San Francisco band The Whale had a very long sound check.  At least they thanked us for waiting through it.  I could tell right away why the band was an opener; They had the country influence, but even heavier than the headliner.  They began and had lively movement on stage from the start.  The keyboard sound and style was standing out to me, but not in a good way.  I wanted to just remove it from the equation.  After a while the motions of the band on stage were getting to me as well.  The songs were not living up to their liveliness, at least for me personally.  The third song started mellow, so I could really hear the rhyming of "heart" and "part" that was thrown out in the beginning.  Something about that made it seem childish in nature.  It is odd how some singers can pull off stupidly simple and straightforward rhyming and some just cannot.  

Later, the singer said he was a terrible banjo player before starting a song with one.  He said it for the benefit of a man from a band that was present but not playing.  It was not until the sixth song that their sound finally got catchy and had my attention.  It was a good song for sure.  After this one they recapped a story about how they were going to play with Vision of a Dying World before, but their van caught on fire.  The song they played after was not bad, but had a smooth transition to the next.  This was another good one, but had the two girl singers starting out alone which was nice.  This was one of their new record songs.  On the last song they pulled out a number of shakers and hand them to whoever wanted to help.  Some even came on stage with them, including members of the band that was present but not playing.  It was a fun song and good way to end their set.