West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip has long tradition as a legendary scene in Rock and Roll history. From the House of Blues to the Whiskey A Go Go, the Viper Room to the Roxy, the musically inclined, young and old, hip and square, crowd into clubs, spilling out onto the streets and drink the noise kool-aid. Saturday, August 4 was no exception at On the Rox, the hidden bar above the infamous Roxy. On the Rox is small, dark and inviting, with a long, full service bar that runs the length of the room and posh seating along the windowed exterior wall. It’s a small stage and intimate space, but big enough to contain the kind of new-fan reaction one witnesses solely in the discovery of new talent.

Which, as it happens, was a very, very necessary feature once the soon-to-be-local-by-way-of-Abilene, TX blues singer Kirk House opened the night. Speaking in a friendly Texas drawl, wearing a guitar held up by a strap that read “Sexy Time” Kirk announced he had not created a set list for the night, but would be choosing the songs he plays off his feelings as the night progressed. As he opened his set, Kirk admonished the gathering group that “Everyone be on their sexiest behavior”. It was an order that was all too easy to follow once Kirk launched into his soulful wail. Hips started dropping and shoulders started shaking while boyfriends got understandably jealous over the crackling electricity running a sizzling current between the performer and the female contingent in his audience.

Highlights of the night included his partial sing-along of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” “Pony” from the film Magic Mike, which included moments where female members of the audience were quite literally saddling up in the crowd and his new signature, “Bounce” where his pecs, and again, the audience, did just that. By the end of his set, the room was packed, the temperature was burning up, and every girl in the space was itching to strip out of her skin just to get that much closer to him.

Kirk doesn’t just have a set of pipes that electrifies your skin and dares you to try and not move your hips, and he is more than another mouth-wateringly hot guy on stage with a guitar (which, make no mistake, he absolutely is that); Kirk brings everything to the table in his performances, and the result is empowering and ecstatic. Kirk is playing the Whiskey A Go Go this Wednesday, singing with the Brian Rogers Band, and will be back in LA on August 20 to rock the Viper as well.