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-sevent of hopefully 52 posts…
9Sep19
Jamie Saft’s Spheres w/ Andy Hess, Bobby Previte, Cyro Baptista, Chuck Hammer @ Nublu 151
There was a point towards the end of this Monday night’er when bassist Andy Hess turned to face drummer Bobby Previte and just played this three note bass riff, over and over and over. The rest of the band more or less had stopped playing and Previte kind of waited a few repetitions of this and then started flailing away wildly at the drums, the most intense drumming of the night. And then he stopped for a second. Hess still playing this riff over and over completely unperturbed by the drumming. Previte goes again — blammablamblam — and still, Hess keeps going, maybe adding in a 4th or 5th note, but more or less steady, steady, steady. Previte goes again and the rest of the band starts to join in as well, but Andy Hess, man, he plays almost like he’s oblivious to what’s going on with everyone else, a fucking hippopotamus on the bass guitar, giant, majestic, unflappable, totally awesome.
Anyway, that kind of sums up the whole show for me: Andy fucking Hessopatamus on the 4-string bass. If you hadn’t told me who was the leader of that band, I would have guessed Hess without a doubt, he was leading and following all at once, whether the music was funky or rocking or quiet or weird, he was the quiet/not-too-quiet guy. I spent a lot of the show listening to that guy. The whole damn rhythm section was a marvel of dynamics between Hess and Previte and, of course, Cyro Baptista… I heard a guy behind me say to his buddy “what do you think of that crazy percussionist,” and whether he was being facetious or not, whether he’d seen Cyro a thousand times or managed to avoid him until last night, the fact remains, he’s a crazy percussionist. Lately he seems to be vocalizing a bit more, whispering into the mic or chanting or using his voice as percussion and that was definitely the case last night. He had a rather restrained set of toys last night, but something I don’t think I’ve seen before was using a small plastic handheld fan and letting the blades hit the microphone to create a rather cool whirring buzz sound.
The set was basically an ad hoc jam session which hopped around in style, tempo, quality. Saft was very laid back, too laid back, I thought. He more or less let the band do what they wanted and so each of the other musicians stepped into that vacuum to push things one way or another. I have to admit I did not find Chuck Hammer to be all that interesting on the guitar, but unfortunately (for me) he was predominant throughout. So many mediocre guitar solos. The best moments were definitely when he would hang back in the mix, but he seemed relatively incapable of letting Saft take a solo without immediately hopping on top of it and soloing himself. There was a nice section towards the end, beautiful ambient groovy thing, Saft on the Rhodes, the rhythm section playing with restraint, Hammer hardly playing at all… that was the highlight of the night for me. After a few minutes of that bliss, they built back up into the jazzrock thing they’d been playing all night, more poor-man’s-Scofield and that was it for me.
Don’t get me wrong, good times, only in NYC, but…
Jim Campilongo Trio @ Rockwood 2
…on to the next one. A very short drive away, starting not long after the Saft gig was ending, and only $10 for the pleasure, I had no choice, no choice whatsoever but to check in on the Campilongo Monday night resideNYC(TM) at Rockwood. Yes, every damn Monday night you can see an amazing guitar player play with an equally amazing rhythm section, last night with Tony Scherr on bass and Josh Dion on drums (often plays with Chris Morrissey and occasionally Kenny Wolleson). In grand NYC residency fashion, there are like 10 people in the room and the music is a.may.zing. I mean, I can’t say enough about how ho-hum this city is with a bass/drum pairing like Dion/Scherr. They’re not just pretty good, they’re Tier 1 and they’re playing awesome guitar-trio music for peanuts in an empty room on a Monday night. Both sad and amazingly awesome all at once.
Campilongo is a fucking pro and not-too-shabby himself. Last night, as always, they ran the gamut, mostly covers, mostly instrumental, country, jazz, rock, funk and beyond. One illustrative stretch had Dion singing/drumming like a pro on Al Green’s “I’m A Ram” which went almost directly into a scintillating jammed-out instrumental version of “Low Rider” which was followed by a beautifully languorous cover of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.”
I can’t imagine anyone seeing the set I saw last night or the set that Jim plays every fucking week and thinking nah, that’s not for me. Great songs played by absolute best-in-class professionals, nailing every genre and style imaginable, infinitely appealing, and like, Josh Dion is a flippin’ beast and Tony Scherr is syrup-on-your-pancakes delicious… good times.
