We hauled over a young man to our house who had a bunch of tin cans which we sang into and now we can heard ourselves praising the Lord's holy name through the stereo speaker with no left side!

We got some nice things written about us and the secret show.

Review: Pre-Halloween secret show with Manny & the Brokeback Boys, the McMercy Family Band and Wino Vino
By Parry Gettelman | Friday, November 2, 2007, 10:36 AM
Even the dead get to enjoy live music in Austin — at least on the night before Halloween, in a certain cemetery that played host Tuesday to the third in a series of "Secret Shows," this one featuring Manny & the Brokeback Boys, the McMercy Family Band and Wino Vino.

At the appointed hour, ushers directed visitors through a gap in the fence and on through the headstones to a spot where tealight candles glimmered. Some 40 people gathered quickly and quietly, while band members scampered about setting up small pots that breathed wisps of spooky vapor.

There was one brief, early scare of a nonsupernatural nature, when word went round that the police had been spotted. Candles and smoke pots were snuffed, and people slipped off into the shadows. But soon a mournful bassline wafted across the graves, and the gathering reconvened in the dark.

I'm not sure how Lindsey Verrill had wrangled her stand-up bass into the cemetery, but she provided the fluid and faintly unsettling lines linking Manny & the Brokeback Boys and the McMercy Family Band, as well as a strong, girlish soprano that gives a good notion of what Iris DeMent would sound like as a character on a Halloween episode of "The Simpsons."

The Brokeback Boys, cross-dressed in vintage clothes, also deployed concertina, accordion, guitar and banjo as they put a macabre twist on old-timey music. They turned sweet male-female harmonies to the service of songs about bawdy houses, the infamous misdeeds of Lizzie Borden and a gluttonous romantic obsession.

Lovely but slightly off-kilter multipart harmonies are also a trademark of the McMercy Family Band, which brought out dark undercurrents in traditional gospel tunes such as "Old Time Religion" and "Wade in the Water," and dug up obscurities such as the vengeful "He Will Set Your Fields on Fire."

A posse in matching skeleton costumes lit by glow-in-the-dark bracelets sauntered up to the edge of the crowd as Wino Vino played its piratical fusion of gypsy and klezmer music, which prominently featured clarinet and accordion on this occasion. A diminutive woman dressed as a circus trainer in a towering hat chased a friend in a bear costume around the tombstones and between band members. The hectic sing-along "Scallamoochie" provoked a final flurry of dancing before everyone slunk off into the night.

Naturally, even secrets have their own MySpace page these days, so you can check out this link for future details on the time and place of the November Secret Show, set to include Some Say Leland.