For the last few years, I have aspired to write about every show I see. In reality, I have not even come close to doing so, I have barely written anything, which is a shame… for me, at least. So, I’ve tried to recalibrate my expectations of myself and am going to try and summarize each month of livemusic’n, hit some of the high points and try to wrap it up in a single theme that captures both the music and my thoughts on music and whatever. We’ll see how it goes!
ICYMI: October 2023: Nostalgia Acts
ICYMI: December 2023: Holiday’d
ICYMI: January 2024: Winter Jazzqueens
ICYMI: February 2024: Lil’ somethin’ extra
ICYMI: March/April 2024: Multiplicity
ICYMI: May 2024: Festival Season
ICYMI: June 2024: Community Centers
ICYMI: July 2024: Newport Folk Festival
I saw fewer shows this past August than I have in any month since early 2022 which, personally, feels like a lifetime or two ago. But “fewer” for some is still “a shit-ton” for others and what I lacked in relative quantity, I made up for in quality, some of my favorite shows of the year were caught in August.
If I had to summarize my livemusicgoing last month, it was definitely characterized by the calendar offering up some of my favorite guitarists, sometimes in rapid succession. In fact, I think I was able to see the four guitarists I’ve seen the most in my life, perform in a single week. Three of these I’ve seen in excess of 100 times each and the fourth getting very close to triple digits. I fucking love these guys, still moving me after literally hundreds of opportunities to lose my interest, so what an absolute treat to see them all so close to each other. And what a nice opportunity to dig into what I dig about these guys, 4 of my top ten for sure.
First up, Bill Frisell. If anyone was the guitar-wielding mascot for my August 2024, it was Bill — I saw him 4 times in August and by month’s end, according to NedBase, I have seen him 93 times. Give or take. The first Frisell set was with his “Four” band at Newport Jazz Festival which was, otherwise, rather light on the guitar this year. NJF was a real delight with a serious breadth and depth to the music offered. But, if I’m being honest, Frisell’s Four didn’t quite click with their afternoon set, the sun-and-heat not quite jibing with Bill’s float-away vibes. I mean, it was fine, it just wasn’t A+ Frisell and the set didn’t stick out in a festival filled with many stand-out sets. No matter, the next three weeks I saw Bill at the Village Vanguard, deep in the cool, dark jazz bunker on 7th Avenue, each week with a different group — 1) backing drummer Andrew Cyrille; 2) playing again with the Four band, and 3) playing with perhaps his greatest band in recent memory, the Bill Frisell Five. In each of these, Bill was as Frisellian as you would want. I’ve written much about the wizardry of his playing, notes and chords emanating from his guitar like smoke rings, shifting and wobbling and reforming in the air as they float away, interacting with the smoke rings that came before and after, a delicate, lighter-than-atmosphere dance in the confines of the Vanguard. It is magic. Whether he’s backing an old collaborator or fronting a quintet, the magic persists. The Five feels like a crowning achievement, the evolutionary end of a musical natural selection. Bill has had 2 main trios over the past 25ish years, two guitar/bass/drum ensembles with rhythm sections that have grown to “know” Bill in very deep, but different ways, responding, anticipating, enhancing. The Five is both of these trios combined: two basses, two drummers and Bill Frisell. He doesn’t so much “lead” this group as it exists to serve him. Watching this band play in mid-August, I had the sense of one of those trust exercises, a team building thing, you know the one, where a group forms a circle and one person stands in the center, folds their arms across their chest, closes their eyes, and just falls into the circle which lightly pushes them back and forth, around and around, an inherent trust between faller and catcher. The band and Bill, falling and catching, eyes closed, pure trust, moving freely, untethered and yet always, always safe. If there’s a favorite, for me, it’s Bill Frisell and then everyone else.
In between, there was a return of the prodigal slinger, Wayne Krantz playing in the West Village. Again, I have written novels about the way Krantz plays guitar, but most of the 100+ times I have seen him was as part of his weekly Thursday night gig at 55 Bar, which is, alas!, gone. Wayne no longer lives in town and 55 Bar is no longer, Thursdays belong to Mr Krantz and a rotating stable of incredible bassists and drummers no more. So, when he does come back to play one-night-only it is often bittersweet at the Bitter End. This most recent August return featured Josh Dion on drums and Evan Marien on bass. I hit the early show and it was a mix of throwback nostalgia and hair-raising guitar fury. Krantz is, in many ways, the anti-Frisell: vicious, relentless, breakneck, playing at a velocity that’ll get you pulled over in most states. His trio isn’t creating a safe space, they’re trying to keep up with each other, trying not to miss the changes, trying to match the intensity. For the most part, they succeeded, Josh Dion won’t be out-intensity’d by anyone and Marien “gets” what it means to play bass for WK, flooding the low-end with alien riffs and pushing as much as pulling. Wayne wasn’t quite the Wayne of 55 Bar, but he was close enough to scratch the itch. I will admit, I loved it, but was left wanting, the tasted was more Splenda than sugar, sweet enough sure, but without the desired weight gain. I lingered and got let in to the late set gratis and was rewarded with a cream-filled-donut of heavy improv by one of my favorite guitar players. I do miss him.
