a floor in between, appropriately named Purgatory. Clay Evans performed in Purgatory and after his set, although a pretty good band called Ninja Gun took the stage, we decided to check out the bar in Hell. The band playing Hell was a young, almost preppy-looking quintet with a nice, indie-pop sound. After a few rounds of drinks, we headed upstairs to Heaven, where a heavily tattooed and pierced metal band was in full thrash, jumping up and down on stage with chains and hair flying. We immediately got into it, joining the crowd at the front of the stage. I don't know if a bald old man was what the band was expecting to see at the front of their stage, but I didn't care.

After a few songs, we headed back to Purgatory to see that stage's headliner, Tim Barry. According to the review in Atlanta's Creative Loafing newspaper, "Since punkers Avail’s last release, former frontman Tim Barry’s taken his hardcore attitude into the solo realm, forging a boisterous folk-punk sound short on pretense, long on rough-hewn honesty, and as bracing as several Jameson shots." We stayed for a few shots of his music before re-joining the rest of our entourage back at the Cheyenne Grill in Buckhead.

So such was my return to the old Excelsior Mill building after a nearly 27-year absence (amazing how fresh some of my memories feel of those long-distant days). I was definitely in the oldest 1% demographic in the club, but I still managed to have a good time. But now that I've been back and see that bands like Yeasayer, Little Dragon, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and Local Natives will be playing there in the next couple of months, I may be going back again soon.