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-ninth of hopefully 52 posts…
25Sep19 Michael Kiwanuka @ Brooklyn Steel
I’ve been a fan of Michael Kiwanuka’s for several years, since first I heard that voice; his albums are so great, familiar yet fresh and new. So when he played Newport a couple years ago, I was ecstatic for the chance to see him live, but like so many artists over the years, especially at Newport, I was ill prepared for how good it was.
Here’s what I wrote in my review at the time:
It’s not surprising that he was good, I’ve loved him since I first heard him a few years back, but somehow I was not prepared for what he was going to sound like live. I mean, he really knocked me over. There weren’t a lot of out-of-nowhere discoveries for me at Newport like there have been in the past, but this set from Kiwanuka was enough of a blew-me-away affair to make up for that. I wasn’t prepared for his band, it was as if Pink Floyd was backing Curtis Mayfield or Bill Withers, a mix of funky soul and bluesy psychedelic, occasionally opening things up, not quite jamming, but finding a loose pocket and letting things linger there for a while. Just wow! The kind of set that makes me regret any time I could have seen him and didn’t in the past. Mistake I won’t be making again.
So I was very excited when they announced he was playing Brooklyn Steel and managed to stick to my plan as more and more shows got announced for that Wednesday night. And, damn, am I glad I did. Even being more prepared this time, he bowled me over with his songs and rock and soul and groove an that fucking voice. It was another wow show in a year full of them.
Here’s my full review which I think you should read. (and stay for the fantastic Marc Millman photos).
27Sep19 Daniel Norgren (Jake Xerxes Fussell opened) @ MHOW
Despite there being no obvious connection to the two, the show I caught Friday night ended up feeling very much a “preshow” for my Saturday of livemusic, which I’ll get to. Friday was Daniel Norgren, a Swedish musician I discovered at Newport last summer. And while my Newport discoveries have a tremendous track record in terms of personal staying power, that next gig, the one where you’re not distracted with festival ADD, that headliner show when you get the full dose, that’s the one that really counts. So, I was looking forward to getting that bow out of my quiver and the fact that Jake Xerxes Fussell was opening was icing on the folkified cake.
This was my like 6th time seeing Fussell and maybe my 3rd time this year. I’ve seen him play in to a loud cramped front bar at Sunny’s, I’ve seen him play in a church at the Brooklyn Folk Festival this winter, I’ve seen him play Union Pool (probably the exactly right room for him), I’ve seen him play in a mostly empty Beacon Theatre (opening for Wilco) and Friday night I saw him play at a Music Hall of Williamsburg that started off painfully empty and was more or less 1/2–3/4 full by the end of his set. And no matter the place or the crowd size, whether it’s an audience there early enough for the opener, or there to see Jake, he just does his thing more or less the same and, inevitably, every single person in the room responds to the music. It’s hard not to connect to this guy. I’ve written aplenty about his approach and his sound, he doesn’t write music, he channels it from other eras. He finds old folk and country songs, not the ones everyone knows, the ones that no one knows, the forgotten ones, and makes them his own, makes them wonderfully his own. He’s like the guy who goes to the yard sale and finds some antique gem at the bottom of an old cardboard box and polishes it up and finds the beauty in it, makes it his own. That’s his artform. He’s like an antiques roadshow dude for folk music. Watching some of the Ken Burns documentary on country music made me appreciate his sound and approach even more. He’s somehow in that shit but very much here with us now. Also, he’s a fantastic musician, his voice is another one of those antiques, like he found it in the box as well and made it his own, and he’s a surprisingly great guitarist. It’s hard not to love this guy. He played a lot of the favorites off his 3 must-hear records, definitely won the crowd over and stayed firmly on my must-see list. His next NYC appearance is opening for Joan Shelley at Park Church Co-op in what should be an amazing night of folk music on an admittedly busy night in November, but you should absolutely go to this one. I can’t wait.
Norgren came out right about 9pm with his band and sat down at the piano and led the way through a song that lasted about 12 minutes. That’s the first surprising thing about Norgren, on the records, his music is contained in these nice little songs, these great songs, perfect bits of folk-rock, reminiscent of Neil Young or the Band or the more Americana side of the Grateful Dead. Live, he very much lets the songs breathe and stretch and evolve. The second surprising thing about Norgren is he’s tall as fuck. Sitting at the piano, his knees nearly crested the level of the keys themselves, standing at the microphone playing guitar, he seemed almost unnaturally large. We were right up front and it, ahem, heightened the experience, his microphone stand seemed adjusted to its limits, a skyscraper of metal jutting into the sky above. His band consisted of another guitarist, bass (interestingly, the bassist played upright 100% of the time) and drums and his monitor/tech guy came out and played tambourine/percussion on a couple tunes. They freakin’ rocked. There was this Crazy Horse feel to the way they just sat on a riff or a groove and let it go, go, go. Except Crazy Horse does this with the knobs and the energy cranked to level 10, Norgren and his band kind of keep it laid back at maybe a 4. It’s kind of fascinating in that way, the ability to let things wander and meander and maybe/sorta jammed out, but to keep it at such a chill spot. Early in the set, he said, in that Swedish accent, “we’re feeling the vibe. I know it’s ‘vibe,’ but we say ‘wibe’.” I think I may have to use the wibe pronunciation to emphasize an incredibly laid back vibe.
