Partying for gun control with Ke$ha, Gabby Giffords and Drive-By Truckers at the DNC

Strange bedfellows indeed were made in the wee hours of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night at the Theater of Living Arts, where Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers and embattled pop star Ke$ha shared a bill at an event hosted by actress Elizabeth Banks whose main attractions were former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her astronaut husband Mark Kelly.

The party was presented by the Americans For Responsible Solutions political action committee, and Vocal Majority, the initiative that had hosted an event on Logan Circle earlier Tuesday in which mothers of the victims of gun violence spoke out along with Giffords, who survived a 2012 assassination attempt in her home district in 2011. Giffords will address the DNC at the Wells Fargo Center at 8 on Wednesday night.

The event had a dressed-for-the-Beltway crowd of junior political operatives - mainly, Ke$ha fans - lined up to the corner of Fifth and South to get in before Bill Clinton's first-spouse speech in South Philadelphia had even begun. Inside the venue, Giffords, walking with a cane made her way through the pre-band crowd, pressing the flesh with the assistance of Kelly.

The Truckers, who have a politically charged new album called American Band due out in September, opened. The band based in Athens, Georgia - and now Portland, Ore., where co-leader Patterson Hood has relocated - didn't stint, playing an hour plus fully committed rocked-out set that drew heavily from the new collection, including "Guns Of Umqua," inspired by an Oregon mass shooting and "Surrender Under Protest," a song about the battle over the Confederate flag in South Carolina by the band's other ace songwriter Mike Cooley.

Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers.

Before the Truckers were done, Giffords and Kelly came on stage to thank them and pump up the crowd. Speaking of gun law reform, Kelly said, "We can do this ... in the '60s, we put a man on the moon!" Giffords spoke in measured tones. "Be bold, be courageous, the nation's counting on you. Now is the time to  come together. Democrats, Republicans, everyone. We must never stop fighting. Fight, fight, fight!"

Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly.

With that, already well after midnight, the Truckers cranked up one more song, dedicated to Sandy Pearlman, the late producer of Blue Oyster Cult and the Clash, whose "Know Your Rights" DBT had taken the stage to: "Let There Be Rock."

Along delay followed, in which rumors abounded: stepping down DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was backstage. Former Friend David Schwimmer was in the VIP section in the balcony. Ke$ha was not yet in the building.   

Eventually, Banks, the University of Penn grad who had told the Wells Fargo crowd earlier in the evening that her first date with her husband was at a Bill Clinton rally, came out to clown with the crowd and introduce the headliner.

Backed by a band that included a keyboard player with a homemade T-shirt honoring late Suicide singer Alan Vega and a headband-wearing guitarist who looked like  a Will Ferrell costumed to look like a Born In the U.S.A.-era Bruce Springsteen, the electro-pop singer bounded onstage in a burst of hair-wagging energy, in a shirt that spelled about "ENOUGH" in silver letters.  

Her four song set hits such as  "TiK ToK" from the 2010 album Animal, co-written and produced by Lukasz Gottwald (a.k.a. Dr Luke), the music exec she has accused of drugging and raping her and with whom she's entangled in a bitter legal battle that has stalled her career.

Ke$ha, whose full name is Kesha Rose Sebert, thanked Giffords and said, "I feel like if you're a human being, you're going to feel pain, you're going to feel hurt." She mentioned her lawsuit in referring to her own pain, but keeping the focus on guns, said:  "I think the universe is screaming at us that there need to be a change and we have to ... listen. And I also believe that love is something that as humans we all have, and I hope that heals us. I really believe that love and empathy can heal us."

Along with with tunes she worked on with Dr. Luke, Ke$ha, whose elementary, hyper-energetic music had business-suited dudes bouncing around the dance floor, also sang a song written with another surprising collaborator. "Do you guys  know who Iggy Pop is?" she asked, and got little response, before doing "Dirty Love." "He's like my musical Jesus."

Previously: A Night Out at the DNC Follow In The Mix on Twitter