9Jul19 Jeremy Black & Friends @ The Sultan Room
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 twenty-eighth of hopefully 52 posts…
I’ll comment on the music a little, which was good/great/fine throughout, but this will really serve as a review/first impression of the new The Sultan Room in Bushwick. tl;dr: great, great room, potential to be one of the best in town. If you prefer to visit and be surprised or make your own first impressions without my commentary, this serves as a spoiler alert. Either way, I highly recommend checking it out (tonight’s show looks to be a burner and I think I might have to go back…)
The club is located on Starr St in Brooklyn. Basically on the same block is a Mexican/tequila joint, a craft beer tap bar and a kebab place, basically a bunch of very cool looking spots right in a row leading up to the Turkish Inn which is a restaurant that the Sultan Room is a part of. I actually had to circle once to find a parking spot which is rare in most parts of Brooklyn, so it may seem out of the way, but it ain’t. I think Elsewhere and House of Yes are both in the general vicinity.
They did an absolutely amazing job with the decor, from the moment you walk in the door to the long hallway leading to the door of the club to the club itself, there are tons of sort of exotic/trippy/psychedelic “Turkish” details. Lamps overhead, wallpaper, paintings, little doodads tucked into nooks here and there, this is the kind of place to explore. There’s a door that says “To Rooftop” in a Turkish font and you walk up a stairway that maybe the trippiest part of the place and there’s a very spacious, very awesome roofdeck with its own bar. This is the kind of place you might make excuses to see music at just so you can walk into the place and savor all the visual details. All that and it’s actually very well done, not overwhelming or too much in the least.
So, we’re not even inside the club yet and already it’s fucking awesome. The doors into the place have this hypnotic design on them, just big, wonderful doors that you really want to walk through but also you maybe don’t feel like you’re cool enough to see what’s going on on the other side. So awesome, but slightly intimidating, which is what I think every door should aspire to. What’s on the other side and do I deserve to find out???
On the other side of the doors is a wonderful place to see music. The room is set up with like 3 concentric half-ovals. The inner core is the stage. It was big enough for 2 drum kits, guitar and bass and the half-oval has a rectangular offshoot which was like built for a horn section which is what it held last night. I’ll get to behind the stage last, because behind the stage is the best part and I’m a save-the-best-for-last kinda guy. The next half-oval is what I’d call the “dance floor.” It is below the stage by a couple of feet, perhaps a perfect distance. since these are ovals we’re talking about, the stage/space is longer than it is deep, so no matter where you are, you’re not that far from the music. As I said, everything is concentric, so it’s not 100% in the round, but it’s about half that way. This is a great arrangement, many of the best clubs have a stage where you can really stand on all sides of it and take it in. The corner of the “floor” section has this really kind of old school lounge-y big ass couch, the kind of place where VIP’s would hang with their crew with a rope keeping away the plebes. It is suuuuper vibey, very nice touch. Finally, the “outer ring” is a raised section in the back, it is a couple steps up from the floor and a couple feet above the stage. The very front of this section is like bar seating with bar stools and a ledge for drinks/elbows. Behind that is standing room with the bar in the back corner. Like I said, no matter where you’re standing you’re not that far and because the back is raised so much, it doesn’t matter how packed the floor is/gets, you’re going to be able to see quite easy and comfortably.
Of course, the Sultan Room is decorated with some great touches like the entranceway and rooftop, even the bathrooms have a nice feel to them. The best is what’s going on behind the stage which I was drawn to even before the music started. Big radial triangular glass-panels coming to a point right behind the stage with sort of alternating motif so that half of the panels are like a Turkish lattice and the other half are like this inverted cloudscape kind of design. Hard to describe. This would have been a cool backdrop on its own, but once the music started, they started lighting up in a very psychedelic, feed-your-head, but fairly muted way. It wasn’t crazy shit like Littlefield, but more a perfect vibe for the room. They didn’t overlook too many details with this space and I have to say, in my opinion, they nailed every one of them. Loved the room.
