My goal for 2019 is to write at least a little something about every show I see, preferably by the next day, we’ll see how it goes. I will compile weekly and post here as-is.
So, in that spirit, this is the forty-fourth of hopefully 52 posts…
8 weeks left in the year!!
29Oct19
Spencer Zahn & Dave Harrington @ Montauk Salt Cave (early)
I don’t care who you are, you’ve got stress in your life. Probably more than you’re willing to admit. Imagine that stress as a piece of glass: transparent, impassable, hard and yet fragile enough that it will break into a million dangerous pieces if you hit it just right. That glass is solid and immovable, right? Glass is an amorphous solid, with properties similar to liquid under certain conditions… it can flow. That stress can flow and move and be made soft, too, under the right conditions — relaxing music, getting a massage, whatever… the world slows down and you can feel that shit turn to liquid. Last night I had one of the most unique and blissful musical experiences of my life, a sonic soul spa where the world slowed down, that hard breakable pane of glass turned into jelly and slipped out of my mind, gone, gone, gone for those 50 or 60 minutes at least.
The show was at the Montauk Salt Cave, a kind of new-agey spa on 10th St. 20 or so people took their feet off and entered the “cave,” a room that was constructed to look cavelike, with salt on the floor and LED’s in the ceiling, a digital night sky that maybe I would have sneered at if I wasn’t about to embark on the journey I expected to take. There were super comfy reclining chairs and they had blankets you could grab when you walked in, like they (used to) have on airplanes. It felt fitting, this was absolutely a high-altitude flight we were about to embark upon.
The “show” as it were was an album release gig for bassist Spencer Zahn, performing with Dave Harrington. Zahn played an upright and electronics, Dave played guitar and electronics. The door closed, most of the eyes in the room closed, voluntarily or drifting into a subliminal state, the collective third eye of the audience no doubt wide open. This was where ambient and ambiance met, this kinda-tacky spa turned into the coolest, most chill club in town, for one night. The music was pure float. The first piece was like the transition, from outside to inside, from waking world to a dreamlike state. The roles were inverted, Harrington playing a backing role to Spencer who didn’t so much solo, not even close to soloing, but certainly taking the lead. The first piece was layers of tissue paper, individual threads in a blanket wrapped around my legs, the music of a piece of glass flowing, somewhat impossibly flowing like a trickle of water through a cave. Wow. The second piece was more charged, Spencer banging some melodies on top of the electronic clouds — there was no doubt, we were dreaming. All of us in the same dream. My mind fell in and out of consciousness at an erratic pace, so I couldn’t really differentiate awake and sleeping. That chair was so fucking comfortable, I don’t think I’ve ever been so comfortable in my life. Deep sleep without weariness, wide awake without thought. Wow.
The music almost felt besides the point, but the music was tremendous. Beautiful, transformative. Harrington is a master of the soundscape, a master of playing to the audience, to drawing the collective energy of a room and making just the right music to suit the space. Was this space, this otherworldly, prehistoric, dreamlike space, was this cave both literal and figurative, was this space a harder or easier space to fill with sound? I felt like I was breathing at the same pace as everyone else in that room and we were all breathing super slow, at the pace of the music, the heartbeat of the universe. Pure liquid. Wow.
New Masada Quartet @ Village Vanguard (late set)
I absolutely would have gone right back in for the second set afterward, but that wasn’t possible. I didn’t need to see anything else. I’m not sure I need to see another show ever again after that, but I imagine the bliss will wear off eventually. Of course, that didn’t stop me from driving over to the Village Vanguard, getting a spot right out front and then hopping on line to get in for the late set. Getting on line early ended up being a good choice, I ended up in perhaps the best seat in the house, sitting on the couch seat right to the left of the stage, which was immediately behind John Zorn who took the stage almost right at 10:30, with his new ensemble the New Masada Quartet, with Julian Lage, Kenny Wolleson and Jorge Roeder.