Driving home, accidents on the BQE had Googlemaps send me through Williamsburg proper and I drove right by Union Pool and I know it was just the livemusicgods taunting me, daring me not to stop by for Rev. Vince, c’mon, you know you want to, you weak-willed fool, but it was only Monday and the rest of the week beckons, so I did resist their temptation. This time. This time… not a bad Monday.
11Sep19
Two glorious sets of music in east Manhattan last night…
Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom @ Jazz Standard (early set)
There are just so many things to love about Allison Miller. She plays drums with such positive energy. She makes it look easy and she makes it look fun and that energy flows into whatever band she’s playing with. She’s a great bandleader, she attracts musicians of such a high caliber, she seems incredibly “normal” and nice, she’s the kind of musician that other musicians want to play with and the kind of musician that I regularly see at other people’s gigs… and she writes really good songs. Really good. Songs that skirt the boundary between standard jazz and decidedly non-standard jazz, songs that force the band the follow the path but also allow for plenty of straying and exploring. Generally, but in jazz particularly, I find compositions from drummers and bassists to be my favorites. Not always the case, guitarists and pianists can write good shit, too, but something about those guys and gals in the rhythm section, they have a different feel for what makes a composition work, how the pieces should fit together anf flow. I was acutely aware of Allison’s pieces as they played the set at the Standard last night. It She did a bit of an intended humblebrag at one point, joking about how she commits to a record before having any music and then just writes it all because of the deadline {proceeds to play 75 minutes of lovely/enchanting/challenging/fabulous compositions}.
Miller’s main band is Boom Tic Boom, which is centered around the songs rather than necessarily the people. Earlier this year I saw BTB with Jenny Scheinman on violin, Todd Sickafoose on bass and Carmen Staaf on piano. Last night was no violin, Myra Melford on piano, the young Nick Dunston on bass and then a similar horn section to last time: Kirk Knuffke on koronet and Ben Goldberg on clarinets. The band was freakin’ awesome last night. Not only were they able to navigate all of Miller’s songs wonderfully, they were incredibly dynamic in doing so, very agile and flexible. At times they felt like a big band with the bombast of horns and a blast of a rhythm section, other times they’d have the complicated interplay of a small jazz ensemble. I’m not going to say that all 5! possible combinations of musicians happened during the set, but they did shrink and grow in different combinations of duos or trios and also had a guest sax player come sit in to push things to 6. Along with these different sizes and different configurations came different sounds and vibes. There were moments when the two horn players stepped off the stage and yet Knuffke would do some comping from offstage which gave another feel to the room. The range of sounds in the band, coronet & clarinet and whatever that big contralto clarinet-thing that Goldberg played from time to time, really help the music sing in so many different ways.
They played mostly music from Miller’s latest album providing too many great moments to recount fully. Everyone was super impressive. I was particularly struck with Melford’s playing. There were a few moments where things pared down to just Melford, Dunston and Miller, a straight-up piano trio, playing anything but straight-up piano trio sounds. There was something magical, ephemeral about Melford’s playing, it wasn’t soloing on top of a rhythm section, it was more like the three musicians were floating together, a single ripple of air through the room. Incredibly beautiful, moving stuff.
The world needs more Allison Millers in it, that’s for sure.
Landlady @ Nublu 151
About 6 years ago I caught this band Landlady, opening for Sam Cohen’s Yellowbirds at Mercury Lounge and I’ve been smitten with this “main band” of Adam Schatz’s ever since. Last night I caught my 7th Landlady show and must say they were as good as ever. I’ve written plenty about the polymathic Schatz and Landlady and his unappreciated genius. Every Landlady show is a snowflake, perfectly unique in its crystallinity, somehow just plain old water, but also something with a twist of otherworldly magic, a melt-on-your-tongue jot of infinite possibilities.