Last night there were probably about 50–70 people there at peak and it didn’t feel more than 1/3 full, so I can imagine it being pretty comfortable at 100–150, a great size. It also sounded quite good, which brings me to the actual music I saw last night. The show was Jeremy Black’s, he was the drummer in Apollo Sunshine and now lives out in the Bay Area, I believe. The band had Dave Harrington on guitar/effects/Mellotron; Chris Egan on drums, Matt Safer on bass and then a bunch of guests including two sax players (one was Stuart Bogie), a guy who did percussion and looping vocals and another guy who sang (quite well!). Sam Cohen was billed as a guest but when I left around 11:15 he had not showed, so I’m guessing he didn’t play. Black started on laptop/electronics and would alternate between that and a second drum kit. The music was great, it was very heavy on drums/bass so that even though Harrington and Bogie and the rest were part of it and played good/great/fine, the emphasis was almost entirely on the rhythms which were tribal and groovy and pretty great. I think we are very spoiled with great improv/experimental music in NYC and I’d put this show in a second/third tier compared to some of the ridiculous shows that have gone down around town in the last couple of years, but I think any other town/city/hamlet would kill for a show as good as last night’s was. Which is to say it was pretty great, but not can’t-miss by any stretch. This was the most subdued playing from Harrington I’ve seen in a while, he was definitely a supporting player and only took a couple of solos and certainly not his most awesomest by any stretch. But it’s all relative and he was still quite good. The show was billed as sets at 9 and 10:30 and I think the actual times were 9:20 and 10:45ish, so not terrible. I left around 11:15 or so.
10Jul19
Billy Martin’s World Beats @ The Sultan Room
I couldn’t resist returning to Bushwick with another killer lineup and am very glad I did. In a way, Tuesday night’s visit felt like a warm-up both visually and musically for last night’s show which felt “better” in every way. First of all, everything that was great about the room persisted on my second visit, although it felt even better for whatever reason. The most tangible way was the lights were like 1000x better, which is to say better than what was already quite awesome. It was like a different guy was running the system and he had a much better feel for what it could do, which is apparently, quite a bit. This is now easily in my top 5 rooms in the city. Between the feel and the booking and the scene there, it feels like the best of Nublu, LunAtico and Barbes all rolled into a single place, which… sign me the fuck up! Can’t recommend going there enough.
Last night was what will be the first of a maybe monthly residency, second Wednesdays of the month with Billy Martin playing with musicians that sort of grab sounds from different parts of the world. It’s very Billy Martin in a very good way and last night’s band was an amazing way to kick it off. Martin on his usual drum kit augmented with all sorts of shakers and shit to bang on + Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz on both bass and oud + Shahzad Ismaily on bass and mini-Moog and what Martin called a calliope and a thumb piano + Sylvian Leroux on flutes and Ghambian/African flutes. I have expressed my love for ensembles that bring together sounds and instruments that might not necessarily seem to fit together, most recently when reviewing the Natural Information Society shows. On paper all those instruments and the worldly baggage they contain within their sounds shouldn’t fit together too well and… I have to say they kind of didn’t fit together perfectly. But they didn’t in a very interesting way, or ways I should say. There was a lot of competition for sonic space, like the oud and flute kind of clashed musically in terms of tone and there’s no reason why two basses should be playing at the same time. Often things were at odds with Martin who was either funky when the rest of the band was getting weird or ambient or was getting weird when the rest of the band was finding a groove. So, there was all this conflict and tension in the music, which was purely improvisational, absolutely no guiding structure to get things rolling. And yet, and yet, and yet, these guys were so good individually on whatever they were doing that all these different combinations of sounds and competition for parts of my ear and brain created a very interesting, kind of fascinating, and yes, very awesome experience. It still grooved, it still challenged, it still killed. Each piece found its place and more often than not found some sort of peak or similar. A few times things just clicked to absolute ecstatic perfection. I thought when it was oud/bass/drums there was some excellent moments and then Sylvian hopped in on the flute and pushed it over the top. Blumenkranz was the glue of the whole thing, playing nasty or funky on the bass, sometimes going melodic on the bass like it was an oud, sometimes playing the oud like it was a bass, his ability to straddle both the purely experimental and the purely synchronized-full-ensemble sounds were keys to the whole thing. In a way, he’s like the Billy Martin of the bass, badass meets pure groove with lots of other toys at his disposal. Ismaily was a bit back in the sound, I was in awe of his ability to just find a riff or groove or even just a chord and just sit on it. Sit on it for a long, long time, letting chaos and exploration and outer-limits shit to go on around him and not flinch a bit. Zen master extraordinaire. Leroux was the melodic center, but also felt the most out of place… not necessarily in a bad way, he sounded fantastic and had just enough different flutes in his bag to create some variety (though not nearly as much as the other 3). Billy Martin is a fucking genius and may or may not have been wearing pajamas last night. The second set was much more out-there/spacey/ambient/weird, but the whole thing was a treat and I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship. A great show in a great space.