Being so close to the stage allowed me to really feel the energy on stage in a way I haven’t in quite a while. I could hear everything Zorn said to his band, this gloriously, ridiculously talented band. Usually I don’t know that I would need to hear the orders Zorn barks at his musicians, but there is an energy with this band that is unlike any Zorn project I’ve seen. Whether or not it is the “best” Zorn group, there is no doubt that it is the happiest, most positively-charged band of his. The smiles, the mutual admiration, the love is so palpable. This is a band that loves to play together, that all listens to each other not as teammates or co-workers or even bandmates… they listen to each other because they have a real, honest love for the music each of the other 3 are playing. It may seem obvious, but it’s actually a rare thing to see it like this, the highest of the high in rapt adoration of the highest of the high. The best of the best being best. What a fucking set of music these guys played and got to enjoy all at once.
I even heard the names of the songs as Zorn called them out, so actually took a setlist, if it means anything to you:
Karaim, Hath-Arob, Kedusha, Beeroth, Rigal > Idalah-Abal
JZ starts the night by telling Roeder to “do a little drone” and they’re off. The intro do Karaim was 5 minutes long and was followed by another 3 minute second introduction, this stretch was all led by Zorn himself, beautiful, strong saxophone playing, the rhythm section’s drone building into an architectural backing of his solo, creating something where there was nothing. That opening stretch was a defiant we-can-do-whatever opening played by a band that didn’t seem like it ever wanted to stop the direction they were moving in, it felt so good, it sounded so good, but also these are restless ubercreative players, so they had to move on. And then Zorn said “take it, baby!” That’s what he said. He said it to Julian Lage. Julian fuckkkkking Lage. The word “guitarist” doesn’t do justice to what Julian does with a simple guitar. He fucked that shit up. FUCKED it up. That solo in the middle was more than just a solo, holy shit. It was the fourth of July and those ten fingers on Julian’s unassuming hands were the grand finale of the fireworks show. Damn.
And now you know why John Zorn is so freakin’ happy with this band. Why he’s downright goofy listening to this band play (he takes a seat during Julian’s solo, pay that motherfucker the respect he deserves). Why he doesn’t just smile at his musicians between songs, but reaches out and grabs their hands like they’re friends. Dare I say, he loves this band. Love. Real love. I was thinking last night about Zorn’s relationship with Marc Ribot, his longtime electric guitar foil, compared to Julian Lage, his new inspiration. Zorn is like the tough, stern father with Ribot, he gives tough love and expects the best. And gets it. He inspires music from Marc Ribot that’s better than anything else. If he looks at Marc like a father to a son, he looks to Julian Lage like a grandfather to his grandson. Pure, unadulterated joy. Julian makes a motion to move the music in one direction and Zorn doesn’t blink. Whatever you want, kid! I am all in on Grandpa Zorn! While so many of Zorn’s ensembles make their magic in the tensions on stage, the personalities of the musicians and the way their mastery does or does not fit in with Zorn’s vision. There is no tension in this quartet. “That’s some sick shit!” he said to Jorge Roeder after one song. John Zorn said that. Damn!
Hath-Arob is a freeform improv kind of piece that has a furious head and then goes into all sorts of breakneck directions, mostly at the whims of Zorn’s direction. Last night’s version was the most thrilling, longest, most awesome version of this song I have ever heard. I thought maybe they’d just keep going, everything they tried worked so well, even if it was bombastic and crazed at times, they were all completely in control — credit largely Kenny W. with keeping the entire show on the rails, his ability to follow Zorn and Lage and sometimes both of them together in opposite directions, was awe-inspiring, a work of art unto itself — all in complete control no matter where things went.
The entire show was transcendent. It transcended the individual talents, the egos and the ids of the players, it transcended genre, it transcended place and time, salt cave or jazz club or Carnegie Hall, this music was so beyond where it was being made. Everyone in the group made their mark, either at JZ’s urging or not. At one point he said “make it funky!” and Kenny and Jorge made it funky, at the end he called out “let’s play Rigal into Idalah-Abah” and Julian returned “I’ll get us there,” like Jimmy Chitwood telling the coach he’d make the shot at the end of Hoosiers. He opened that stretch playing a solo without accompaniment, a truly jaw-dropping display of guitarplaying prowess, it was faster than fast, slower than slow, beautiful and gnarly, it stretched from Mahavishnu John to Grant Green and so many points in between. Other professional guitarists should be warned before entering the Vanguard this week — this guy may make you question your chosen profession.