Last night was the first of three “residency” shows, with two more Wednesdays left at Nublu. I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend checking one of them out. The crowd last night was a healthy more-than-half full, many clearly know-the-words diehards happy for a rare Landlady show as I was. Schatz alluded to recent rehearsals with the band for these gigs and I know they were recently in the studio and let me tell you, it showed. The band was crisp. The show last night was like biting into a piece of fruit at peak ripeness, depths of flavor and satisfying juiciness, you want it to last longer, but can’t help to shove the whole thing in your mouth in one bite. They played a bunch of new songs, presumably for the first time mixed in with a bunch of songs off their last album, except the “old” songs were almost all reimagined or reworked in excellent fashion so that they felt like new songs, too. It felt like two new albums worth of material dropped in 75 minutes worth of tough-to-describe/easy-to-love artrock groove. Schatz on keys and lead vocals (and occasional saxophone) is certainly the ringleader and artistic genius behind Landlady, but it’s not called “Adam Schatz” it’s called “Landlady” and as much as I’ve seen them, the rest of the quartet — Will Graefe on guitar, Ian Davis on bass and Ian Chang on drums (are there really two Ian’s in this band? — were just as central to the music last night. The bass was popping like Paul McCartney’s best work after downing a dozen pixie sticks. The tone on the bass was about as perfect as you could imagine for this kind of indie dance weirdo awesome shit, and Davis was often the melodic focus. Ian Chang brought to mind the great artrock drumming of John McEntire’s work with Sea and Cake, all over the place, completely in control, overly complex in the best way possible, but somehow funky enough to make dancing the only option. This is not a guitar-solo band, but Graefe is also more than a rhythm player, often doubling-up with the vocals or the keys or the bass (or even the drums) to break through for another dimension to the sound. Good lord, they sounded so good.
The new shit was mostly great. If I had to characterize it with a general, overly simplistic single thought it was that the new stuff was ambitious in its scope with multiple sections, so many of them had me wondering “is this the same song or a new one” and frankly I’m still not sure for a couple of them. I loved them all. Guessing at titles, some favorites from what I remember, I think one was “Tooth and Nail” that had a sweet, quiet first half and then an almost krautrock instrumental section/jam in the second half where the whole group settled into a punchy, awesome major-key groove. That was awesome. The following song I would guess was “Supernova” which was just a great Landlady song, fitting in with their existing catalog perfectly, that unique Schatz sound with flavors of Talking Heads groove and David Bowie glamweird and something distinctly modern and pure Schatz that is unlike anyone else making music and, for me, utterly addictive. This show could have been 3 times as long and I would have been happy to listen to these guys play whatever. From their last album they did great versions of “Electric Abdomen” and “Nina” and several others, sometimes almost unrecognizable in the ways they had been reworked, the band playing with supreme confidence as they played them. Everything they did was killer, I thought.
Adam has too much energy to just put on a simple show. He curates a live experience, whether it be in the billing or with guests or other special twists. For the residency he has not only opening bands — last night’s was called The Burnt Ends, they played a kind of swing jazz thing, featuring, who else, but Adam Schatz on saxophone and a bunch of other I-know-I’ve-seen-that-guy-before players in the band — but also a “house pianist” which was just about the coolest thing ever. Basically in between sets in lieu of a DJ, he has a guy just playing piano like you’re in a classy lounge. Last night he had Frank Locrasto who I just recently saw play with Dan Iead at Union Pool a few weeks back. He was fantastic on the Rhodes playing loungey covers between sets. Finally, there were indeed some guests as during the last song, the band built to a major wall-of-sound crescendo and then from the back of Nublu, behind the stage, these two guys playing trumpet appear and walk through to the front of the stage, Schatz hopping down with his saxophone for a rather awesome horn-heavy climax to end a rather stunning Landlady show.
I am really hopeful I’ll get back to at least one more of these. I cannot recommend hitting one of these. Adam Schatz is what’s good about music and NYC livemusic and you should get to know him a little, I promise he will deliver.
12Sep19
guitar body/upper-cut combo last night knocked me out cold…
Ryley Walker/David Grubbs (Eli Winter opened) @ Trans-Pecos
When I heard Ryley Walker was moving to Brooklyn, I imagined a dream scenario where his gigs in town proliferated like proverbial rabbits left to their own conjugal devices, a trove of opportunities of every shape and size. Well, however many months later, it struck me last night that the dream is a reality. It seems like we’re averaging about a Ryley Walker gig every couple weeks, not just “gigs” but different experiments, Brooklyn and Manhattan venues becoming petri dishes for odd combinations of collaborators for Ryley’s diverse talents: solo, duo, trio shows, sit-ins, acoustic, electric, song-centric sets with ridiculous banter in between each song, extended freeform jamming without a peep and all gradient shades in between. Tough to appreciate them all when there are so many shows, but it’s always a great idea to catch a Ryley Walker show and last night was absolutely a perfect example.
