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Parmalee, 7:30 p.m. Friday
Reserved seats: $8 and $12
On the record or on the radio, this bro-country band is a slick enterprise, calibrated for maximum appeal and buffed to a fine sheen of catchy hooks and precise production.
But live in concert, as they'll be Friday when they play opening night of the Central Washington State Fair, they're just four guys getting rowdy.
"It's just raw as hell," lead singer Matt Thomas said in a phone interview this week.
The playing and singing, unencumbered by backing tracks or studio magic, are allowed to breathe and stand on their own. It's not slick like the records, but it's got its own energy, Thomas said.
"It sounds live."
That's fitting for a band that paid its dues for a decade, gigging in barrooms across the country before getting its first big record deal in 2011. Parmalee knows how to get back to basics as a four-piece live band.
In fact, that kind of stuff even predates this band, going back to when Thomas and his brother, Parmalee drummer Scott Thomas, played with their father, Jerry Thomas, in the Thomas Brother Band.
"When we were playing bars with my dad, it was pretty much a blues band, a barroom band," Thomas said.
That influence is still evident even without the elder Thomas. Parmalee, with the Thomas brothers, their cousin Barry Knox on bass and lifelong friend Josh McSwain on guitar, is definitely a post-pop country band. This isn't classic country, though it's influenced by that, too.
"I love the storytelling of country," Thomas said. "I also love pop melodies."
You can hear that pop influence most on Parmalee's most recent work, especially their 2013 Stoney Creek Records debut, "Feels Like Carolina." But the bluesy Southern rock stuff that came from the Thomas brothers' father is still there, too.
"My dad was my biggest influence," Thomas said. "He brought me up on the classics -...