The fact that it was this remarkable music, this crazy mindblowing shit that filled the empty space vacated while I was in the salt cave. Well, it doesn’t get much better than that from where I’m sitting. Truly a night of out-of-body experiences that will be tough to top… but I’ll try.
31Oct19
Where to begin, where to begin? Much to dig into on a wild Halloween, but may as well start at the beginning…
We woke up a little before 3am for our ride to the airport. Holy shit, that was early. 24 hours later I’d be back in bed. The entirety of that day, all twenty four tocks around the clock, felt like one show, a really good show, a piece of art, performance art. I bring it up a lot, but I am fascinated by the various ins-and-outs of a concert the art of livemusic beyond just the music. The lights and production, yes, but also the weird little details, the way an audience and a band interact, the way an audience behaves, the way pockets of energy in one part of a room will greatly affect the experience… all of it. There are no bad shows to me, because there is always something interesting to consider, the way it all fits together, it’s all awesome as far as I’m concerned. So that was my day yesterday, little bits of weirdness fitting together in ways that made the whole feel like a singular piece of art.
I mean, it started with our ride to the airport, a Super Shuttle driver who had no business driving a vehicle for a living. We literally had 5 very much too-near near misses on the expressway, what a weird way it would have been to die, not even 4 in the morning on Halloween. We survived, thankfully! Everything else was smooth, landed in New Orleans, made it to the hotel. Lunch at Cochon Butcher (my first time there) was divine, truth and transcendence between two pieces of bread. Delicious. After lunch we walked up to Frenchman’s to meet some friends and catch some music. I ended up catching 30–45 minutes of 4 different sets in 4 different rooms, completely different settings and styles, at one point dancing with some older folks to classic soul and rock tunes like it was a mid-afternoon wedding with no bride or groom, later sitting back and taking in some old time jazz country, a cheap happy-hour bottle of beer at each stop and a couple bucks in the bucket for the musicians. You want livemusic at nearly any hour of the day, New Orleans delivers? Time seemed to stand still, like I could have squeezed an infinity of music into my time bouncing around Frenchman. That was fun. Visiting a town where taking in the local culture literally means seeing as much music as possible (with a tasty bite and a drink in between) is very much up my alley, to say the least. Very fun afternoon, hopefully one or two more like it before the weekend is up.
We took our time getting over to the venue which is a good schlep from the center of town. We had to pick up our tickets at Will Call and my word, if ever the word “clusterfuck” could be used to describe a situation, it would be well served applied to the will call situation at the UNO Lakefront Arena 30 minutes after the doors opened on Halloween night, 2019. The feeling you get when, well over 30 minutes standing on a line that isn’t moving, what the fuck is going on at the actual ticket window which is still out of sight, when someone says they’re on the stage and then George Porter Jr. is playing with them and it’s still unclear you’re ever going to get to the front of that line. Well, my friends, let me tell you something, it ain’t right. It ain’t right at all. I will spare you the details of the clusterfuckness, but at that point I could only shrug and laugh and hope (unsuccessfully) that someone would come by with beers to help pass the time. Needless to say, the line did move, slowly and not-so-surely and, if I may, one more what the fuuuuuck?, we got our tickets, made it inside, 5 songs into the set. First set of 6 for the weekend, it was frustrating and missing songs due to other people’s incompetence sucks, but I’ll live.
Right after we got in and found our group, they kicked into Hatfield and, frankly, that whole shit was instantly forgotten and I was immediately into it, no trouble letting myself go, getting absorbed into the already heightened energy of the room. I had not been in the Lakefront Arena in over 15 years, Halloween 2000, I believe. More to the point, last night was the 20th anniversary of the Halloween 1999 shows, which The Squeeze and I attended a couple weeks after we were married, treating the trip to New Orleans as, more or less, our effective honeymoon. When these shows got announced it didn’t take us long to decide that we had to be there… and after an hour of linewaiting, and a long day of just about everything, we were there and about two chords into Hatfield I was absolutely there.