The set last night was a duet with guitarist David Grubbs. Both played electric guitar. The set was one long improvisation, about 40 minutes. It’s hard to remain compelling for 40 minutes when you’re just “making shit up,” but this was a rather epic journey that never seemed to falter or wander too far into inaccessibility. Which is to say it was very good. If you are unfamiliar with Trans Pecos, it kind of has this living room feel with kind of nice hardwood floors, large windows, some booth seating around the perimeter of an empty floor and a houseplant aesethetic, with plants on stage and hanging from the ceiling to give it a very homey, natural vibe. It’s rather nice for a “DIY” venue that’s kind of out of the way (for some) in Ridgewood. It sounds great, you can see from everywhere and almost every time I’ve been there it’s just felt like a right fit for the music and the crowd, whether a sell out or a show attended by less than 10 people. Last night was sort of in-between, a comfortable sized crowd, many of whom opted to sit on the floor, some happy to stand in the back. This was more of a performance than a show, a crowd of 50 or so people getting a chance to watch two mutually admiring guitarists just figure shit out on the fly. For large portions of the first half of the set, Walker was creating space for Grubbs to riff on. What is the style they were playing? Sorta not rock, sorta not jazz, sorta not anything Americana… it was just guitar music, relaxed and spontaneous both. As it went on, the music shifted back and forth between the two, an easygoing musical conversation that found some louder rock-out peaks and plenty of soothing stretches as well. It was a perfect should-I-stand-up/should-I-sit-down middle ground with a not-too-full/not-too-empty room, not quite in Brooklyn, but not really in Queens either. Goldilocks guitar in the best way.
The opener was Eli Winter who played solo acoustic guitar. The opening piece started as a single chord played dozens of time, up and then down, then a second chord, and then a long meandering piece, an instrumental river flowing down a mountain, a light trickle at some points, a rush of music at others. Very meditative headspace music. I think that first piece was like 25 minutes long and when he put his guitar down, I thought that was going to be it. There was some discussion before the set about what the perfect length of music is and obviously it changes with the artist and the style, but I was wondering to myself at that point whether that half-hour was the perfect length of Eli Winter who just oozed a rather gorgeous stream of guitar into the room. But he picked up an electric and played another shorter piece that was more raga-ish, a bit of Steve Gunn in it and then a third and final piece back on the acoustic that felt more composed and melodic. All 3 were excellent. Definitely will be checking out more of Winter’s music.
Wayne Krantz, Ari Hoenig, Evan Marien @ 55 Bar (late set)
It wasn’t a quick ride over to the West Village at that point, but it was a necessary one, and however long it took me to get to 55 Bar was the perfect length, because I walked in right as the music started. It seems like that once-reliable 11:45 start time has crept back closer to 11:30 on some nights, please note… it feels like those extended hour-plus sets were just a phase and Wayne is able to get things done in a perfect-set-length 45 minutes. Hoenig & Marien is a monster backing band, each A++ Krantzians and maaaaan, was the trio feeling it last night. Again, at some point between winter and fall he’s rather eschewed the lengthy jams in favor of tighter focused improvisation and as much as we love things to go long, I think the music is even better now, slowly, slowly, slowly approaching perfect. And so, the trio seemed to create little nanojams inside the song structure, miniature big bangs quickly expanding to contain all the cosmos, wormholing to parallel realities and then disappearing just as quickly. Ari Hoenig changing his rhythm for a measure or two, the profundity of such a shift, ripples to the other two musicians who acknowledge in their playing and then return to steady state (and what a steady state it is) all happening so fast and all happening so often that maybe that it is the steady state… good lord, to see it, to hear it, to appreciate it and still, to dance to it. Holy shit, broke my brain. All three fellows were the man last night, all three leading the charge, somehow at odds with one another for 45 minutes straight and yet in complete synch. That’s the beautiful conundrum of Krantz Thursdays.
The late set crowd perfectly traced the outline of the music. I was sitting at the business end of the bar, right in front of the band, but also a vantage of the rest of the room, the ability to react and watch reactions at the same time. The best seat in the house. The guy in the front table was the focus of the room, I’ve never seen a guy airdrum/seatdance like this guy was. He was losing his marbles right in front of Wayne, the entire fucking set. Banging away at imaginary toms in the sky, arms above his head like an Olympic medalist, the biggest, goofiest, just-saw-God look on his face. I loved this guy. I have never seen him at a WK show before, I’m sure I would have remembered, I wonder if it was his first Krantzing? Was it you? I loved that guy. But there were plenty of other highlights in the audience, a half-filled 55 Bar, again, the perfect crowd at the perfect point in the week, the moment when Thursday turns to Friday. The weekend is birthed at 55 Bar on a weekly basis.