I couldn’t tell you the setlist and I’m sure it wouldn’t matter to you. I’m sure this is the first time most people reading this have heard of Daniel Norgren, I mean, I didn’t even try to convince anyone to hit this show, but it’s too bad, because it was phenomenal, starting with that 12 minute opener and just getting better from there. The room was maybe half to three-quarters full and a decent number of the attendees were quite obviously Swedish either by look or the fact that they were speaking Swedish to each other. I do love how international acts will draw out their local NYC populations at shows like this, makes feel like a weird kind of interloper and also like a small chunk of Williamsburg has been transported to, in this case, Stockholm, or something. The wibe was such that when the band finally completely exploded in a moment of drummer-go-nuts energy, it felt so invigorating and earned and special, much more so than if they’d been at that level the whole night. I do remember one of the better, more exploratory songs was called “Musical Tape,” I think, a song with lots of verses that opened up into a full-band romp that had shades of a Bird Song jam or something. By the end of the show, my best comparison for Norgren was a Swedish Jonathan Wilson, who always seems to surprise as well, with his ability to mix great songwriting with a propensity to let loose, backed by a killer band.
Great, great show. Missed plenty of other music to catch this one Friday night, but absolutely zero regrets.
28Sep19 Woodsist Festival
As I mentioned, the MHOW show Friday felt like a perfect lead in for our upstate adventure Saturday heading to the Woodsist Festival. The whole festival was an experiment in serious wibe. There’s no way you could describe the day in Accord, NY and not use the word “chill.” It took us a little longer to get to the spot, a brewery a bit outside New Paltz, but once we got to the spot, tucked away largely from civilization, a nice winding drive through the woods, it was easy in, easy park (free with a full car), 2 minutes through the gate and we were throwing down our chairs on a lawn and listening to the beginning of the opening act Anna St. Louis. The fest grounds was basically a large lawn, some food trucks where you walked in, a couple main brewery spots for grabbing beers, some port-o-lets in the back and then two stages next to each other, one main stage that looked to be a permanent part of the grounds and an auxiliary one that was more or less in a modified camper opened on one side. There were maximum 1000 people there, a “sold out” crowd that had obviously been tailored in size for ease and comfort. The distribution of people was tight, I’m guessing 90% of the people there were between 35 and 45 years old, many with young (preschool) age kids. The weather was a pristine mostly sunny and high 70's/low 80’s, occasional light breeze. You could not have asked for a better scene, assuming you like the music, and even if not, I can’t imagine anyone being there that didn’t have a reason to be smiling the entire time. Serious fucking wibe. The wibiest.
Woodsist is put on by the Woodsist label which is an offshoot of the band Woods. I’m thinking everyone who’s on that label played at the festival plus a few others. Not only that, but everyone who played was more or less friends and/or collaborators of like everyone else there, so in best-fest fashion, there was a ton of interplay. I’d say a healthy majority of musicians played in at least 2 sets with a few — Kevin Morby, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Alex Bleeker — appearing in 3 or more. The music alternated between each stage with no break in between, so it was bang, bang, bang sets of music, but really “bang” is too harsh a word for anything that went on up in Accord Saturday, it was more a light bubble pop, pop, pop, one set after another.
For the record, the acts, in order, were Anna St. Louis, Hand Habits, Wet Tuna, Kevin Morby, Bonny Doon, Woods, Little Wings, Real Estate, Waxahatchee, Whitney. I won’t go into detail of each set, but as I mentioned, it was a very friendly line-up, everyone loved everyone else, everyone played with everyone else. Not only did the bands share members and a label, but, in a way, they also shared a sound. If you imagine most music festivals as going to a modern art museum where you get to see oil paintings and landscapes and sculptures and weird installations and photography and like a little bit of everything, well, this festival wasn’t like that. This was like going to an art gallery that has one kind of art, like a portrait gallery or a sculpture garden. And what is that sound that these artists all share? Well, for one, they all have a deeply chill vibe. Wibe for days. But more than that, these are all artists that start with great songwriting. The song is key. Ironically, a lot of these bands that played have the ability to jam in some way, to rock out and/or improvise the way you might find bands at a jam festival would. Even more ironically, is that a lot of these musicians are big Deadheads and Phish fans (the festival t-shirt and stickers had a Woods-logo Steal Your Face on it). But these are not jamming bands, well except for Wet Tuna which definitely had some spacey psych sweetness going on, if not with an extremely laid back energy. This whole song-first, free-in-spirit-but-rarely-in-practice is a definite mood that pervaded the festival, in a very, very good way. It made the moments of “jamming” feel that much more special and also heightened the power of truly great songsmanship.