Wayne Krantz, Josh Dion, Orlando Le Fleming @ 55 Bar (late set)
It was a wacky Waynesday, er Wednesday, with Krantz playing the first of 2 very rare non-Thursday shows at 55 Bar. In a way it was the same as any Thursday, but also it felt kind of different. Like if Krantz played Wednesdays on Earth 2 where everything is kind of the same, but not really. I recognized a couple of the people there, but the guy who usually runs the door was inside enjoying the music. I guess Wednesday is his night off? Also strange: we walked up at 11:31 and it had already started. Usually the late set starts no earlier than 11:45.
Despite all that quite-minor weirdness… HOLYSHIT what a great set of music. When the trio clicks, it clicks and they were feeling it last night, at least for the late set. If you think about the “song” being some sort of four-walled room for the band to move around in, each piece last night seemed to have different walls, some made of glass, totally shattered and left in a pile of don’t-cut-yourself shards on the floor, some mirrored, giving the effect of being a much larger space, some just plain old sheetrock, painted and hung with elaborate artwork and some entirely invisible, no boundaries whatsoever. As such, some pieces you could hear the song’s themes running throughout, sometimes it was a riff to return to from each improvisational excursion, sometimes it was something to be completely ignored and others it was something manipulated into different shapes along the way. It’s maybe subtle, but this kind of playing is such a different level then just rolling out the basketball and playing improvisational pick-up, it really felt like a band last night, everything was so tight, not just one guy or the other showing off their incredibly skill, but three guys working off each other, and around and into each other’s brains. When it’s that good, it feeds itself, Wayne takes it to another level and the other two join him. I wish I knew all the names of their songs, but the second one was a jammer masterpiece, a long stretch of playing where they started at one point, pure quiet, Waynezone and then built, built built, straight line, walking from one side of the room to another, the room morphing and changing around, some crazy Willy Wonka room, but a straight line nonetheless, building to a single glorious peak. It’s rare to see something that coherent end-to-end like that at 55 Bar and they did it like no big deal. There have been rumors of a new Wayne Krantz original and I am pretty certain they played it last night and am semi-confident that it was the first time. It sounded very good, very much in the vein of the kind of shit he’s playing these days and the band seemed to have fun with it. Wayne joked about maybe playing it again in 3 weeks or something to that effect. Then they closed with 3 big “covers” going “Another One Bites the Dust” which had the theme popping up throughout the jamming in mutated forms (le Fleming is very good at this) and then “U Can’t Touch This” which got out to some crazy places, planet hopping across the omniverse before coming back home and then the obligatory “Manic Depression” closer, the song that’s the litmus of the WK late set, the further they take it out the more you know Wayne is feeling it and man, they took that thing out last night.
70 minutes of mindboggle for $15 after two sets of sail-the-seven-seas confoundment in Bushwick for even less than that. Can’t beat it.
12July19 Gaby Moreno @ Prospect Park Bandshell
Another gorgeous evening and free music at Celebrate Brooklyn? Sign me up!
Last night’s show was part of the LAMC = Latin Alternative Music Conference which has events around town this week/weekend. It was the quintessential “doesn’t matter what’s happening at the Bandshell, just go” kind of show. Nice sized crowd with walk-right-in entry and plenty of room inside, couldn’t have been better. We got there just in time to literally hear the last line sung from the first act, so not much to say about that. The second band was a rock band from Mexico City called Enjambre which I really enjoyed. Kind of alt-rock feel, a Mexican version of Modest Mouse or Franz Ferdinand or something, with a lot of great songs, good energy, sometimes one guitar, sometimes two, sometimes three. The perfect example of a band I would never, ever go see otherwise, but a) always try to hit the opening band and b) trust that anything booked for Celebrate Brooklyn is worthwhile and there you go. I wonder what sized club they’d play if they were just headlining in NYC. There was a fair number of people there to see them, getting hassled for standing/dancing in the aisles and singing along. Anyway, good shit.
