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 thirty-third of hopefully 52 posts…
13Aug19 Daughter of Swords (Erin Durant opened) @ Union Pool
Following up the Saturday MMJ show in all its oversized glory, with this bill of quiet, sweet, understated folk was a nice compare-and-contrast’r, that’s for sure. I’ve really enjoyed the albums from both Daughter of Swords and Erin Durant, so definitely wanted to get my evening’s worth and catch both sets. Got there at 8:30 not sure if the music would start at 8:30 or 9 and, naturally, it was 9. Alas.
Room was about 1/4 full for Durant. She kind of came out and just sat down and played one song by herself at this small piano on stage. Her voice had a lot of strain and a few cracks in it as she sang and it took me a little while to adjust to it, but there was a nice quality to it as she went on. after that she invited Patrick Holmes up to join her on clarinet and he stayed out the rest of the set. I am very confident that I saw this guy play clarinet recently, in a show that was more experimental/weird than the set he played in last night, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. Durant played the next song on an instrument on her lap that had four strings, like an old, folky predecessor to the violin or something. It was interesting how switching instruments made her voice sound different. The rest she was back on the piano. The music was just very nice. It was very natural, in that a lot of the songs were about nature — mountains and lakes and rivers and talking to the wind and to the seasons were the kinds of things she sang about. The clarinet was soft and actually kind of pretty and there were some nice moments where they just kind of played together, not really improvising, certainly, but definitely just letting things drift, leaves floating down a river or something. One of the last songs she sang was a new one that she kind of joked would be a disaster because it wasn’t finished yet and she just wanted to play it with Holmes and it was actually great and sounded whole and a little self-deprecation can go a long way sometimes.
The headliner was “Daughter of Swords” which is the name of Alexandra Sauser-Monnig’s solo music. She’s one third of the group Mountain Man which is a vocal folk trio that you may or may not know. They play Newport regularly, either billed directly or just floating around sitting in with people, adding some angelic vocals if/when needed. Here she just played by herself with only a lightly-played guitar to accompany her and even then, she sang a few a capella, including the opening number. That was fine, because her voice really felt like an instrument to me. There are “good singers,” but this was more than that, she had a real talent and feel for manipulating her voice, getting the right sound and feel out of it depending on the song or the lyric or the phrase, like a well-picked acoustic guitar. Her songs were light and delicate and sometimes felt like barely anything at all. This was one of those shows where I wish I was sitting and a couple times I did contemplate just sitting on the floor so I could drift off without worrying about falling over or constantly shifting my weight from one side to the other or whatever. She had some cute/funny banter about touring on her own, driving her own car, biting off directly from a block of cheese, etc. good stuff that didn’t jibe with the music, but that’s sometimes the best way. Her songs, with that voice, were soft and mellow, but seemed to surround and burrow and I really enjoyed the set. And when it was done, no encore, I was very much satisfied and ready to go home.
14Aug19 Billy Martin’s World Beats @ The Sultan Room
Last night was my fourth trip to the Sultan Room and all my initial impressions have only been reinforced with each visit. Not only is it one of the coolest looking vibey rooms I’ve seen music in, it has also already established itself as a home for top-notch experimental music, a cross between Nublu 151 and the Stone. Last night was my second time catching Billy Martin’s monthly residency World Beats show which is every second Wednesday of the month and, as far as I can tell, will feature Billy with Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (on bass and oud), Shahzad Ismaily (on any variety of instruments, last night including congas, Moog and acoustic guitar, he never touched his bass, but he did have it with him) and a rotating fourth member of some “world” music background. Last night the fourth was Min Xiao-Fen who plays the pipa, a Chinese lute which makes the kinds of sounds that you will automatically associate with stereotypical, unmistakable “Chinese music.” This World Beats series is really perfectly suited to the room, which, as mentioned, is a “safe space” for musical map-free exploration, but also has this sort of international bazaar, nightclub-from-a-Bond-film feel, a sort of old school non-Western feel, but also a very modern feel. Hard to describe, but the music just fits in that room perfectly. I am already putting second Wednesdays of the coming months on my calendar to try and hit as many of these as I can.