Now, the one nagging thing about going to see Wayne Krantz was that I had to choose to miss another reunion show from another blast-from-the-past, Rana. But Rana was playing 2 nights and Krantz only one, so I made my choice and I stick to it — there was no way I was missing WK play. Apparently I missed the Rana show that night, but that’s the game, ain’t it. The next night I was at the Sultan Room seeing another favorite, Scott Metzger, play lead guitar in his “old band.” Rana is one of those “if you get it, you get it” bands from the early aughts, they were one of my favorite things going back then, their music kicks something inside of me over and I’m just there. It’s the songs and their balls-out rock attitude and, yes, it’s where I fell deeply in love with Scott’s guitar playing. The second-night set was filled with old favorites, lots of friends, plenty of sing-alongs and plenty of major, major guitar riffage. Sure, I missed some favorites, but I got to see Scott rip the instrumental masterpiece “Whenever You Can” which was all I needed to make my night. Someday I will have to count up all the times I have seen Metzger play… between JRAD and Wolf! and various project in between, and of course, plenty of Rana shows back in the day. Scott has a unique ability to adapt and adjust to the situation, to find the right tone and sneak in his spots, while constantly remaining true to his fundamental self. It’s funny that the octopus is used as a JRAD symbol, a nod to Joe Russo’s insane rhythmic skills (what, does he have 8 arms!?), but perhaps that aquatic creature describes Scott just as well: masters of camouflage, adept at moving in all directions, sometimes gracefully, sometimes violently, able to make themselves very small to fit into unlikely places and then just as able to get very very large and intimidating. Catching Scott playing a Rana reunion gig won’t give you all of that, and that’s the point, you are only ever seeing one of his appendages, the other 7 are off doing something else.
All that in one week? How can you top that? Well, in the middle of August I saw my sole Phish show of the year (so far), Sunday night at Bethel Woods. I reviewed the show for JamBase if you want to know what I thought of it (I loved it!). Of course, seeing Phish is, perhaps first and foremost, seeing Trey Anastasio who is, I have little doubt, the guitarist I have seen the most in my lifetime. “Rarely disappoints” would be an understatement. In the hundeds of times I have seen Trey play, it’s been rare that he hasn’t redefined everything I thought I knew about seeing music played live. Like every time? Pretty remarkable. I wouldn’t call this show a particularly Anastasio-heavy show, but even in that way, it is. The Sunday-show jams in Bathtub Gin and AC/DC Bag were remarkable for their full-band improvisation, the confident and trusting exploration of 4 guys who know and trust each other like few do. I have been thinking about this a bit. Like, when you see a lot of music, as I do, you see a lot of very, very talented musicians, including very very talented guitar players. I don’t necessarily think Trey Anastasio is the most talented guitar player I have seen — obviously that’s a matter for debate, opinions, whatnot. But I can’t necessarily say he’s “better” than Frisell or Krantz or Metzger… or Lage or Ribot or any other of a dozen/hundred/thousand take-your-pick guitar players out there. No, what I’ve been thinking about is: what makes Trey different? Because he is different. He comes out and plays and you just feel something different than when you see those other guys play.
And my working theory is that it is a combination of many things. That a lot of it is luck. That Trey was lucky to find the other three guys in his band, three guys that were talented enough on their own, but also smart enough to see that Trey could mold them into something better and open-minded enough to allow him to do that. Part of that is his magic, the leadership. That’s something special, something beyond “being great at the guitar.” That is what you see when you drive up to Woodstock on a Sunday in August, you see a band that has evolved as a single unit, largely because of a single guy’s determination, creativity, and energy. It’s infectious, clearly. You feel it in the crowd and you want more. He wants you to feel it and that is another of his talents, the way he understands how to form a melody, a solo, a jam — to get an emotional response from the band and the crowd and the symbiotic nature. Some musicians get this, have this, too. But man, has he got it. Then there’s the never-ending fountain of creativity — just a constant churn of newness, reinvention, discovery. Look, other people have some of these things, but Trey has all of it to the nth degree, combined with an insane talent on his instrument, and the luck to find the musicians who are along for the whirlwind, talented enough and game enough to surrender to it.
Someone else who has a rare combination of skills, different than Trey, but also similar is Stu Mackenzie, the leader of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. KGLW isn’t part of the “my favorite guitarist” but they may just very well be “my favorite” at the moment. I won’t go into a full review, but there were guitars-ablazin’, two nights of 3-hour marathon Lizard Wizard shreddgasms for their August stop at Forest Hills in Queens. If any band has captured some of that Anastasio magic — not the “most talented” not the “best jammers,” but those intangible things, it’s this band. What’s fascinating is how they’ve arrived at many of the “jamband” motifs without trying. Through constant evolution and a restless energy, a generational connection to their fanbase, and an astronomical creative output, they have found themselves side-by-side with the likes of Trey Anastasio and are, somehow, impossibly, poised to follow in their footsteps. One bitchin’ guitar riff at a time.
August Roundup:
17 shows = $34 donated as part of the #livemusicchallange to CHiPS.
Five Star Shows seen in August:
! Newport Jazz Festival @ Fort Adams State Park, Newport
! Phish @ Bethel Woods Sunday
! Tsons of Tsunami @ Barbes
! King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard (x2) @ Forest Hills Stadium
! Bill Frisell Five @ Village Vanguard
Review written in August (for JamBase):
