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    Photos: Red Sun Rising at Newport Music Hall

    I’ve always said that the best way to deal with the impending doom of a winter storm is to go hang out at the Newport Music Hall, watch three straight-up rock and roll bands, and pretend the onslaught of ice and snow isn’t happening outside. So, that’s what I, and many others, did on Saturday as Black Coffee, Dubé and Red Sun Rising turned up the temperature for an evening of classic guitar-driven rock.

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    Columbus’ own retro-rockers Black Coffee opened the show. The plucked-straight-from-1977 four-piece justified their growing reputation with a solid slab of unapologetic and in-your-face riff-rock, including a ballsy cover of the Led Zepplin classic cut, “Black Dog.”

    Long since moved on from the Hanson-like novelty of three brothers in a band, Canada’s youngest rock band reinvented, Dubé made the long trek out of the snowy North to bring their garage-rock hooks, pounding drums and gritty vocals to the Newport masses — and firmly plant themselves onto my Bands To Watch list.

    Originally scheduled to perform at the A&R Bar, Akron’s Blitz-radio-rock five-piece, Red Sun Rising upped their game a bit by moving to the much larger Newport stage. There, front-man Mike Protich and company were able to breathe a little more and let their alt-rock anthems engulf the weather-oblivious crowd in stadium-friendly riffs, rock star posing and sing-along choruses, warming everyone up to endure the winter wonderland that had happened outside.

    Matt Ellis is a freelance photographer who covers bands that visit the city and the Columbus Crew MLS team. More about Matt can be found at Matt Ellis Photography.

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    Matt Ellis
    Matt Ellishttps://www.instagram.com/3songsandgone/
    Matt Ellis is a freelance photographer who covers music that happens in the city and the Columbus Crew SC home games. More photography from Matt can be found at his Instagram page.
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