There were many notable details about the show last night. One cool thing was how each musician had at least two looks, meaning they could do more than one thing, Shanir going to bass or to oud for two completely different sounds. Min having her pipa and then another Chinese banjo-looking thing (possibly with a snakeskin head?!?) and she also did some singing, some Chinese and some indecipherable melodic babbling that worked quite well. Shahzad, as mentioned, moved between a few very different instruments and of course, Billy Martin is a killer groovemeister on the drum kit, but also just as awesome banging and shaking a variety of percussion on his table-of-wonders. Billy brought a completely different set of percussion stuffs than he did for the last one of these and it made me wonder how he decides and what the motherlode looks like and how many storage units it occupies.
Martin started the night shaking these massive branches, like two oversized lulavs, something he might have happened upon while trekking through a jungle. The first ten minutes of the show he went from shaking those things to hitting with them, to hitting his drums with massive brushes to hitting them with drums and over that time the music went from rudderless amorphous freeform to an ambient creepshow soundtrack to some more directed, everyone’s-comfortable-now improvisation. During those opening minutes there was just the feeling that once the four of these masters clicked it would be something special and every time they did, it very much was. Often with great improvisation, it succeeds because there is no leader: everyone just kind of gels into a single entity and the music flows from the collective whims. Last night was the opposite, very much leader driven, it’s just that the leader rotated naturally around the quartet. Billy would focus things with a groove, a little conversation would ensue around that rhythm and then, without comment or gesture, Xiao-Fen would pick things up with a riff or lick or extended solo and everyone would react around that and so on and so on. Some of the more interesting parts of the first half of the night were little back-and-forths or in-and-outs between Shanir on the oud and Min on the pipa. There was much overlap and much clashing in the sounds of these two instruments, so many miles and millenia of culture between the two sounds, you could feel the tension of geography and history as they played off each other and the mastery of the two players who made circle peg fit into square hole.
A short paragraph on Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz, because holy fuck, it’s one thing to remember in your mind that he’s good and that every time I see him, it’s something awe-inspiring, but it’s quite another to experience it again in real time. He really was such a force again last night, on both instruments, even when he was just clapping his hands in rhythm a couple times, it was always just so right. Delicate to overpowering, flurries of notes, or just long pauses on the bass. The chemistry between Blumenkranz and Xiao-Fen was really fun to watch, but he had it all way. At one point he took an extended solo on the bass, but it wasn’t even a bass solo, it was like he had invented a new instrument through his skill and the effects and the context of the show, a combination of the oud and the pipa and the bass and electric guitar, over-the-top, around-the-globe good. I say “Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz” and you say “who?” and that’s on you, man. One of the absolute best bassists out there.
Billy Martin is also someone who just doesn’t put on a bad show and is clearly made for leading a band like this. His ability to let out the leash a little bit and let the group meander while he bopped around banging this thing or that and then ease back to the kit and find just the right funk to coalesce again is remarkable. That such a freeform show could inspire movement and dancing in the crowd is all on Billy and what makes these shows so appealing. At one point, Ismaily took out an acoustic guitar and Billy found this beat that was somehow a country funk and somehow something extraterrestrial and the group found this sweet spot for a bit that was quite awesome. Ismaily is the epitome of chill, he wore a winter coat (!?) the entire first set and would sit on a chord or a riff on his Moog for long stretches, completely unflappable even when shit got wicked weird around him then would without-warning start slapping the congas or aggressively push the improv with some synth. Was really fun to watch how it all worked together and how it sometimes didn’t. A small thing I really appreciated last night was how there were times when one of the musicians would just stop playing and listen, a little bit of a catch-your-breath that created some different sonic space for just three of them, but also somehow made sure that things didn’t get too overheated and out there. Even the guy running the lights seemed to stop every once in a while and just let the group work things out in the shadows before picking back up again.
