Darlingside @ Old Town School of Folk Music

June 20, 2025

After yesterday (which was a day off, but a busy day nonetheless)… today was a bit weird. Liz and I were both back to work, but for both of us it was a rather subdued and quiet day.

A lot of our coworkers were out, given yesterday’s holiday. And the weekend felt like it had already started yesterday. But not really, since we replaced our desk work with physical labor.

To continue the weird early weekend feel, we logged off of work right at 5PM and hopped in the car, heading north to Lincoln Square.

We wanted a calm, easy night… so we made some early dinner reservations at Cobblestone, which was close to the concert venue (Old Town School of Folk Music).

The opening act: Clovers Daughter. My camera is a bit too good with the auto correction, as the room was dark and the singer asked everyone to wave their phones/flashlights in the air.

Darlingside on stage. I got our tickets late (just last night), so we were sitting at a table in the back. Surprisingly, our table mates were this elderly couple – and we found out that they were also at the North Shore Center show a few years back.

I do have to say – this venue is great, and very intimate. Unless you’re way off to the side, there’s not a bad seat to be had.

Similar to what they did the last time they were here… the band unplugged, stepped down from the stage, and performed right in the midst of the audience.

And not just once, but twice! Deciding to move to both sides of the space. Really quite fun.

Out for an encore, which was The God of Loss. And I’ll be honest – if all they did was this song, I would have been happy. One of my favorites.

// Trivia: One of the members of the band, Auyon Mukharji, has been working on a cookbook with his mother for the last 7 years. It’s called Heartland Masala and is going to be published this year. They’ll be doing a book tour later this year and one of the stops, apparently, is going to be at a local bookstore – 57th Street Books. Small world.