The main reason I was there, though, was to see Gaby Moreno. I know her exclusively from Live From Here with Chris Thile as she’s been the “duet partner” at probably almost half the LFH’s I’ve been to, including, I believe, the first one I saw, in which she kind of knocked me off my feet with her voice and presence. Every subsequent song I’ve heard her sing has been a repeat of the first one, just wow every time, somehow you forget and then bam!, she’s moved you again. And, of course, you wonder what a full Gaby Moreno show would be like and wouldn’t a free show at the best outdoor venue in NYC be the place to see her on a beautiful night in mid-July? Yes, yes it was. As usual, I was not prepared for how awesome Moreno and the show would be.
It turns out that it was not just a Gaby Moreno show. It was more like a Gaby Moreno-curated Latin music extravaganza. She started with just her and a band that included he’s-kinda-low-key-everywhere Chris Morrissey on bass and David Garza on guitar and I just couldn’t for the life of me catch the drummer’s name, but I’m betting he’s another plays-regularly-around-NYC kind of guy. The band was very good is my point and Gaby was excellent from the start, wearing this wonderful shiny multi-hued skirt. The show quickly showed its true form early, though as she invited this other guy (missed his name, sorry) to first sing a duet and then sing a song or two on his own with the band, Moreno leaving the stage completely. And that’s sort of how it went, more like this LFH-inspired rotation of musicians and styles with Gaby playing and leading about half of it and the other half she graciously gave up the stage to a variety of guests. These guests seemed to come from different places in Latin America, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia… and they bounced around folk, American and Latin, rock, and combinations thereof. Actor/singer Oscar Isaac (from freakin’ Star Wars!) came out for several songs, some with the band, some just in duet with Moreno. That was good. She brought out members of Colombian rock band Aterciopelados, the singer sang on two or three songs that were all over the place as far as genre was concerned, traditionals to alt-rock.
Gaby did a great job with the flow of the show even when it seemed like the tech team at the Bandshell didn’t quite have the changes dialed in every time. The show just got better and better as it went on. An all-female mariachi band, called Flor de Mariachi (I believe) kind of stole the show with a mini-set that included a No Doubt cover and from there ranged from hip hop to a ridiculous kind of classical/bluegrass/mariachi violin battle to a few bars of Afro Blue (?) and beyond. They were kind of ridiculous and awesome, their section was kind of “Peak Bandshell.” And talk about ridiculous, her next guest was this guy playing some sort of 4-string guitar thing (she said its name very quickly in Spanish… this was definitely a wish-I-knew-Spanish affair, most of the songs and a good amount of the banter were not in English) from Venezuela and hollllllyshit, this guy was insane. She called him a “master” or a “genius” and she may have been underselling his talent, moving his hands so fast and getting about 100 overlapping sounds out of the instrument, I found myself laughing out loud 55-Bar-on-a-Thursday-night style at everything he did. I had joked earlier in the day that maybe Chris Thile would come out with her, but this guy definitely filled that role nicely, just jaw-dropping skill and then he was able to work that into a few songs without it sticking out too much, very impressive. A few times through the night she mentioned how she had just announced a new album coming out in October that day and that dude (what was his name!?!?!) appeared on it and then afterwards, she brought out one more of the guests on the album, who was, uh, Jackson Browne(!?!) to sing a couple. I mean, the show didn’t need a high-profile guest to be good, it was already quite a great set, but it certainly didn’t hurt, either. I didn’t expect to see the trio of Gaby Moreno, Jackson Browne and Oscar Isaac singing the final song of the night together, I mean talk about a “three people who have never been in my kitchen” grouping. I think that kind of encapsulated the night, though, Moreno brimming with so much talent, enough to play a set at the Bandshell and capture the attention of the audience and probably get 3/4 of them to fall in love with her, this person giving up the stage so often during her own show, allowing others to take the spotlight, highlighting music you might not otherwise stop and pay any mind to… it all just spoke to the kind of person she is. I have seen her sing several times and you imagine that’s the kind of human you’re watching, so it was heartwarming to see that “Gaby Moreno” really is that way. I also just love that she went above and beyond for this Bandshell show and have huge respect for artists that do so. It really is a not-just-another-gig gig and should be treated that way.