They played about an hour and then broke for a bit. I’m curious how many people that room can fit, I counted 50+ in the room last night and almost everyone was in the raised section and there was plenty of room to move around, which leads me to believe it was less than half full. They came back for a shorter second set which felt less focused to me. It found a few moments, for sure, and was compelling throughout, but it was just a little more “free” and experimental. It was also a bit shorter, I think the second set was only about 35 minutes or so, but it was the right length. Billy Martin also knows how to end things like this. Looking forward to the next one, on 9/11.
15Aug19
It was a triangle of delights in the West Village last night, 3 great shows with some ridiculous head-tumbling contained within…
Ben Goldberg @ The Stone
I don’t even know how to bill this show. On the Stone website it was billed as “Ben Golbderg Nonet,” but the show featured 10 people and Goldberg introduced it as something like “The Vibraphonium Euphorium Bake-A-Cake,” if I recall correctly. A band by any other name would sound just as sweet, there is no doubt. I hit the Stone last week and wrote about how it’s a very, very don’t-know-what-you’er-going-to-get kind of place, a black box of experimental music where you walk inside with a metaphoric blindfold on and even an hour or so later when you walk out, you still might not know what you just listened to. Such was the case last night, I knew a bunch of the names on the show listing and figured it’d be something pretty good, but I had no clue, no fucking clue, what were in for last night. As it turns out, the packed house got a set-of-the-year kind of show, a blissed-out 80 minutes that I’m not sure how to describe. Leaving this show last night was like leaving a great film where you’re not exactly sure what the plot was, but the acting was phenomenal, the cinematography was masterful and all you want to do is talk about it afterward. I don’t know what it was, but I know I loved it.
Let’s see what we can say about this one… well, first off, who were these 10 players? It’s Ben Goldberg’s week at the Stone and it is coinciding, not coincidentally, with his 60th birthday last week, so it’s a celebration of Ben and also a chance for him to play with some of the best in the city, and if you look at the week’s lineups and the two still to come, you can see for yourself. I hope to be back Saturday. So, the lineup he put together for the Thursday night extravaganza was, on paper, nuts, three (3!!!) vibraphones played by Ches Smith, Kenny Wolleson and Will Shore; three (3!!!) electric guitars, played by Steve Cardenas, Ryan Ferreira and Andrew Conklin; two (2!) drums played by Allison Miller and Gerald Cleaver and two horns, Kirk Knuffke on cornet and Goldberg on clarinets as is his custom. That’s quite a band! In size, in personnel, and certainly, certainly, in the instrumentation. Quite a band!
The show opened with Goldberg entering the room by himself with a “little clarinet” and playing some long notes and simple melody walking around the room, soon to be followed by Knuffke. The rest of the musicians kind of entered one by one and took their space in the room at their instrument. This sort of introduction served to shift the room, to prepare it, almost like a ritualistic thing. Any band can come out there and start playing, but this already felt like more than “a band playing” it felt like something a bit more special. And with a slight shift, they are into the first piece and whether it was one piece or two or three, they played at the start for a very long stretch and what they played was some serious, serious magic. You might expect a band like this, 3 guitars!, 2 drums, to be loud and in-your-face, to create a wall of sound. Often with this much coming at you, the potential for so many notes at potentially high volume, you might liken it to sticking your head in a swarm of bees, notes flying around with their own individual buzzing, but as a swarm, an almost overwhelming sound. This was not like that, not at all. To extend the metaphor, this was like sticking your head into a swarm of butterflies, each one fluttering about and gliding, a thing of delicate beauty, bouncing on the whims of a breeze, dazzled with primary colors, simple and complex all at once, pure and good. There were no solos over the course of the whole show, really, save for a short drum breakdown somewhere in the middle, just 10 musicians fluttering about. It was gorgeous and happy and soothing, narcotic, soul penetrating, pump-that-shit-straight-into-my-veins kind of headiness. It’s hard for me to imagine, even after having experienced it that a band with 3 guitarists and 2 drummers, could be so subtle and smooth