While most of the western world watched a football game, my friend A and I trundled down to Hugh’s Room for a boys night out – The Banjo Special show, featuring Arnie Naiman, Chris Quinn, Chris Coole and Brian Taheny. The show featured a variety of old time, bluegrass and Irish music, scads of banjo, and special guests playing fiddle, stand-up bass, more fiddle, guitar, bodhran, mountain dulcimer and Uilleann pipes.
Fantastic show! All the players were top rate musicians, and even though the focus of the show was a single instrument, there was a lot of variety, from Brian Taheny’s tenor banjo to Arnie Naiman playing a gourd banjo to lots of old time clawhammer to bluegrass. There was a little singing, and a lot of instrumentals all played to a very attentive audience.
27th Street 
It looks like there was one very full stage, too. Good thing the Polyphonic Spree didn’t also show up. Seriously, though, it must have been a great foil to all that football talk.
There simply wasn’t any football talk. I didn’t know who won until morning. In the second half of the show, there were different combinations of players so only at the end was everyone on the stage at once (playing Arkansas Traveler).