New Year’s Eve 2008 with Davis and Benevento

Surprise Me Mr. Davis closed 2010 with a show at San Francisco’s Café Du Nord. All five members of the group performed at the same venue a night earlier with their other projects: Andrew Barr, Brad Barr and Marc Friedman as The Slip and Nathan Moore and Marco Benevento under their own names. Big Light—a band named after one of Moore’s original songs—opened for Surprise Me Mr. Davis on New Year’s Eve. Friedman filled in for Big Light bassist Steve Adams throughout the opening set. (Adams spent New Year’s Eve performing with his longtime band ALO.)

Surprise Me Mr. Davis’ New Year’s Eve set kicked off with “Sissyfuss” and featured an appropriate take on “Snowed In” (weather-related problems forced both the band to perform with a streamlined lineup on the East Coast earlier in the week). As midnight approached, the band jumped into a version of “New Lang Syne” that led into “Mardi Gras Song” and “Everything Must Go.” Near the end of the night, Moore invited out his old friend from New Mexico. Felecia Ford (Hundred Year Flood), to sing on a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “It’s Only Rock n Roll.” The East Coast-based group closed the night with an apropos nod to San Francisco, “Home Away From Home.”