I went into this show wondering what it would be like when Gaby Moreno had a show of her own and… I still don’t know! Or maybe I do know and that her show is more than just her show, but so wonderful all the same. She’s clearly a special talent. Looking forward to hearing the album and would absolutely go see her again, for free or not.
Had two great days/nights of music, let’s see if I can put together some coherent thoughts on it all this morning. First up Saturday…
13Jul19 Barbes > Bandshell
Saturday afternoon and I’d gotten all the things on my list done, so what else to do between then and my scheduled livemusic for the night? What else, but more livemusic’n?
We hit the early show at Barbes first, which is Book of J, that is Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg. They are playing the Saturday 6pm set at Barbes all month. I love this slot and am always impressed that the room isn’t empty every time I hit one. They have different guests each week and this Saturday was Steve Ulrich guitarist from the band the Big Lazy that also plays Barbes regularly. So, it was actually kind of broken into two parts so that the first part was Steve and Jeremiah doing a guitar duo thing and then they did one sort of impromptu transition song where Jewlia came up to sing with the pair on their last song and then it was “Book of J” with Lockwood and Eisenberg. Over the course of that the music went from sort of swinging two-guitar versions of jazz songs (“Caravan” and “Mood Indigo,” etc) to sort of rock/Americana (“That’s Alright Mama” and “Lay Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” etc) to Jewish/cantorial/Yiddish (titles IDK). It was all rather delightful and fun, a little history lesson and lots of music wrapped up. One of the great joys of seeing music like this in NYC is getting to see musicians and artists in their “just fucking around” stage, somewhere between rehearsals and pet projects and hobbies, it’s not only getting to see sort of the “raw data” of these performers, but also seeing them do what they really want to be doing, their passion and love, the shit you do when you don’t care how much money is involved. This was really great.
With still some time to kill and just a short walk separating us from the Bandshell, it made sense to catch the opening set for the Celebrate Brooklyn show that night. Less than 6 hours earlier I had confidently exclaimed in so many words that “whatever they book at the Bandshell is going to be great, it really doesn’t matter who is playing!!!” Well, let me tell you that this apparently ruffled the livemusicgods feathers and such hubris would not be tolerated. not be tolerated!! The set we saw was, uh, not good, in my opinion. I hate to pile on and elaborate, but I also hate it when people just say “it sucked!” and don’t back it up, so… the act was Courtnee Roze and she was billed as a “master percussionist.” In my years I have seen one or two of what I might call a “master percussionist” and while Roze was fine, just fine, she’s good, don’t get me wrong, I saw nothing that brought the word “master” to my mind. Which is fine. Basically the set was her and two other guys and a bunch of drums and one of the guys played some keys as well. The whole set was highly choreographed between their playing and then they’d also have songs and beats and stuff playing that was prerecorded and then there was dancing and even a little schtick along with it. So, there was a part where they were playing/dancing along to some James Brown and later a portion that sounded a lot like “Thriller” and certainly plenty of banging on congas and a few “BROOKLYN CLAP YOUR HANDS!” and more than one “goddammittttt!!!” thrown in for good measure (cover your ears children!) and in concept there was some interesting stuff in there, but in practice it felt very summer camp talent show. The whole thing was kind of strange and flat and couldn’t survive the fact that the audience didn’t feel very into it. I hope the headliner was better, good enough that everyone in attendance doesn’t even recall that there was an opener, and I still stand by my confidence in the booking there.
tl; dr:
ME: everything they have at the Bandshell is awesome
Bandshell: {loud farting noise}
Yeasayer @ Webster Hall
Apparently the city was partly in a blackout at this point, but we were largely oblivious and headed to Webster Hall without incident. Had a lot of fun checking out Yeasayer for the first time (I think?). Crowd was having a blast, the band was a great balance of indie/disco/rocking. My full review of the Yeasayer show is here.