We caught the last 4 songs of the set and I’m betting, GPJ notwithstanding, that we caught the band well into its ascent to peak. Hatfield, All Time Low > Pilgrims, Knocking Round the Zoo. Those 4 songs pinged nearly everything I love about Widespread Panic, from the superlative songwriting (your favorite jamband wishes it had a song like Pilgrims, just absolutely sublime in every way, one of my absolute favorites) to the crunch headbanger All Time Low, which opened into a short meandering jam that flexed the band’s first set improvisational skills (A+ as always) and then a make-it-their-own cover to blow the energy off the room. During this stretch I thought back to a conversation I had with someone I was friends with in college, not a Panic lover, but an appreciator. He said that what he liked about WSP was their ability to do so much in so little time, little wasted energy building to an absolute frenzied peak. If you think about seeing bands that jam as watching a fireworks display, explosions of color and fanfare, brilliantly lighting up the sonic sky, well when Panic takes it there, it’s like one of those crazy videos where you’re watching the fireworks from a drone, a vantage that let’s you experience the entire explosive display from deep within, beginning to end, absolute crazy shreddiness. But man, I do love Pilgrims, glad I didn’t miss that.
So, we came in late and I only got a quick read on the band’s costumes. We had a good spot overlooking the stage from the side of the arena, but I only had a cursory feel for what the costumes were: Jojo was in a car or a garage? Duane was in a wrestling ring, Dave was a line cook or something, JB some sort of swami or fortune teller? I didn’t think too much of it, frankly, I was thrown too quickly into something underway and didn’t have a great look at it. When the band returned for the second set, they played the Mighty Mouse theme over the PA and Sunny did that bit that Andy Kaufman famously did, lip synching only the “here I come to save the day!” part of the song. Weird. But I didn’t think much of it. No one had mentioned or talked about the band costumes to me, so I didn’t think there was anything special. Then the second set started up and at one point during a jam (I’ll get to the jams in a second), Jojo was turned to face our side and I quickly realized that he was dressed as Latka from Taxi, the Andy Kaufman character. Wait a minute, I thought, if Jojo is Andy Kaufman, why was Sunny doing the Mighty Mouse bit? And then, like when you finally get an Andy Kaufman bit, I actually got the costume… everyone on stage was dressed like a different Kaufman character or personality. I’d say I’m a casual Kaufman fan, but I saw “Man on the Moon” and knew most of his more famous material, the women’s wrestling thing, Taxi, Tonight Show appearances, etc. and when it snapped into place, the costume, this loving tribute, when I got it, it was really a warm feeling I got, like this is fucking brilliant. But really, I had no idea. I’m glad I got it at this point, because it made the rest of the set, particularly the end of the night, so incredibly satisfying. See, the thing is, Kaufman lived his life like it was one extended bit, a piece of performance art with personalities within personalities, a constant are you fucking with me? existence that was probably too brilliant and perfectly executed, down to the weirdest details, a life lived as an inside joke, but one with depth and warmth to go with the unmitigated genius. And to pair that with Widespread Panic, a WSP Halloween show, somehow felt like Andy Kaufman had orchestrated the night itself. Every detail of the night ended up coming into question — what songs were chosen to fit the “theme,” which were just random, and is anything “just random” anymore? I’ve seen some great gags, mostly from Phish, but the design and execution of this night, particularly for an insider band like Widespread, it was next level. I could write a long, long, long ways on this, but suffice it to say, it was fucking awesome.
