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Kristen Forde from Yahara Bay handed out a free shot to Jen Horne Thursday night at the High Noon Saloon. - Katjusa Cisar

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Madison's newest microdistillery, Yahara Bay, hosted a show last night at the High Noon Saloon with its own version of the Bacardi Girls. Instead of tarted-up, navel-baring outfits, the Yahara Bay girls wore cute ratted wigs and thrift store suits and ties while passing around trays of free shots.

"It's a spoof," said Kristin Forde, organizer of the event and the stepdaughter of Yahara Bay founder Nick Quint.

Yahara Bay (www.yaharabay.com) started up last year and offers a line of vodka, gin and rum made with local ingredients. Still brewing but coming out soon are an apple brandy and a limoncella, a lemon liquor traditionally from southern Italy.

The late-starting party featured ATF, Heather Abney and the Catalog Babies, Stephanie Rearick and the ManSisters and DuDu Stinks and D.L.O. of dumate. It was ambitious to get four acts (with skit interludes) into one evening, and I unfortunately had to duck out after the ManSisters because it was getting late. Too bad, I was really looking forward to dumate -- DuDu Stinks had told me he was going to unveil a new theatrical aspect to the hip-hop group's performance.

ATF kicked things off with a hard-driving, easy-dancing set of rock, marred only by a song toward the end that started with a "Chinese fire drill" (bassist and drummer switched instruments) and was introduced as "inspired by too much Jimmy Buffet and too much weed." The song went on about "making love to my Margarita Senorita" and could have benefited from a little less weed, a little more Buffet.

Between sets, a troupe of actors performed skits written by local playwright/actress Karen Saari. I'm all for mixing up rock bands with short plays, but the set-up at the High Noon made it nearly impossible to hear them. Most people drifted outside for a smoke or fresh air between bands, and it was too hard to hear the unmic'ed actors over the chatter of the people who stayed inside.

Forde gave a valiant "shhhh!" over a microphone, but it's kind of hard to shush a bar crowd that just listened to loud rock music.

A few dozen stuck around to hear the first skit about a zombie couple with a sexual dilemma, but almost no one stood within ear shot of the second skit. What I did hear seemed funny (something about a rodeo clown who was just in it for the 401k) but the rest of the dialogue was sadly sucked into the High Noon's big space.

Stephanie Rearick and the ManSisters took over the stage around 11 p.m. and played a fantastic set of avant-garde pop driven by a keyboard, a drum machine and Rearick's clear, strong voice. The crowd was thinning, but those who stuck around enjoyed the music. It's a sound that's hard to pin down, but if pressed, I'd call it a space-age cabaret cacophony.

Forde brought the band a round of Yahara Bay shots on stage, and someone shouted out, "Can you believe? We finally have a legal distillery!"