That guy who was one table over whose face lit up when the band would drop out of jazzfusion fantasy and drop a riff on the room. Back In Black.. fuck yeah! Another One Bites the Dust… WHOO! U Can’t Touch This… R U kidding me?! That these are the landing points for the improv last night, three guys in absolute facemelting harmony is the beauty and the irony. To watch musicians transformed under the spell of the room and the music and Wayne, his take on these songs. I listened to a recent release from Evan Marien. It’s decent, a lot of dance music, not particularly my cup of tea, but… fine. You listen to this thing and then you go see him play with Wayne and it’s like someone pissed him off and he’s now the incredible fucking Hulk. Holy shit was Evan Marien playing a fucking bass last night. Like you would’t believe. You really should’ve been there, pure funkified filth. Everything Andy Hess was on Monday, Evan Marien was that distilled to maximum potency. Damn, I saw some good bass playing in just the past 4 nights, but this was on another level.
They closed out with the strongest stretch of the night, building strength with each song. There were moments of pure jamtronic ridiculousness and a lot more heavy blues influence to the sound than you usually hear Thursday nights at 55. That “Another One Bites the Dust” had a long intro of epic three-man jamming, a convoluted game of musical leapfrog so that by the time they reached the actual song, dropping into that powerfunk riff, it was an earned moment, the room tilting slightly to accommodate everyone being pushed back in their chairs. Whoah! Then immediately dipping into another thrill-ride jam, the band slowing down, stretching time like taffy, or maybe it was just the audience that was moving and the band was actually not moving at all? Ridiculous shit.
Wayne called for “Manic” to end the set, then quickly decided to do one more, a “quick” version of U Can’t Touch This that went 8 minutes long in guitar-bass-drum bliss. It was definitely Friday at that point, the Manic Depression that ended it felt like it was 15 minutes long there was so much to ponder within, but it was less than 5. The best way to end a night because that’s how Wayne ends his nights and he’s the fucking best. Will be missing next week, alas… you should go.
14Sep19 Brandi Carlile (Mavis Staples opened) @ Madison Square Garden
My Bowery Presents review for this show is here and I think you should read it because it covers some of my thoughts on this show. But I wrote that Sunday morning and like a good beef stew, this show has been marinating in its own juices in my mind, the flavors getting stronger in my memory, and I’ve come to find more and more to love about it. That show was one hearty stew. This show was announced long ago and even many months ago, there were several good options on the calendar for 9/14, I didn’t even strongly consider hitting this one. Then I hit Newport Folk Festival. If you read my review of Newport or follow me on Twitter, I think it was clear that I came to have a heightened appreciation for Brandi Carlile, not just musically, but also her personality and, most of all her energy. She’s a force of nature, utterly transcendent the way the lucky few musicians are. When I got home from Newport, there was no doubt, no fucking doubt, that I was hitting this show. And not a doubt in the world that it was going to be something special. I was not wrong about that at all. It’s really something to see big acts in small rooms, to see them before they were somebodies or after they were somebodies in an underplay. I love that, you love that, it’s something you never forget. But there’s something equally as special, maybe more so, to see an artist at the top of their game, hit the biggest stage in the world and fucking deliver like nothing else. The show Saturday night was more than just a concert, it was more than just an arrival, it was its own thing. Transcendent. Two hours straight, hitting all the right beats at all the right time, Carlile utterly appreciative and contemplative and aware of the moment in ways few artists are, and the audience, an enthusiastic “soft” sell-out, aware of her being aware and aware of the moment and basically 15K people having a shared experience. I don’t want to say “that’s what it’s all about” because there are lots of things that are “what it’s all about,” but that two hour stretch of livemusic focused on, more or less, on a single person, and that person rising to the occasion with complete and heartfelt self-awareness, that person breaking down in tears on stage in front of that crowd and then going on to put on a ridiculously good show that stretched from solo acoustic beauty to full-band rock-out… definitely a show of the year candidate for me. Holy shit, that was good.
But read the full review for more details, please, I think it came out pretty good.
15Sep19 Hope Debates & North Forty @ Skinny Dennis
The resideNYC gang hit Skinny Dennis yesterday afternoon for great hangs and some cool country/rock covers from Hope Debates. Decent bar band with some interesting cover choices, some done straight up, some countrified versions of songs. Always happy to see a pedal steel played well, and you can’t beat the vibe at Skinny Dennis.