Anyway, back to the show, because damn, the second set came out like a we’ve-only-begun firecracker. The improvisational centerpiece was a Surprise Valley > Jam (worth of separate label) > Arleen > Surprise Valley. The initial SV ignited the already ignited audience, unbelievably high energy. Man, I love being at a Panic show. Even up north in NYC they’re fun as fuck, but when you get the band in their element like on Halloween in NOLA, the energy in the room is fucking nuts. Last night I high-fived more people than I have all year previously, like genuine fuck yeah, well-deserved high fives and fist bumps from perfect strangers who were just so happy and having so much fun they just had to share it with whomever was in their general vicinity. It sounds cheesy, but it’s a wonderful thing. I got a bunch of those throughout the Surprise Valley jam, Jimmy Herring putting on a guitar display of dizzying heights, packing more into his solos than musical options on Frenchman St. Wow! Double wow! The jam left the typical Surprise Valley theme and went free-range for a bit, the band locked in as a unit, so very much clicked in like few bands can do. And when they find that critical mass, six guys operating as a single unit, a get-out-of-the-way bulldozer, that’s a force to be reckoned with.Triple wow! When they dropped into Arleen, decades of NOLA funk summoned like voodoo spirits, the place went berserk, total knocking-round-the-zoo dance party. At this point I really appreciated what a perfect venue the UNO Arena is, despite their serious Will Call deficiencies, that just right, Goldilocks size, intimate and cozy/cramped in the best way possible, totally general admission so that everyone in the room is more or less surrounded by their friends, a dank old basketball arena perfect for bonkers energy. This Arleen was shake ’em if you got ’em, so much fun. The jam zigged and zagged and then Schools bounced the “Flashlight” bass riff.. I think this was just a feeling-it move, doubt it was preplanned, but it was legit and the band responded, particularly Jojo, laying down a saucy P-Funk groove where once there was none. Very cool. A short drum-led interlude dropped the band back into the closing end of Surprise Valley and as good as everything had been up to that point, this was the peak jam of the night. On paper, it reads “Surprise Valley,” but Jimmy guided this thing to some amazing places, it really felt like a SV > Eyes of the World jam > Blue Sky jam > SV, and yes, maybe those songs all sound kind of similar, but these little movements felt distinct, and with Herring, who has effectively played with both the Dead (in some form) and the Allman Brothers (in some form), these passages felt so natural coming from his guitar. Damn good shit. I won’t blow-by-blow the entire set, but I will just say that, like Pilgrims, Holden Oversoul is absolutely a perfect bit of Panic, in my opinion, absolutely one of my favorite songs, one I could hear every time I see them. After Barstools and Dreamers, the song I’d request, if anyone asked for my opinion, So, yeah, I was happy they played it and danced my ass off accordingly. Spoonful was a nice surprise, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, and had this nice little solo-round-robin with Schools and Jojo and JB taking solos before Herring took his, which really launched the blues standard to some interesting places.
Alright, that was the good part, but now we get to the good part. They brought out Mike Mills (from R.E.M.), who played keys on the Lou Reed tune “Perfect Day,” which sort of summed up my 10/31/2019 pretty nicely, almost dying and line-not-moving be damned, it was pretty great! Then Mills moved to guitar (and backup vocals) as they played David Bowie’s “Star Man.” Now, they always will bust out new covers on Halloween and have been doing so since 1992, as long as I’ve been seeing this band, and they’re often just random awesome songs they want to play. I haven’t figured out just how Perfect Day and Star Man fit into the narrative of the night, were they just random or was there more to it? I don’t know, but they nailed them both. Bell really showed some extra juice in his ability to bend his voice to do justice to both Reed and Bowie one right after the other. Not a lot of bands can do that without blinking. Nice work, nice work. Then Mills moved to bass (keys to guitar to bass in three songs also very impressive!) and they played the REM song “Man on the Moon” while flashing little clips of Kaufman on the screen and the satisfaction of the night’s “gag” really put a smile on my face. The thing is, I don’t know how many people in the room were even aware of how everything tied together. There was one level where you didn’t need to appreciate all this shit, that it was just a great Panic show, like one Andy Kaufman SNL appearance might just make you laugh like any other comedian does, no extra context needed. But if you get it, even partially, well, the enjoyment is exponential. I was left wondering, did they come up with the whole AK tribute show and then ask Mills to join them in New Orleans (he’s played with them before, I’m pretty sure, but no other connection I can see), just so they could build up to