This is how close we were.

Marah was playing in somebody's house in Takoma Park. That was all I knew when I bought tickets. Keyboardist Christine Smith befriended a bunch of us on Facebook, and clicking through to her MySpace turned up the house concert, just posted and not even publicized yet. Sold.

A month later, we pulled up to the house, met homeowner Pete in his front yard as his son hopped on the trampoline, dropped our beer into the coolers on the deck, met some good people all excited to be there, heard about the chickens out back, grabbed plastic chairs in the front row of the cleared-out living room, and let Dave Bielanko and Christine hit us with an acoustic show the only way Marah does acoustic. Loud.

I was a decade into loving the band. Emily was taking a flier. At dinner before, the waiter edited the drink list. They were out of the Puppeteer and only had a bottle left of the Woop Woop. Emily read my mind: We had to get one of those two. They had the best names. And the Woop Woop came out nice. Heard later the name was Aussie slang for deep in the Outback. Like, "We went all the way to Woop Woop and back."

The start was quick. Pete and his neighbor Matt introduced the band.

Then we got rolling.

If the first set woke up all the neighbors, they were lucky. People have talked for years about Marah playing full-steam, any time or any place, and this show was proof the engine hadn't cooled off. Same as it ever was, you couldn't keep a guitar-wielding Bielanko from your furniture. You could only hope the ceiling fan was off and the cops didn't appear.

And they didn't. The house party came together real well. Intermission brought runs to the best-kept rock hall bathroom ever, Pete's brother-in-law Chris manning kitchen merch sales, talk with Randy Abramson — a digital leader at Discovery and somebody I'd e-mailed with for work, what a crazy small world — about his cool RockTorch.com, Emily and I searching for those chickens, and running into both them and Marah.

Dave and Christine were getting a smoke behind the house. They had a whole set left to play but couldn't have been more chill. (The chickens were also chill.) Christine was glad the friending worked out and liked Emily's earrings, and Dave asked if we wanted to hear certain songs.

What did you think of all this, chickens? A pretty cool night, right?

Back up: Ballads, including my request (it meant a lot). Then amping…

Setlist, courtesy Facebook: Limb / Baby Love / Angels on a Passing Train / City of Dreams / Round Eye Blues / East / Can't Take It with You / Walt Whitman Bridge / The Catfisherman / BREAK / So What If We're Outta Tune / Tippecanoe / Brokedown Wagon (?) / Hole in My Boat (?) / Christian St. / Phantom Eyes / Fever / Why Independent Record Stores Fail / It's Only Money, Tyrone / Waiting for a Devil / Santos de Madera / Point Breeze / The Closer / BREAK (thought it was over!) / Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft.

All the way to Woop Woop and back.

The new songs sounded good, like the next mysteriously fitting pieces, and I got excited for the June album. (Possible art arrived last week.) The way Dave and Christine went at the new stuff, it was easy to see how Marah — for all of the crap that's happened the last couple years — lives on. They mentioned playing Iota early summer. We pulled the plastic chairs out of the way as the final numbers got to room-shaking, and the guy to whom Christine tossed the tambourine was a natural.

We got into random conversation with the band in the kitchen after — just where was Antietam anyway? — thanked them and our hosts for the music and the night and, again, the music and went diner hunting.

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