Los Angeles – The Peach Kings’ Paige Wood and Steven Dies have some kind of onstage love affair. They face each other, he kisses her forehead, and she wipes sweat from his brow. She eyes him for most of the show, singing to the crowd but watching his closed eyes and his crumpled face, playing guitar like he’s fixed to an energetic heroin drip.
The final night of their month-long residency was performed against a self-painted backdrop of an image from “The Shining”—a hexagonal black and white honeycomb pattern—that Dies’s parents had assisted in painting. A lit up sign professing “salvation” with round, yellow bulbs hung suspended over the stage. The Bootleg Bar looks like a 1960s slightly hipster version of a Texas barn, and it was jam-packed for the final Sunday show.
“This is my birthday camera,” said Dies, who celebrated the same day, winding up his disposable and snapping two shots with flash, splitting the crowd into halves.
“That’s gonna come out really nice,” said Wood, who later prompted the audience into a loud rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
Steven is tall and dark-haired, with side burns and a thin mustache. His presence is quite serious, focused, subdued—until he opens his mouth and reveals himself as unexpectedly silly and loud. He’s fun to watch, playing with abandon and joy, making knee-jerk, unexpected, jagged movements across the stage like he’s barely conscious and never loved anything more. His curls were ringed with sweat by the end.
Wood, on the other hand, looks like a doll: Tall, very slight, beautiful, blonde-haired. She wore a tan, glinty, sweater-like body suit with long sleeves and a fur collar, and black tights, and her mouth was stained ever so slightly purple from red wine. She is sweet, sultry and constantly smiling, and her voice—desolate, all encompassing, perfectly pitched.
Wood and Dies have an interesting onstage dynamic, and not just because of their obvious affection. They are equal frontmen—one never upstaging or more important than the other. (Also in the mix is Edward Shiers on drums.) They make up two halves of a very interesting whole—a mix between psychedelic rock and Patsy Cline country. Together they make an inspiring live act: fun, dynamic, engaging, rockin’ and personal. Every member of the audience felt like a close friend.
It was the final performance for a year that saw at least one major professional milestone—their song “Thieves and Kings” featured regularly on season four of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
“We get so inspired by cinema,” TPC wrote on their blog. “It was surreal to see such a monstrous show… use our song to match the mood of prohibition-era rum-runners, shootin’ tommy guns and murdering good guys.”
It is definitely a suitable marriage. Dies and Wood channel a bygone era, if not quite as removed as the Roaring Twenties then definitely in the vicinity. Their video for “Thieves and Kings” has a very Bonnie and Clyde feel and their show reflects the fun, playful nature of the video. The music itself they call a mix between rock, doo-wop and blues, Led Zeppelin and Roy Orbison, and between his playing and her voice and look, they definitely fit the part.
The Peach Kings next play Jan. 16 again at The Bootleg, a venue they have referred to as “home.”
Photo by the lovely Michelle Shiers Photography
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