Man on the Moon, the REM song about Andy Kaufman? Or did they somehow work backwards from that? Fun to think about, absolutely doesn’t matter. Did they do it because it was the 20th anniversary of our honeymoon, a perfect day itself? I doubt it, but who knows? And on its own Man on the Moon was an awesome cover, it’s the song I have in my head the next morning. And then, as Mills walked off, they dropped into a short moonshot version of Porch Song, where they sing “the man in the moon is a musician…” and I realized they went Star Man > Man On the Moon > “man in the moon… living the moon time” and I wondered even more, coffee-mug-in-Usual-Suspects style about everything that had proceeded. At this point, the show had been a brilliant bit of performance art and, as luck would have it, a pretty great Panic show, a very much first-of-three Panic show with some killer jams, a few personal all-time favorites and great new covers. And yet, the joke was still unfolding…
The encore had Duane Trucks take the bass, Sunny sitting behind the drum kit and Dave Schools sans instrument, walking around singing “I Trusted You,” which is just a song with that lyric sung over and over, angry punk rock style. Who wrote this song? Where did it come from? Where do you think? Holy shit, deep cut amazingness, check out Andy Kaufman singing I Trusted You. Bravo, bravo, brilliant. At this point, there was only one thing missing from the Andy Kaufman oeuvre, Tony Clifton. Naturally, they brought out “Tony Clifton” to sing, but not before someone came out and said that the next guest doesn’t want any smoking while he’s out there. It played out a bit like this clip here, actually (I think there was a lot of YouTube research done for this entire night, actually). And yes, Clifton came out and sang “Volare” just like in that video. Then he started to more or less insult the band, saying he only liked one song, started singing “Tacos,” a weird, rare old Panic jokey tune. And then the show ended in absolute legendary fashion. Someone “in the crowd” started heckling Clifton, Clifton barked back, the next thing you know there was someone on the stage, storming the band, security hopping up to grab them and the band rushing off stage, truly “frightened” by the interloper. The band left the stage, the lights came up. Show’s over. A guy next to me, the guy who had high fived me at least 3 separate times during Surprise Valley, this guy looks at me and says “are they fucking with us?” I mean, at this point I was very aware that a good percentage of the audience had no clue what had transpired in that encore or the entire night. I mean, they saw a great show, but maybe they missed the performance, a true Andy Kaufmanesque piece of brilliance, undeniable one of the coolest and most unique things I’ve seen at a concert. When those lights came up I knew it was over, people cheered hoping they’d come back, but I knew that was it…. the minute those lights came up, I laughed out loud. Legendary! Are they fucking with you? Yes, yes they are. And it worked. Surprise valley, indeed.
This has been long enough, but I have to add that it’s fucking cold in New Orleans, low 40’s when we got out, and there were no cars back to town. Just like the getting in part, the getting out part was so painfully clusterfucky I had no choice but to laugh. Perhaps a part of the whole joke, the whole day a participatory absurdist joke, highly entertaining. brilliant to the last. We made it back to town eventually, George Porter was sold out, but we didn’t really care… walked back to the hotel and were in bed almost 24 hours to the minute from when we had arisen. A perfect day.
1Nov19 Widespread Panic @ UNO Lakefront Arena
Getting in last night was infinitely more smooth and good thing, too, because I would have been very bummed to miss the fire-outta-the-gate start to an all-around killer Friday-nighter. The band came out and Dave Schools started a little riff on his bass while everyone got situated and I was like are they opening with Bowlegged? And, indeed, they did. It’s amazing how quickly I fall into the old habits of my days seeing lots of Widespread Panic shows, from the things I zero in on during certain songs to the urge to “guess” what song is coming up next — I actually nailed quite a few of them last night, including the opener. It’s an interesting experience, the nostalgia of seeing a band you’ve seen over 100 times over a span that’ getting perilously close to 3 decades (!?!?!). There is a lot of joy in seeing the songs you’ve loved for so long played live, but there’s also a weird tension… I mean do I just want to see the songs I loved when I saw a gazillion WSP shows in 2000? A repertoire preserved in amber like a prehistoric bug? On one hand… yes! On the other hand, there is something to be said for newness and growth. Last night’s setlist was pretty much entirely a setlist that could have been played in 2000. The good thing is that the band very much made the show fresh and new and relevant in all sorts of ways, it didn’t feel like a nostalgia act, it felt like a band that had extracted the DNA from that prehistoric bug and filled a theme park with monstrous, man-eating dinosaurs, very much alive right here in 2019.
