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
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the reasons why we go see livemusic and I’ll probably write something about my thoughts once they’re properly organized and I find the time (ha!). For June, though, my mind was fixated on the concept of “community,” specifically how certain venues, in NYC, but I’m sure elsewhere, have, through some combination of happenstance and intention, become the center of a makeshift community… of musicians and the people who go to see them. And how these have evolved over the years to give them a certain vibe/energy/feel. There are plenty of examples out there, but in the month of June I found myself in three of these rooms relatively often and so I thought I would dwell on those in this space.
The first one, which should come as zero surprise to anyone who knows anything about my livemusic appetities is Barbes. This room in Park Slope has so many great things about it, but one of these is that it’s not just a room in Park Slope. It’s a full-fledged community, a musical “safe space” for a range of artists to unfurl their multicultural creative flags whether it packs the small room or only draws one or two back from the bar. One of the ways you know a venue is more than just a venue is how the musicians that play there also come see music there, like aunts, uncles and cousins coming over for dinner on a Sunday night, they come to Barbes because it’s family, it’s home. This sort of community vibe lends itself to the regular residencies that take place at Barbes every week, and I happened to catch my favorite of these three times in June (and 10 so far in 2024 (and counting…). This being the Friday “happy hour” weekly gig that goes by “Oscar Noriega’s Crooked Quartet” but is more often not a quartet at all. Crooked indeed. And even though there is a standard line-up (featuring Barbes regulars Marta Sanchez on piano, Chris Tordini on bass, and Jason Nazary on drums backing Noriega on saxophone/clarinet), it’s in the Barbes spirit that Noriega draws from a larger community of musicians and it’s in the rotation and fractalized permutations of possibilities that the magic of that room works best. Perhaps the best of the 3 Noriega sets I saw in June was a two-sax line-up with Tim Berne, Nazary and Hannah Marks making up the rhythm section. Berne’s freejazz mentality brought an even-more-so adventurous spirit to the show, the weekly-worn compositions sounding as alive as ever.
Barbes also features short-term residencies, often in early-eve Saturday slots and in June these were filled by Erica Mancini, not only a Barbes community member, but a regular at Sunny’s as well. The evening I caught her, she was playing in a new(ish) duo with Pedro Erazo (of Gogol Bordello) called Bombo Box. It was a wild set of accordion and synthesizer, a reimagining of Latin music of the type that maybe could only really be home at Barbes. My last show of the month there ended up being the “backup plan” when I got shut out (gasp!) of my first show choice. That’s the beauty of Barbes, you can always go home and be welcome, or, as the case may be, you can always rely on the room to deliver, it’s a community that welcomes with open arms, whether they be jazz, country, world, rock, or something that has no name. On this night it was guitarist Luca Benedetti playing with Tony Scherr and Tony Mason. The room was half-filled and it felt like we had stumbled into a private living room show with a laid-back energy, the band goofing with each other and the audience. The music was an engaging, quite-excellent instrumental potpourri, the well-worn wood floors of Barbes providing the community vibes.
The second room I’d like to blather about is The Stone. When the Stone moved from Ave C to the New School it became even less of a “room” and more of a “community” The way it’s booked lends itself to this spirit, each week a different musician books their own Wednesday-through-Saturday set of shows, $20 at the door with 100% going to the musicians. I don’t think there are any other rules and the format has fostered a spirit of pure adventurousness. Quite simply, the Stone is the place a musician gets to find theirselves at their most creative. The audience is kind of secondary, but still a critical component of the Stone family because the adventurous spirit has spawned a community of adventurous listeners. Listeners who really have no clue what they’re in for until the music starts. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else.
