My Sister! My Mother! My Sister!

Honestly, most of the pickers in the Stairwell Sisters are somebody's mommy, but the band still has some genuinely twisted danger in its backwoods bluegrass. They're probably the kind of moms who always want to go camping, just so they can tell one of their damnably potent ghost stories. At least, that's what we fear, since most of the Sisters' songs are about death, whiskey, cold rivers, and the devil. The first time we saw them, they were in a BART station, dressed as skeletons, killing. (Metaphorically.) Also, one of them, Evie Ladin, does something called buckdancing, which sounds dirty but isn't; it's the BFE version of tap dancing. Tonight, local freak-country music hound Jimmy Sweetwater includes the Sisters in one of his showcases, along with their pretty-but-possibly-psycho brethren, Loretta Lynch, and Sweetwater's own tricky getup, Devine's Jug Band, which comes complete with stoneware jug percussion and a drum kit made of possum skulls. (Or something; they're too small to be human crania, we're pretty sure. Mommy!)
Sat., March 15, 9 p.m., 2008