So, they opened with Bowlegged Woman and it very much felt like they were kicking off a third set to the Halloween show, I mean they started with a fucking bang. The jam got heated quickly, but the interesting thing was how it kind of flipped:: instead of building to a peak, it got to the peak quickly an then worked its way back and found this very cool quiet(er) space, led by Schools who felt like a leading voice all night, tempering the awesome, but occasionally-overheated guitar from Jimmy Herring. In a way, that made the show much more musically interesting. This little “quiet” jam got a little groovy/spacey and then built back up and, what the…???, segued perfectly into Chilly Water. I am way out of the Panic loop, but I’m pretty sure a first set, second slot for Chilly is something to remark upon. For the uninitiated, Chilly is the monster jam, historic show-closing mayhem, the tyrannosaurus of the Panic song catalog and this one was a early show beast for sure. Jimmy got to go haywire, the Schools/Trucks rhythm low-end was a short-armed rampage through the arena and the crowd was forced to suck up whatever leftover Halloween weariness and get their shit together for a long night in store. Another great segue into Little Lilly and damn, that was quite a one-two-three start to the show. Damn! The other big highlight of the set came later in the set, as You Got Yours, one of Panic’s nastier, darker tunes, got nasty and dark and opened into a really nice, thorny evil funk jam, again led by Schools with a heavy assist from Jojo. The set was absolutely second set energy in an opening stanza, punctuated by the band returning to where they came, another monster segue jam out of Xmas Katie that used to be prevalent enough that they gave it a name — Entering a Blackhole Backwards, but apparently hasn’t been played for 5 years, that one came out of Katie like a long lost friend popping up in your social media timeline, Schools once again controlling the stage, bringing that back to finish out the Chilly Water from the two slot, another stomping T-rex of guitar/bass/drums/keys before that segued back into the closing reprise of Bowlegged Woman. Yes, they did a full-set double-nested sandwich in the freakin first set of the night. Fuck.yeah.they did.
The second felt even old-school’er than the first, opening with the classic 90’s pairing of Disco > Diner, something that was so common it’s more or less how their first live album opens up. Was it just where I was standing or just what I was zeroed in on, but again Dave Schools was a maestro, long-necked Apatosaurus bass riffage, power and grace, groove and rock. The dude was in a good zone and that made it feel even more like I was 20 years younger. Flat Foot Flewzy is a song I associate with Saturday nights, so cool to woozy boogie on a Friday night. I will just note that at least two songs had the lyric “boogie” in them last night and at least one did on Thursday night and I am very much hoping the complete the trilogy tonight. No suggestions off the top of my head, but it feels very NOLA appropriate that they are urging so much boogie’n from their audience this weekend. Overall, the second set didn’t quite match the heat of the first, but that would have been a bit much to expect considering. But they did play Mercy, which is definitely an all-timer personal favorite, stunning lyricism from John Bell, a full band graceful restrained, power in the subtleties and interplay, more musical poetry than you might expect from this ole lumbering dinosaur, but man, they can move you when they want to, can’t they? I feel like whenever I hear or think about Mercy, I think back to the first time I saw a headliner Widespread Panic set. It was November 20, 1992 at the old Paradise in Boston, a ridiculously good show that had a jam in the middle out of Mercy that I can still remember. I bring it up again and again because if there is one show I wish I could hear again (alas, I don’t think any recordings exist), this would be the one, the one that hooked me on Panic for life, and the thing I really want to hear again is that Mercy jam. I had no idea this band could do that and they did it that night and many nights since and they did it again last night, a majestic late show jam, a musical pterodactyl soaring above the, beating its massive wings, high, high, high up there. So good. Four Cornered Room (sweet) > Jack > Red Hot Mama closed out in hot, hotter, hottest fashion, Bell hands off to Herring hands off to Herman and then everyone goes meteor-wipes-out-the-dinosaurs apocalyptic to end out another fuck-yeah Panic show in style. Danced my ass off, big honking smile all night. Nostalgia, sure, but in the best possible way. One more night to feel 20-years-younger again. Can’t wait.