…and a monster Sunday. 5 shows in 3 boroughs, all of them better than anything I saw Saturday.
75 Dollar Bill @ Noguchi Museum
We got on the road early, got some delicious dumplings in Flushing, got to Long Island City with some time to explore and so checked out the Socrates Sculpture Garden for a bit which was cool, but it was very hot out and so we headed inside to the Noguchi Museum. I had no idea this place even existed a couple days ago, bu thanks to the magic of the Freaks List, I was there for a perfectly-situated concert on a Sunday afternoon with time to check it out. Basically, the museum was created by the Japanese-American sculptor Noguchi to house his art. It’s a really great indoor/outdoor space!
I love seeing music in museums, it’s something different/special and kind of heightens the experience into different conceptual planes, really layering and folding metaphors all the while. I mean, there is this thing with a museum that connects the artwork to the space it’s being absorbed/observed/appreciated. You can’t separate the two and similarly, when you see music, it is very strongly tied to the place you see it — what works in one room might be a disaster elsewhere. A sculpture presented in this perfectly curated space takes on a certain weight and meaning that might be lost if it’s just sitting somewhere thoughtlessly. This phenomenon was stirring in my head strongly yesterday afternoon, first when walking around the museum before the music… much of the art is large hunks of granite that have been worked on by the sculptor, with some super-smooth, curved areas juxtaposed with unworked rough areas. There were other works, too, wooden pieces that kind of fit together perfectly to create multi-sectioned weirdness and more like marbled stone polished smooth with alternating sections of colors, bent into perfect curves. The museum was sort of these spartan cinder block rooms, but somehow as a museum felt warm and homey, the art affecting the space just as much as the opposite. There was something very Japanese about it as well, a simplicity cross-cut with complexity, coldness draped in warmth and whimsy and weird. It was a perfect place to see music.
Of course there’s a sculpture garden, a kind of courtyard space and around 2:55 people started gathering here for the music, sitting on mats on stones or just finding space around to park. There are sculptures everywhere, naturally, these big hunks of granite that seem to contain so much, facets that you just want to touch and rub, smooth and rough, rounded and flat. The garden was walled in and although the city was just outside those walls, it felt miles away… sort of. There was a space for the musicians in the center, but they started at opposite ends of the courtyard, at first barely making any noise at all. Then they both started tapping at “percussion” = wood blocks and cowbells. I mean barely making any noise at all. But the audience (there were more people there than i would have guessed, maybe 50ish?) fell mostly quiet. At this point, the natural sounds of the space seemed to be drawn out. The last time I saw 75 Dollar Bill, a couple weeks ago at Roulette, they had enlisted a bunch of musicians, strings and bass and more, to join the band, to make the sound bigger and different. Yesterday, it was as if they had enlisted the city itself, the world outside the walls, to join them. The birds in the trees chirping became louder and really felt like they were participating. Planes flew overhead, filling the space with their temporary roar. The quiet heightened the cars passing outside the wall. All the while, the two musicians — Rick Brown and Che Chen — are ringing bells and tapping blocks. This goes on for a while, I mean like 5 minutes then 10 minutes… 15 minutes. In any other space this would have been unbearable. If this was at Roulette or Union Pool people would have started talking or murmuring or walking out. But the space, the connection to the space, it made it all more of this meditation, a group exploration. I had the image of a sculptor approaching a big hunk of granite and slowly chipping away at it, taking something rough and making it smooth, giving it shape. That was what these two musicians were doing, slowly, slowly, slowly. Eventually they moved to the performance space and transitioned, slowly, slowly, slowly, into a song. Chen taking his guitar and playing his bluesy kind of Tuareg style improvisation, so many sounds at once, one of the sounds almost exactly akin to the occasional plane overhead; Brown sitting on his plywood box, blowing his homemade horns, the sound of car horns and alarms outside the walls, banging at percussion, the bells chirping the birds, the bang-a-lang of the city beyond. It was all very zen and peaceful as the music became music at long last, when the hunk of stone becomes art, there before our very eyes. There are children running around trying to make sense of it all, smooth surfaces they can’t touch, big playground-stones they can’t climb on. Che is wearing this shirt with a kind of mottled pattern on it and the piece of artwork behind him has an almost exact same mottled look to it, I mean it’s uncanny to my eye, he’s almost blending in with the sculpture behind him. The first piece came to an end, it was probably 30–40 minutes after they had started twinkling the bells at opposite ends of the space. I think they had 45 minutes to play. “I didn’t think we had played that long!” says Brown. To say they had been in a trance would be an understatement. In another space it would have been ridiculous, in that garden, a beautiful warm Sunday afternoon, it was watching art being made. They played two more shorter pieces that were off their new album, quick heavy doses of the glorious, unique drone of 75 Dollar Bill. Absolutely perfect. Museum admission was a mere $10 and I got that much worth and much more. Definitely check it out.
Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano @ Union Pool
We hopped in the car and made our way from Queens to Brooklyn to the Union Pool Sunday afternoon “Summer Thunder” series which this week was Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano guitar/drum duo. How strange the coincidence to go from one experimental guitar/percussion duo to another, but how different they were. Grabbed a couple tacos from the El Diablo taco truck in the awesome backyard outdoor space at Union Pool and a cold can of beer and sat down for a set that felt almost inside out from the previous. Their show was just an intense stream of killer guitar/drum jamming, not pure noise, but loud, in-your-face bombast of shreddy guitar licks, bluesrockdrone over a ridiculous torrent of drumming from Corsano… I mean ridiculous, a spiritual, summon-the-gods performance on the kit. The pair of them wove in and out of themes, stopping occasionally to mark the end of a “song” and then moved in another direction. Things wavered in intensity, sometimes full-lobotomy-style onslaught, other times more nuanced and catch-your-breath’y. It was all incredible. If you enjoy the guitar or the drums, there is no way you would have seen this set and not have closed your eyes and just let your ears marinate in the music these guys were cooking on the backyard grill at Union Pool. Really great. I love this series, free music for the win. Tacos are none-too-shabby as well, for the price!
Railroad Earth @ Summerstage
Somehow it was a pretty quick ride from Williamsburg to the Upper East Side, got our third can’t-beat-it parking spot of the day and hit our third free outdoor show of the day and it was barely 6pm at this point. Still hot, but there were shady spots to be had and Railroad Earth was already warmed up by the time we got to Central Park. These guys are a band I always enjoy, but I think I only really see them at festivals or shit like this, which is fine. They are well-suited to a sunny-day afternoonish set. It was Family Day at Summerstage and so the crowd was a mix of locals/regulars, hippies and parents chasing kids with big earmuff-style hearing protection on (and some people may have fallen into more than one or all of those categories).
This was partly a nice social hour, catching up with and/or hey-what’s-up’ing friends and such, but the music was also excellent. I really want to say that I was at the first ever Railroad Earth show at Tribeca Rock Club many years back, but someone can correct me if I’m wrong, so it’s good to see them when I do and damn, they do bring the bluegrass/Americana-flecked jams. They’ve very much embraced a Grateful Dead style sound in a good way and showed off some tremendous instrumentalism and that-band-is-tight style jams. There was one song that they “co-wrote”with John Denver that was a good summary of their style. Later there was one that sounded much like a bluegrassy mash-up of Terrapin Station and St. Stephen, in a good way, like a fiddle-and-mandolin version of Chris Robinson Brotherhood or something.
It was a beautiful afternoon/early evening, the sun was on its way down and it was free. Can’t beat it. Really enjoyed this set.
Jim Campilongo Trio w/ Josh Dion & Chris Morrissey @ 55 Bar
I think at this point it was officially “nighttime,” so in theory, we’re just getting started, right? Dropped my better half off at Penn Station and it was a straight shot down 7th Ave from there to my W. Village home at 55 Christopher Street. Another amazing parking spot, another free show, finally indoors. I walk in at 7:30 and the band is kind of killing it; settle in, they finish up and decide they’re going to take a break! That’s cool, my small-bites meal plan for the day has left me a little hungry again so take a stroll and grab a pepperoni slice to continue my on-the-cheap day in the boroughs.
