it's undeniable - mat kearney (pronounced karni) is pretty good. no, scratch that - he's great. and what could be better than a smoke-free 930 club on a monday night? i'm just really glad there's a starbucks in my building.

so if you haven't heard mat kearney you should get on that. a friend turned me onto him last year and i was lucky enough to hear him open for train last year at wolftrap. his voice is amazing, his lyrics are great and he is probably the best (only?) speak singer i've ever heard.

and clearly he threw in the inevitable pop culture reference. he was was introducing "where we gonna go from here." he went on and on about how he wrote this "love" song, but how he never in his wildest dreams expected mcdreamy and meredith to make out to it. haha. in case you're wondering it's from this season in episode 8 - when meredith gets back w/ derek. also ingrid's "breakable" is in the episode. and lily allen. what a great lineup.

the best part of the show came right at the end. it was his third song into the encore and it was "undeniable." the song, as written, has random "spoken" verses, but he really through a curve ball at the end. he totally ad-libbed a verse all about dc. and it was legit - he was throwing dc/md/va references at us left and right. and then he even got into real estate and how the market's good to buy right now (holla). and then after the show my new friend said, "that last part was great. i think i would be in love with mat if he had thrown in an orange line reference."

and just a word of caution - stay away from the downstairs bar, stage left. i've had a few bad experiences down there, but last night was just ridiculous. the bartender took my friend's cash and then "forgot" how much he had taken and tried to accuse her that she hadn't paid enough. luckily she stood her ground and put up enough of a fight. he eventually gave in (and gave her drink back), but not before saying, "i know i'm right, but you can just have your stupid beer. it's not worth fighting about." lame.

i'm still bummed we got there too late to enjoy the first opener. it was some band from the uk - the feeling. we caught the tail end of their last song and it sounded very promising. plus the lead singer delivered the best line of the night (w/ a sweet accent, of course): "life's too short to be shy."

and i've determined today will be much better than yesterday solely because i didn't get boxed out on the metro this morning. well for the rest of you it's one day closer to the weekend!