We hit Howlin’ Wolf after for Papa John Gros’s Dr John tribute, big band doing all your favorites and then some. This was a great postshow party, definitely as much socializing as music, and that’s fine, too. Frankly, a bit hazy on any details, but much, much fun was had.
2Nov19 Widespread Panic @ UNO Lakefront Arena
Third night of three and the band delivered another beaut. We managed to move from a good-not-great spot on the side of the arena on the first night, closer to the center on the second and then last night straight back from the stage, dead center, in our little “box” (i.e. the landing of the stairway up to the section) and it was very much a best for last spot with the best sound of the weekend and amazing views of the lights. The colors he gets out of the light rig are really something else, much different palette than, say, Kuroda or others. It’s really interesting to see completely different styles when it comes to lighting up a big rock show like this and I was rather dazzled with the artwork the entire night.
Don’t know if I have the energy to go as in-depth as I did with the first two shows, but if the first night was kind of a Herring kind of night and the second was kind of the Schools night with an assist from Jojo, last night felt very much like JB’s night. The songs they played really seemed to bring out the best in his singing and he still has that oomph to deliver as well as ever. The other overarching thing with last night’s show was that it felt like a lot of covers with a good number of them being covers that have been in the repetoire long enough they feel more like originals — Goin Out West, Climb to Safety, Aunt Avis.
Like the previous nights, there was a monster jam in the first set, this time it was out of the third song Greta. This one took a really long time to reach the peak, build, build, build, it felt like they couldn’t ratchet it up any higher, they were in such rarified air you worried they would run out oxygen. You just knew when they finally got the climax that the room was going to explode and it did, for sure, but they band had such collective momentum that they actually hit a second peak right after the first, how they managed that without killing everyone in the room, I have no idea. Definitely a moment in a weekend filled with ’em. Honestly, they played a bunch of not-my-personal-favorite’s last night, but they were playing them so well, I didn’t have a lick of disappointment. The end of the first set saw yet another guest appearance, this time from Ivan Neville who played back-to-back with Herman on the organ for a really nice stretch of Sleepy Monkey > Guilded Splinters > Cream Puff War. Thursday night’s first set was barely 60 minutes and last night they managed almost 80 with that awesome extended closing.
The power in the second set hit about halfway through with an insane jam in the middle of Driving Song that had everyone around me saying is this a Pink Floyd jam?, it was so very explicit, I think it was a jam on “Run Like Hell,” which was, like, super cool, the whole band banging around on the theme in lieu of another song in the typical Driving sandwich. The personal moment for me was when they did the “Breathing Slow” end jam to Driving, an instrumental bit that I think I’ve only seen like once before in 125 Panic shows, one of my favorite little pieces of music. It had me feeling a bit emotional for whatever reason, such a very fun weekend that brought out a lot of memories and nostalgia and weirdness throughout… all seeemd to culminate in that Breathing Slow for me, I was so happy they played it and so happy they played it well.
The closing stretch of the weekend is best described as whiskey soaked, which is definitely the right way to finish out a 3-night Panic run in NOLA. Impossible and Pigeons are two more personal favorites, raw, alternate-reality WSP gems and it’s such a treat to hear them played by a band that is at a new peak, as good as ever. They sounded great all weekend, but the final night, the final stretch, they still had so much creativity in the jams, so much interlocking-puzzle-pieces tightness, so much energy coming and going. Such a fucking treat. Throw in a cover of Neil Young’s Vampire Blues and the always-explosive Papa’s Home and the second half of that second set was more or less a perfect dose of Widespread.
They played Basically Frightened to start the encore and once again, I had waves of personal, deep-rooted nostalgia coming up from my personal depths. The link between Col. Bruce & ARU and Widespread Panic a personal one as well. Dave and Duane even snuckin a “Cheese Frog” in there and either you know what that is or you don’t. There was little chance the weekend wasn’t going to end with Postcard, the back of that postcard on which “this town is nuts, my kind of place, I don’t ever want to leave” was written. This band speaks the truth in poetic ways, but sometimes it’s best to come right out and say it. Tremendous weekend, they always are, everything was perfect up to that point and the band coming back out to rock “I Trusted You” one last time was the exclamation point those three nights deserved.
Thanks for reading!