Back to 55 Bar and grab a seat, again, the room is not full by any stretch, but a good crowd considering it’s a beautiful Sunday evening. The band starts up and dammmmn, these guys are so good. I saw Dion play with Krantz in that room on Wednesday and Morrissey play in Gaby Moreno’s band on Friday, so it’s kind of cool to see them in what I guess is their “regular” gig with Jim Campilongo (the trio plays most Mondays at Rockwood 2, some variations in the band, but this is the main trio). They really showed their weekly-gig skill the whole set. I mean, if the last couple decades have taught me anything, it’s that the best bands in NYC play weekly, and these guys were fantastic. The music bounced around to just about any style you’d want a guitar-bass-drum trio to play, from straight jazz to rock ro funk to blues to twangy country groove to all sorts of combinations thereof. Dion sang on one song, “I’m A Ram” which I remember seeing Galactic play regularly back in the day… this was as good as any version they had ever done, Dion’s superb voice and drumming adding a one-two funk punch. Campilongo is a Telecaster master, creating so much sound and space with his guitar, was just a great thing to watch him devour every style he tried. They did a Duke Ellington piece and some originals, some gorgeous stuff and some mind-bending get-out-there-Krantz-style jammers. There were many times when Morrissey played a lead bass role, either taking a solo or just leading the music straight-up. He’s a damn good bassist. Each guy in the band is phenomenal and they play together weekly so they’re fucking amazing together… it was the kind of set that made me feel bad I don’t get out to this every Monday. You can’t do everything, but gonna try to hit these more often. So good.
At the end of this set, they sent a bucket around for tips for the band. It was the first time all day that someone had asked me for money to see music. Of course, it was my option not to put anything in, but after a set like that, not an option at all, actually. $10 in the bucket seemed reasonable.
Wrembel’s Band @ Barbes
Speaking of phenomenal musicians that play a weekly gig that I don’t catch quite often enough, I was determined to finish this Sunday #nedventure at Barbes for Stephane Wrembel. One last bridge crossing and one last can’t-be-beat parking spot and I walk into Barbes, but not before noticing that the chalkboard outside says “Wrembel’s Band” and not “Stephane Wrembel.” Indeed, stepped inside and it looks like Stephane had the night off. That’s kind of a super bummer, he is the fucking man, as close as you’ll come to seeing Django Reinhardt in the modern day.
Still, it took me about half a measure to realize that the four musicians in front of me playing — violin (female), guitar (dude), nylon-string rhythm guitar (dude with ponytail), upright bass (dude) — were fantastic (quelle surprise!). They did a similar gypsy style jazz thing, but with an electric guitar playing the lead in a barely-Django-if-at-all style, so the show was much, much different than a regular Stephane Wrembel show would be, not least because there was no historical-chit-chat between songs that you usually get with Wrembel. These guys were good, though, and again, much like Saturday’s show at Barbes, it really felt like watching a bunch of musicians just messing around because they love to play, not someone even thinking about working too hard. They would briefly discuss which song to play, figure out if they knew it and then it was off to the races. The soloing from both the lead guitarist and the violin player were like off-the-charts good. Every time they’d take the wheel, it was a breakneck, whoo-hoo! rollercoaster. Just one after the other after the other. If you’re going to do a you-solo-then-I-solo style jam session, make sure you kill it every time, or I’m gonna get bored and let me tell you I was not bored at all. This was a lot of fun, a nice little bait-and-switch set that caught me by surprise, but I don’t know how I can get surprised seeing music in this town anymore, it’s all so fucking good it hurts.
So as their super-great first set winds down I’m thinking “who are these cats?” and expecting the obligatory band introductions before they break, but… apparently not obligatory. I mean, I don’t know everything about the music business, but it seems to me if you are an opening band or playing a gig for tips in a hat or in any way are not 100% confident that people know who you are you should introduce yourselves!! Multiple times!!! Jesus, I think it’s so bizarre that people don’t do this. I mean, it’s a stretch sure, but someone in the audience might actually like you and want to see you again! But has no way of knowing who you are because you didn’t introduce yourself!! Sorry, ranting, but huge pet peeve of mine. Anyway, lady, dude, dude with ponytail, dude they were quite good.
All told, I spent like $35 total to see 5 killer shows by world class talent, check out some wonderful sculptures and eat delicious dumplings, tacos and pizza, and was home at 11. That’s how you Sunday night, my friends. A great week of music.
