In which I offer friendly advice to the good people at Headliners Music Hall.

If the question is, "How does the locally owned and operated Headliners Music Hall compete against Live Nation-owned and -operated Mercury Ballroom?", then the answer is this:

Headliners needs to be MORE local than Mercury.

Not that Headliners isn't locally oriented already. In many ways, it is. The point, and my not necessarily unbiased advice: Be even more so. As much as possible. And rub the corporate entity's nose in it.

Restricting the focus to beer: Every multinational starter beer being served at Headliners negates the venue's argument v.v. Mercury's corporate advantages. Yes, of course the Headliners bar must make the customers happy and reap the mark-up whirlwind. But karma can be quite the bitch, and we've seen from our temporary experience with Houndmouth beer at Houndmouth's show that local products can compete. Craft beer, craft music. Forecastle can't or won't do it; Headliners should.

Some Headliners loyalists apprehensive over opening of the new Mercury Ballroom music venue, by Michael Tierney (Insider Louisville)

Developer Bill Weyland‘s CITY Properties Group and Live Nation have teamed up in Louisville to open the Mercury Ballroom. Though the new music venue isn’t set to open until April, its concert calendar has already sparked concern over how the locally owned Headliners Music Hall will be affected.

Jeffery Smith runs Crash Avenue, a locally owned media and management company with offices in Louisville and New York City. Last week Smith posed this question on Facebook, stirring the pot in the Louisville music scene:

Do you boycott Mercury Ballroom because they’re going to be in direct competition with our locally owned / local fave Headliners Music Hall? Understand, they’re going to be competing for the same talent coming through Louisville… but Live Nation has the money to essentially throw at the talent until they drown out the competition. If you’re going to be diligent about eating locally, should you not be diligent about extending where you choose to take in your smaller national acts?

Insider Louisville interviewed Smith, who claims Live Nation — the publicly traded (NYSE, LYV), Los Angeles-based entertainment company — may snatch a market that Billy Hardison built.

Hardison owns Headliners and is a partner in the local talent-buying agency Production Simple, alongside Joe Agabrite III, John Grantz, and Lizi Hagan ...

NABC believes in Naughty Claus. We don't believe in Black Friday.

NABC will be very busy on Thanksgiving weekend, 2013, though not on the holiday itself. Thanksgiving Day is on Thursday, November 28, and both NABC locations will be closed. On Friday, the beer schedule explodes.

Plaid Friday is on Friday, November 29. At NABC's Pizzeria & Public House, this is the day when Saturnalia Winter Solstice draft fest begins ... and it's the 10th anniversary edition.

Jingle Walk and HolidayFest (Downtown New Albany) takes place during the afternoon on Saturday, November 30. We'll be dispensing samples of Naughty Claus, Tunnel Vision and other NABC favorites on the premises of Keg Liquors.

Later on Saturday evening,  The Nifty $50 Art Show is happening at the Art Store in downtown New Albany. There'll be art, musical entertainment and NABC's Elector and Houndmouth on draft.

Meanwhile, New Albany's favorite band Houndmouth plays Headliners Music Hall in Louisville on the 29th and the 30th (both shows are sold out as of this writing), and by special arrangement, NABC Houndmouth will be available on tap at the venue, which customarily doesn't serve draft beer.

This brings us to 10:00 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, December 1, as Bank Street Brewhouse begins its Sunday Brewhouse Brunch, with our ever-popular build-your-own Bloody Mary Bar, food, and carry-out growlers all day long. Not exactly a nightcap ... although perhaps a brunch-cap after a prolific weekend.

Houndmouth, band and ale, all around this November.

In the summer of 1985, I was in Ireland.

I was in search of an Irish stereotype, preferring it to be a regular provincial town and not a larger city, once with scenery nearby for rambling through. There needed to be pubs (as though one could locate a square inch of Ireland without three or more of them) and cheap eats. It needed to be accessible by train, because that way, tickets already were paid with my Eurailpass.

A place just like Sligo, in fact.

It was to the northwest of Dublin, on Ireland’s opposite side, and a place utterly alien to me that sounded estimably Irish. There wasn’t enough time to explore Donegal, to the north, where the original language still could be heard. Sligo was my choice, and it proved to be a good one.

Exiting the train station on a sunny day, I saw an orderly settlement of perhaps 10,000 inhabitants (a quarter-century later, it has doubled in size). There were pubs and a lively main street, a small river surrounded by decaying gray mills, and green fields on the periphery, rolling out to meet Knocknarea and Ben Bulben, two limestone hills looming nearby. Near the bus station I passed a normal row house with a hand-lettered sign in the window offering a room to let for travelers just like me. The husband and wife both were teachers, supplementing their incomes during tourist season. It was ideal.

Back in France, a British rock and roll magazine parked atop the breakfast table had trumpeted Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief, scheduled for worldwide transmission by satellite on July 13, 1985. Early in the morning that exact day, Gerry was off to play golf at nearby Strandhill, and he dropped me off at the foot of Knocknarea. I hiked to the top for an examination of the ancient burial mound, then descended and hopped a weekend bus back to Sligo. Live Aid was underway at Wembley in London, and the pubs were more crowded than I'd imagined with people in the pre-big screen age, watching the concert.

At some point, I went back to my lodging, and found Gerry and Mary intently huddled around a tiny black and white television in the kitchen, upon which there were fuzzy images of U2 taking the stage. This was much to my delight. It was a band I knew well, just a few albums into its ascension, and as Irish as Irish could be. Sharing this viewpoint with my hosts, they nodded amiably and proceeded to inform me of their abysmal ignorance of pop music -- but U2, well, it was a different thing altogether, even if they didn't know a single song.

"They're Irish boys, one of us."

Fast forward too damned many years, and I feel the same sort of pride about Houndmouth. They're New Albanian lads, and a lass, although the difference between anecdote participants is that I know and like Houndmouth's music, which to the uninitiated is hard to describe. Accounts of the band often evoke comparisons to The Band, and I'll leave it at that. We all got together early in 2013 when Houndmouth suggested we brew a beer just for them, and while such pairings don't always work out, this one seemed worth trying, and so we did. It was a genuine collaboration. We sat around a table at Bank Street Brewhouse, tasted and chatted, and the final verdict was a hoppy American Wheat Ale. David Pierce and Ben Minton took it from there.

Houndmouth was on tap for Houndmouth's season-opening outdoor show at the Iroquois Amphitheater back in April, and it will be pouring again on November 29 and 30, when the group plays indoors at Headliners. NABC's web site has the details, along with news of the St. Matthews Mellow Mushroom's month long Houndmouth beer promo.

Mellow Mushroom in St. Matthews is putting on the Houndmouth all November long