and kind. Each guitarist was noodling their own little thing, knitting their patch for the tapestry, spinning out Frisell-like spells into the mix without ever overtaking the whole. The stock of this soup of sound was those three vibraphones, one in the middle and two on each end of the room. Everyone was reading off sheet music the whole show and that in itself is something to marvel at, like this puffy cumulus cloud of vibraphone and guitars and, of course, clarinet and cornet, somehow it was by design? Doesn’t seem possible, but I suppose it was, unless they were just looking at a sheet of blank paper? And how do two drummer of the grade of Miller and Cleaver, how do they played so restrained while still providing focus and structure? Well, they’re fucking awesome, that’s how. Miller was like the “lead drummer” and Cleaver was like riding shotgun, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two drummer play in that fashion together. There were so many fascinating things going on over the course of this show, so much to take in. A song towards the end broke this mold a little bit, a more rollicking jammer, Allison really laying down a guiding groove, a repeated melody that reminded me of Garcia playing Dear Prudence pushed through and the ensemble kind of “jammed” as it were on this theme for a perfect number of minutes, whatever that was.
I wish I could say more about this set, it was unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and so enchanting and wonderful. To pull out more details — the revelatory curls of guitar from Ferreira, Wolleson playing an “electric vibraphone” with effects called up through an iPad, Goldberg’s direction and banter, the way the horns both sharply contrasted with and cozily nested in the rest of the music, the sheer look of the band, 10 different people all looking very cool, in 10 very different ways — to dwell on any of them would go against the energy of the music, to identify individual water droplets in this massive puffy, beautiful cloud in a summer sky, the kind of cloud that looks like something but you’re not quite sure and, really, don’t matter. What a stunner!
Bill Frisell Trio w/ Greg Tardy @ Village Vanguard (late set)
Sure, it was the kind of show that you could dwell on for an hour afterwards, or you could follow up that exploded-Frisell-chord of a show with… a Frisell show. Last week’s trio show was too good not to return for another set which was also a trio show, except with special guest Greg Tardy on saxophone, which meant, not a trio show at all. Not 10 people but definitely not a trio. The show, in fact, was heavily characterized and influenced by Tardy’s presence. It’s interesting to think about how Frisell’s sound and approach and playing shift with the groups he’s in, from duos to larger ensembles, from his guitar being the primary energy source, to it just being another wheel on a car. Last night I felt like it was somewhere in between. Don’t get me wrong, from the start I can say that Greg Tardy was pretty great, his playing was very much suited to being part of a Frisell band, he didn’t overpower and he was aware of and respectful of the quiet power that is BF’s guitar playing. That being said, in my opinion, he detracted more than he added.
The set started out with a rather lethargic ballad, I want to say it was “All of Me,” but maybe it just sounded like it. I actually think the opening tune was the weakest of the set and a couple minutes in, I was wondering if it had been a mistake to come to this after what we had just witnessed at the Stone. Luckily it got better, with some nice Frisellian moments, some good interactions between the quartet. In the end, though, it felt more like a standard “jazz show,” albeit one that featured one of my favorite musicians playing quite well. The real star of the set, though, was Rudy Royston on drums who somehow took the opportunity of a quieter, jazzier set and infused it with some not-off-the-shelf coloring, sparkles and glitter and all that bedazzling. Easily the best I’ve seen Royston play. It’s really fascinating to have seen basically the same band play last week and how the addition of a sax player created such a drastic shift in energy and tone of the show. I don’t recall but one bass solo last week, but last night there had to be 3 or 4. Last week the trio’s raison d’etre was to decorate the fantastical rooms that Frisell was building, but last night it seemed that they were all just hanging already-framed artwork on prefab walls. Not to sound too negative, it was a great set of jazz, Frisell had 3 or 4 magic moments that hit the sweet spot, Tardy was actually pretty good, all things considered, and Rudy was phenomenal… it was a good show. Just not nearly the set I saw last week, alas.
