Beach Fossils fills in at the last minute at South Street Seaport’s Pier 17

If not for Beach Fossils, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? would not have made it to South Street Seaport on Friday night. But we are very glad we did.

So the resourceful River To River Festival folks, who presented tonight’s free show at the Seaport, called the suddenly famous Dustin Payseur and his band of merry men — John Pena, Sennott Burke and Tommy Lucasto— to fill the headlining spot. And even though they’re from Brooklyn and not Texas (there’s a Texas On Tour event at the Seaport to which the show was thematically linked), they did a great job.

The noisy but melodic young Brooklyn quartet agreed to fill in as headliner at the free show after YellowFever’s Jennifer Moore got stopped at the airport in Houston Friday morning for carrying a chef’s knife onto her NYC-bound airplane. (Her day job is in the kitchen at Rudy’s BBQ in Austin.) Although things were eventually sorted out, and Jennifer was deemed no threat to national security, all that happened too late for her to make another flight that would get her to the show on time.

Beach Fossils played a solid set that lasted just under an hour. That’s when Dustin announced: “This is our last song. We were supposed to play longer, but we don’t have any more songs!”

Talk about truth in advertising. With only one rather new album out, it’s no surprise that the band had nothing else to play, But they left us wanting to know what comes next.

Opener Woven Bones also turned in a solid set for the slight crowd. They seemed much more on than when we saw them last month opening for The Ponys at the Mercury Lounge. Click through to the jump for more photos of Friday night’s sunset gig.