By Karrie O’Neill’s own admittance, it was a weird night at Pignic Pub & Patio in Reno. At one point during her first set, her iPad with her music glitched and she had to restart a song. Later, an audience member whom she didn’t know insisted on coming up to the mic and singing with her for a tune. The audience was even treated to a traditional dance by a different zealous attendee when O’Neill and her partner on the fiddle, Kat MacMartin, played an Irish folk tune.
As O’Neill told the audience, “you never know what’s going to happen” when you play live music.
O’Neill, a local singer-songwriter who played the acoustic guitar and sang at this show, and MacMartin have been performing at Pignic on the first Thursdays of the month recently. This past Thursday evening, they drew about 15 dedicated listeners for each of their two sets in the front room of the 1916 Craftsman home.
The duo embraced a variety of genres alongside six of O’Neill’s folksy bluesy originals. They moved from Dreams by Fleetwood Mac to Royals by Lorde and from Come on Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners to Zombie by the Cranberries. O’Neill found ways to put her own vocal spin on each.
The eclectic, folksy vibe of the music matched those of Pignic and its clientele. The front room of the bar features a boar’s head, old-timey skis, and a disco ball. Antique furniture fills the entire repurposed house, giving it a Western, Old Reno feel. Full of character, it’s one of the most unique venues in this town.
The crowd was just as eclectic. The group contained a mix of ages, even on a Thursday night, and some had seen the duo perform before. Others wandered in from another concert in the neighborhood at the Nevada Museum of Art. Even though there was only a small group actively listening to the tunes, other patrons stood and listened for a couple of songs while they waited for another drink.
The audience shared its appreciation early and often. And even though that supportive energy produced some awkward moments, like when someone requested that the duo play Zombie for the second time of the night (they obliged), O’Neill and MacMartin mirrored the audience’s energy back to them with fun banter and animated physicality.
For me, the originals showed a depth of performance and emotion that did not exist in the covers. I wish O’Neill had played more of her originals.
The last song, Don’t Tell Me No, stood out. Its swelling sound grew with time and made good use of both MacMartin’s melancholic bowing and punctuating plucking. Daybreak provided a pensiveness and longing untouched elsewhere in the performance. Generally, the originals brought a chiller vibe to the bar and the duo spread them out throughout the night.
O’Neill and MacMartin made it a priority to match the mood of the room, so they kept the energy up and tried to hold the ear of other bar patrons by playing recognizable covers. Another Cranberries song, Linger, represented the best mashup between the chiller originals and the upbeat covers. MacMartin provided atmospheric sound on the fiddle, while O’Neill’s vocals stirred.
The most ambitious cover of the night was Royals. While O’Neill and MacMartin offered an inventive take, with a little more speed, the song lacked the deep sound that the original thrives in.
To their credit, the duo responded to the requests and surprises that come with live music. One audience member asked for Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. After O’Neill warned that she plays it differently from the original, she and MacMartin still connected with all of the emotion and questioning in the song.
As O’Neill and MacMartin swayed with sound, so did the audience. But the crowd was just as ready to get up and stomp when MacMartin set the pace during the Irish folk songs and sing along during Come on Eileen. It demonstrated the range of the duo and the intimacy of the space.
They inspired good, pure, old-school fun among those gathered. The kind of fun that’s sometimes hard to find on weekdays in adulthood. The kind of fun that takes you back to the summer concerts in the park that your parents used to take you to.
What’s next for O’Neill and MacMartin: O’Neill plays the Nashville Social Club in Carson City on Sept. 14. You can usually catch the duo on first Thursdays at Pignic Pub & Patio in Reno.
What’s next at Pignic: Also on Sept. 14, local jazz standby First Take featuring Rick Metz will take over Pignic with vocal jazz from the Great American Songbook.