Wayne Krantz, Orlando Le Fleming, Josh Dion @ 55 Bar (late set)
If Allison Miller was the hidden-gem of the set at the Stone and Rudy Royston was the diamond at the Vanguard, then it only makes sense that Josh Dion would deliver the precious stones at 55 Bar to complete the drummer’s-delight trifecta. And dammmmn, did he deliver the goods. We walked into a set already in progress and the trio was already deep into some improv, Wayne playing some terra-not-so-firma shit in a style I don’t know I’ve ever heard him play. Almost jambandy kind of guitar soloing, with brightly-bowed licks and a propulsive funk. You walk into a room in a state like this and you can feel it in a nanosecond that the trio is in for it. And dammmmn, were they in for it, just another night at 55 Bar, but a mindblowing one at that. The set was a bit short, we missed an indeterminate amount when we walked in and probably caught 35 minutes total, but I saw through to the other side of the wormhole in those 2000 or so seconds, each one a little gift from the universe which somehow evolved to that point in time, that moment when Dion, Le Fleming and Krantz went into overdrive, Josh Dion speeding things up and up and hitting harder and harder, precipitating an avalanche of sound from the trio, a strap-on-the-oxygen-mask thrill ride of music that — have I mentioned this happens almost every week and only costs $15? Every week! Just walk in off the street! — a ride that got my stomach in my throat and drained me of adrenaline, because flight or fight is where it’s at. Le Fleming filling the room with giant balloons of electro-bass, effect-laden things that kept inflating until they pressed against all four walls, inescapably awesome.
At the moment there are no Krantz-at-55-Bar shows officially on the calendar, which is a bit sad, but I imagine it won’t be too long… you should go.
17Aug19 Frankie and the Witch Fingers (Las Rosas opened) @ The Broadway
My original plan to hit the Stone earlier was nixed by too much work to be done around the house, but probably for the best, the late show in Bushwick was probably about all my body could handle.
First the venue… The Broadway is “new” I suppose, but clearly an old space that maybe got a bit of a spitshine. The space is three floors, you walk in on the main bar area which is basically just a bar that looks like it’s been frozen in time from the early 80’s and maybe was. Pool table, plenty of beers, booth seating, there is nothing there to indicate that there’s any live music going on anywhere nearby. I think you can just go to the bar and drink an hang without paying. Downstairs is a small kitchen with a window to buy tacos for $2.50 a pop. I was not hungry, but will absolutely plan to try tacos next time. Burritos for $10 as well. Nice clean space downstairs, I suppose you could eat down there as well. Upstairs is the “venue” and it’s a perfectly formed small rock club, small bar in the back, stage in the front, a rectangular space with room for about 75 or so. The only peculariarity is the stairway kind of comes right into the space so there felt a little bit like the chance someone could fall down the stairs during a show. Anyway, I definitely dug the space, good energy, good use of the space, a step beyond a DIY thing, but not too far beyond.
We got there between sets and caught the final two acts and when we walked out a couple hours later I was a sweaty mess, I can’t remember the last time I danced so hard at show. Something about being in that room Saturday night felt so vital, like this was where the action was, a steamy, volcanic crack in the mantle, up-and-coming bands in a new room with a bunch of youngs dancing and moshing without a care, that was some serious energy. Las Rosas were basically a very good rock band. They had elements of psych and surf and doo wop and were just a lot of fun. The band was two guitars, drums, bass plus a percussionist and I guess the extra emphasis on rhythm with the second guitarist and the guy hitting the congas, plus the above-average bass and drummers really pushed this band to, well, above-average for me. Would absolutely check out again. Their last album is pretty good.