In June I made it to the Stone three times and had my brain tickled in three very different ways. The first two were part of clarinetist Ben Goldberg’s week. Wednesday was a quartet, Ben backed by none other than Nels Fucking Cline on guitar, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Tom Rainey on drums. The Stone family has some heavy hitters in it and they often come to play with guys like Goldberg. This one was a holyshit set of improvisation at the highest level, conversations in another language, deciphered by the musicians to completely different meaning than by the audience, I have no doubt, but… man! There is something almost inhuman about seeing music like this, music that appears to have no form at all and yet conveys so much emotion and meaning. It was so good I had to go back the next night for a group called Ben Goldberg’s Glamorous Escapades, a pandemic creation playing music to be played on front porches, in Goldberg’s description. On this night, his compositions were more front and center, but it was the space created for the band within these compositions, and, eventually, beyond them that was almost as mindblowing as the previous night’s magic. Seeing these two back to back gave me a real sense of what the Stone community means, the music it makes happen, the way two very different sets can be a part of the same residency, how they can be part of a continuum of creative spirit that probably exists nowhere else on the planet. That’s a special feeling. I returned the next week to see bassist Thomas Morgan play the first night of his first residency at the Stone. In a way it was “welcome” to the family, but Morgan has been a go-to player in a backing role for many many years, adding his thoughtful playing to the most straightforward and strangest music being made. He was no stranger to the Stone. But being the leader is different and it was interesting to note that his week was filled with unique duos, the first of these being a bass/drum duo with Johnathan Blake. Blake is like Morgan in that he backs nearly everyone and makes them better every time. Together this duo made only-at-the-Stone mindzones for a half-filled room. The Stone community opens its arms, but it opens them widest for those operating successfully at the fringes and Thomas Morgan proved that’s where he belongs. Very cool show.
Finally, we have Union Pool in Williamsburg. There’s a certain kind of music and musician who just kind of fit in at Union Pool and over time that’s created a community of musicians and music lovers who feel the same kind of “safety” that other communities feel at Barbes and The Stone. And again, you can see this in the fact that the musicians who perform there are often in the audience taking in their fellow communityites. This was definitely the case at the two shows I saw there in June, two of their backyard summer Sunday afternoon sets (called “Summer Thunder”), which is really Union Pool at its finest. These free shows have the feel of a community cook-out, the best of the best energy, top notch music, and lots and lots of smiling faces. I’ve seen Bitchin Bajas a couple of times, the last being at a rather mind-bending Ambient Church gig a year or two ago. They’re freakin’ amazing, but can be a bit of a zone-out hypnotizer of an act. For their Summer Thunder gig, they took their ambient synth thing to another level, an at-the-BBQ appropriate groover of a set that was downright masterful. The following week was Rosali who was righteous in her own way, her band surprisingly Crazyhorse-ish in their rocking choogle. It’s in the space occupied by both Rosali and Bitchin Bajas (and the myriad other acts playing the backyard this summer, not to mention the free Monday night Rev Vince shows there) that the Union Pool “sound” exists and it’s around that sound and the musicians-first philosophy that the Union Pool community fluorishes.
There are plenty of other venues in town that have uniquely awesome communities attached to them and ain’t that a wonderful thing. Maybe I’ll write about them someday. I can only hope there are places like that where you live. Find them, find your community, it’s pretty darn great.
As a postscript, I’ll just mention two more shows I saw in June. First was a benefit for another venue-as-community in Brooklyn, one that’s been around a bit longer than the other ones, that being Roulette. Roulette is a non-profit which allows it the freedom to foster a decades-old community, but also is a tough business, so I was more than happy to attend a fundraiser last month, even more happy that it featured Bill Frisell, my favorite of all favorites. I could write a few pages about the thought-provoking bliss that was this gig, a truly special night where Bill improvised against short film clips from filmmaker Bill Morrison. It was one of the best Frisell gigs I’ve ever seen, made all the cooler knowing he’s been a part of the Roulette community from the beginning.
Another highlight from June was attending for the first time the Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, MA. This is a festival put on by Wilco and is a prime example of not a venue being the focal point of a musical community, but a band. The energy and the music over the course of the weekend was of a particular vibe and feel and all of that emanated from Wilco themselves, in the best way possible. Too much to get into here, but rest assured, I was happy to be a part of that community for the weekend and will return!
June Roundup:
36 shows = $72 donated as part of the #livemusicchallenge to The Lilith Fund.
Five Star Shows seen in June:
! Goldberg/Cline/Dunn/Rainey @ The Stone
! Bitchin Bajas & Garden Party @ Union Pool
! Leyla McCalla/Marc Ribot, Yasmin Williams, Neel Murgai/Kunal Prakash @ Merkin Concert Hall
! Yonatan Gat/Lee Ranaldo/Eastern Medicine Singers, Mamady y Mamady, Innov Gnawa @ Merkin Concert Hall
! Bonny Light Horseman @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
! Juana Molina @ Sultan Room
! Bill Frisell/Bill Morrison @ Roulette
! Solid Sound Festival @ MassMOCA
Reviews written in June (for Bowery Presents):