That was all just a very good warm-up for what was to come, and since Frankie And the Witch Fingers didn’t start until after midnight, I can count them as part of my epic Sunday of livemusic’n. So, yeah, about those Witch Fingers. Hoooooolyshit, they were awesome. Very serious Thee Oh Sees vibes, the frontman could very well be John Dwyer’s younger cousin and even holds his guitar like Dwyer and has that same sort of energy and semi-random HOO! in him, if you know what I mean. The set was just a slap-slap-slap faceslap of intense psychpunk energy from start to finish. Zero let-down, everything at highest-of-high manic energy, plenty of extended rock-outs, plenty of moshing and sweaty dancing, I haven’t had this much physical-activity fun at a show in a while. It felt like the set lasted hours, but it really was barely 40 minutes and let me tell you, it was the perfect length for a show, like when you work out and everything just feels great, that’s what this set felt like. The “we’ve got two more for you” warning came and they played about 20 more minutes, the second-to-last song being a real artillery-fire 12+ minute give-it-all-you-got’er. <gush> <gush> <gush> I loved this show, (another) one of my favorites of the year.
18Aug19
Sunday was a packed day from start to finish, midnight to midnight,
Julian Lage, Gyan Riley, Bill Frisell @ Village Vanguard
The matinee Zorn sets have proven to be some of the most special Sunday afternoons of the year in their limited run, thus far. I can only hope they continue ad infinitum. Yesterday afternoon’s set was aural ecstasy of the highest order. I mean, from the start, three of my absolute favorite guitarists playing together, it’s not often you get to see a lineup regardless of what they play. Lage and Riley have played together several times before and put out a ridiculously good record last year, so they are an established duo that have bent my reality on more than one occasion, including at a Vanguard matinee (perhaps the first one of these?) a couple years ago. For this work, John Zorn has added none other than personal lifeguru Bill Frisell to play a suite called Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi, which is inspired by some artwork and was composed for a concert at the Frick a couple years ago (that I did not see). With me so far? In the end, the details of the background of the music are not important unless you want them to be, the important thing is that three brilliant musicians, three of the greatest guitarists I have ever seen, are playing a piece of music composed by the compositional genius of our lifetime (who wrote the music for these three specifically) and it’s happening in the mecca of jazz clubs in the greatest livemusic city in the world in its golden heyday. This was all happening yesterday, by the way, why weren’t you there?
So, the music… three chairs, three masters, three acoustic guitars, three musicians who are brilliant on their own, but even better in a group, listeners and players. They are also all great improvisers, but this wasn’t about improvising. This was about executing the will of Zorn and his compositions. That’s all well and good, because it’s John Zorn we’re talking about. JZ is a great musician himself, sure,he is much more than that. Yes, he’s a great composer, but it’s more than that. Sometimes it means creating a space for improvisation and sometimes it means taking the right musicians and bringing them together and using each of them like an artist uses each different tube of paint, dabbing just the right amount of each together and mixing them together in all the infinite ways to paint the painting. That’s what those of us inside got to see and hear last night, Zorn was there, he came up at the start to introduce the band and the music and then hung out in back and watched the canvas of the Vanguard get painted for an hour by three of the brightest, most beautiful paint colors there are.
The music was beautiful and awe-inspiring, it reached out and closed your eyes so you could zone in on the details, it seeped into your ears and filled the crevices in your brain igniting synapses that filled your body with the stuff that makes you feel good. This was the kind of music that made you contemplate the instruments themselves, the pieces of wood that had been formed into the guitars, the individual strings, how the thickness and tension and material of each string, the way the atoms inside that long wire of metal or nylon hold each other in place with a certain strength and so, when plucked, by finger or plastic, they vibrate in such a way, such a way. You can hear all that in this music, written for these three acoustic guitars, and so the air is vibrating from each of them and the notes are overlapping with each other to create something even greater and it’s like, the most beautiful thing you can imagine. A few times during the set I enjoyed shaking myself out of a stupor and looking around the room, the looks no people’s faces as they listened to this music, many with eyes closed, zoned out to some euphoric plane, others with big smiles on their faces, others with the beatific eyes of true believers glinting in the darkened room, oblivious to the heat and sunshine of the city grinding on above. And while the individual personalities, the musical signatures of the three players comes through in the notes they play, it is really the whole that you hear, Zorn’s paint brush that you are listening to. Still, though, it was fun at certain moments to appreciate each of the three, Julian Lage’s entire physicality poured into each chord and note, his body rising and falling, the smile on his face going crooked at particularly challenging moments, his ears clearly zeroed in on the other two as he looked and grinned at them at times; he would occasionally come in close to the microphone on his guitar and you could hear him moan or grunt and, it was so quiet in the room otherwise, before a long or difficult stretch, you could actually hear Julian take a long breath through his nose like a trumpeter preparing for a solo by filling his lungs. Gyan Riley playing a nylon-string classical guitar seemed to be the melodic focus of much of the pieces, brilliantly fast fingers moving effortlessly over his instrument, he was masterful. Bill Frisell doesn’t play fast and furious like Riley and Lage, his style is slow and nuanced and strongly tied to an electric guitar. On the acoustic yesterday afternoon, he was able to bring that Frisell magic, nonetheless, with delicate BF flowers decorating the periphery of the canvas. Bill was clearly the “third guy” in this trio and, stating the obvious, if Bill Frisell is the third guy in your trio, your trio is pretty fucking spectacular. And pretty fucking spectacular just about sums it up. An unbelievably soul-stirring set of music, humanity’s finest I say without hyperbole.
Sam Evian @ Union Pool
The Summer Thunder series at Union Pool is winding down after a remarkably good season, but it ain’t over yet and yesterday’s show was another excellent one. We got there shortly after Brooklyn’s-own Sam Evian started, grabbed some tacos and enjoyed a great set of music. I’ve seen Evian at least one other time, opening for Cass McCombs at Murmrr a few months back, which was a very impressive set all around, so I was looking forward to this one. Cass McCombs is actually a great starting reference frame for Evian who has a very “what if Jerry Garcia was writing heady indiefolkrock in 2019” sound to his music. Every song he played was really great, his band — Evian on guitar/vocals, second guitar, bass drums — was killer, they opened up on more than one occasion into not-quite-a-jam-but-close. I always love it when someone says “we’re going to play a new one” and it’s the best song of the set which was the case yesterday. He brought up opener Hannah Cohen to sing duet on one song and just kind of sounded awesome for an hour in the great outdoor backyard spot at Union Pool for free on a warm, muggy-but-manageable Sunday afternoon. I mean, what more could you ask for? There was a nice sized crowd there and they were mostly packed in close to the stage and with good reason. Good stuff! They played Evian’s recently-release cover single of “Right Down The Line” after the set and you should check it out! They said “last NYC show of the year” or something to that effect, but when Sam Evian plays again in the area, I highly recommend checking him uot.
Ben Goldberg, Ryan Ferreira, Simon Jermyn @ Downtown Music Gallery
Between Williamsburg and the extreme Lower East Side where the Downtown Music Gallery is located, the skies opened up and it fucking poured like nothing else, but we made it inside shortly after the music started (hey, getting pretty good at this!). This was my second time checking out the free music they have most Sunday early-evenings at the DMG. This is a real-deal record store, cramped with LP’s and CD”s, mostly jazz and classical and weirdo only-in-NYC shit and that’s the kind of avant garde music you can see there if you make the trip on a Sunday. Yesterday Ben Goldberg finished up his week of shows at the Stone with this little add-on at the DMG, playing in a clarinet-guitar-guitar trio with Jermyn and Ferreira. They played two long pieces of improvisation that were both characterized by the guitars laying down some ambient atmospheric stuff, both guys using some effects and Ben soloing on top of it. Goldberg is some sort of guitar whisperer, having played with three guitarists on Thursday and then 2 on Sunday and in both cases the guitars laying low and quiet in the mix, which is, like, kind of not the obvious thing that would happen in those cases. The music was both soothing and challenging at times, ugly and beautiful. The first piece had a steady growth from very quiet and sparse to an increasingly weird and out-there space. The second piece started with Goldberg playing a little melody that honestly sounded like it could have come out of an old Broadway showtune. The guitars joined in and the melody started to disassociate until there was barely anything at all. There was a point where Ben put his horn down and the two guitarists tip-toed around with light little barely-melodies. Ferriera is someone I didn’t really know much about and now saw two times this week and am highly intrigued by… he has a very light touch with a guitar that seems to pick up on that sensitivity, creating a very pleasing tone, almost Frisell-like. I believe I’ve only seen Jermyn play bass before, but he had a good feel for shaking out the effects on the guitar, making things weird, but not too weird. It was warm and steamy in the basement space, kind of cramped, but really only like 15 people down there zoned out on the trio. The scene down there is so great, I need to get back there more often. Also note that Goldberg, Ferreira and Ches Smith are playing at Nublu Tuesday night late (11pm start).
Michael Daves, Jacob Jolliff, Alex Hargreaves, Erik Alvar @ Jalopy
Brooklyn > Manhattan > Brookylyn > Manhattan >… looks like we were headed back to Brooklyn. psychpunk > guitar bilss > folkrock > avant garde >… looks like we were due for some Americana to end the day. I knew that the Michael Daves show was sold out, but social media interactions earlier in the day led me to believe that we might be able to get into this show with at-the-door standing room tickets. When we arrived, the woman said there was one ticket left (we were two with a third en route), but if we waited until 7:45 we might be able to get in. Long story short, we hung around a bit chatting in the rain-free early-evening and right when we were like “time to go home” we checked once more and we were able to get into the show. I mean, my belly was already bursting with excellent world-class livemusic’n all day, but, like musical jello, there’s always room for bluegrass.
Thank goodness we made it in, because this was another delightful show. This was the 3rd of Daves’ 4 August Sunday shows and the lineup was a doozy, with Jolliff on mandolin, Hargreaves on fiddle and Alvar on bass. Tony Trischka was also on the bill, but he missed a flight or something and wasn’t there. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if he had been there, too, because there was so much awesome music coming from the stage, at no point was I thinking that it needed anything else (as good as TT is!). Jolliff is the mando player in Yonder Mountain these days and also does plenty of his own thing around NYC when he’s here. Hargreaves does a bunch of stuff, but I know him mostly from playing on Live From Here as he is a regular in the fiddle spot there. Alvar is not someone I was previously familiar with, but certainly belonged on the stage with these other guys, he was phenomenal. They all were.
The show was kind of like an extended version of Daves’ usual gigs, both at Rockwood (every Tuesday) and others. He played a lot of songs from his usual repertoire and added in a few other “new” ones. They’re all largely from the great American songbook, bluegrass favorites and obscurities, plenty of country tunes, and a few others that fit in. The show was roughly 1/3 instrumentals, but there was no shortage of soloing throughout from all four musicians. I mean, it was all fantastic, lots of different feels, lots of killer playing, some good banter/stories/song histories from Daves, some songs you knew, some songs you wish you had known. Two hourlong sets filled with tunes from Bill Monroe and Dolly Parton and Glen Campbell, fiery fiddle tunes, some dark and twisted stuff, some lovely gospel stuff. And the spot, that room at Jalopy, it just makes all that real-deal music, played by real-deal pickers feel absolutely real-deal’er. It’s amazing to me that that space sits where it does at the cusp of the BQE and the Battery Tunnel, somehow that’s the spot where NYC’s folk and bluegrass gravity is centered, a little wormhole into another universe. It’s truly like walking into another time and place and when you got guys like Michael Daves playing, it’s pretty magical. Great, great show and done at 10pm! Home at 11! That’s a pretty great 24 hours.