Another thing I loved about the festival, and there were many, many things to love, was how the order of events was in no way a little font > headliner-big-font thing. Sure, Real Estate and Whitney play big rooms, Terminal 5 was where I saw Real Estate last and Whitney is playing two shows at Brooklyn Steel this week. But I think for many of the people who drove up to this, who helped sell it out, were equally or more excited to see Kevin Morby and, for me especially, Woods, who haven’t played a gig in a couple years and ain’t that a shame, and having those two acts play the middle slots on the main stage was pretty cool, I thought. I mean, if I’m being honest, every act absolutely crushed their set, every single one was fantastic and the flow of the day was idyllic in all ways.
If you love Kevin Morby as much as I do, you were in luck. His songs and his voice and his energy were all over this festival. He played his own set, which was a duo set with Cochemea Gastelum on sax and flute, he played the entire set with Woods on bass (he was originally the bassist in Woods), he sat in with his “better half” Waxahatchee and he played one of his own songs with Whitney. Pretty great. The Morby set was similar to the one he played in Jersey City, except the latter parts of it he was joined by Meg Duffy and Jeremy and Jarvis from Woods for a full-band treatment of “Harlem River” (sick!). They ended, of course, with “Beautiful Strangers,” with Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) as well, sharing vocal duties. I’ve seen Morby a bunch of times, this was the 3rd time this year alone, and I think he’s always played this song and why wouldn’t he, it’s truly one of the all-time great songs. It was written after the Paris rock club shooting, and it’s about that, but it’s about so much more. It seems to come to me with new meaning and relevance every time I hear it, and every time I’ve heard it it’s been different in some way. It’s never failed to completely melt my soul, just reduce everything inside me to a puddle of whatever it is that comes out of you when you cry. Was Saturday’s the best ever? Who knows, but it was something special. The whole set was. So many sets of music, you’re lucky to get the chills maybe once. When Morby played this one, I had chills the entire time, it was more noteworthy when I didn’t. It was inside out in the best way possible. That’s sort of the way I felt about this whole festival, inside out from all other music festivals, in the most meaningful, soul-inspiring ways.
I fucking love Woods. So great to see them. So great to see them with Morby. They played an old school set so not only were they playing for the first time in a while, they were playing so many songs that I’ve either never seen or haven’t seen in quite a while. Stuff off “Sun and Shade” and “Bend Beyond” and I’m not sure much that came out later than those two. They opened with a long, instrumental thing. Was it a jam? Who cares what you call it, it was awesome. It was a mood. It was wibe with no lyrics, just a long 10 minutes of laid back, groovy, winding chugging-along. Glorious, glorious shit. I had such a smile on my face and bounce in my body during that opening jam, absolutely buoyant. The Woods setlist is here, if you’re curious. Loved hearing “Pushing Onlys” and “Bend Beyond,” but the whole thing was very special. Very happy-I-didn’t-talk-myself-out-of-driving-up-for-this. They closed the set with three covers, first playing Graham Nash’s “Military Madness” which sounded great for this band. Then they did two David Berman songs, “All My Happiness is Gone” off the Purple Mountains album with Kyle Field from Little Wings singing very nicely and very powerfully, Anna St. Louis singing backup; then they closed with Morby singing the Silver Jews song “Random Rules,” again, very nice.
Bonny Doon was great, Alex Bleeker played bass with them and they just fit in perfectly with everyone else. That band backed Crutchfield for her Waxahatchee set which had some new songs (all great) and a Lucinda Williams cover “Fruits of My Labor” which I’d seen her do before, but this with Meg Duffy providing some great guitar. Morby also came out and sang with Crutchfield as mentioned. Duffy also deserves mention, because she is such a phenomenal guitar player, but also she somehow masks it in a very nakedly emotional sound. Her set was early in the day and was so incredibly, beautifully mellow, I found myself happily dozing off a few times in the middle.
The final two sets on the main stage were both great. Real Estate is the type of band that kind of sneaks up on you. In that way, they fit in with the rest of the Saturday acts perfectly. And then they’re there playing in front of you and, holy shit, I forgot how good these guys are!! Sofuckinggood. They were clearly having a lot of fun up there. They very much sound like they could drop into a 15-minute Dead jam at any moment, and yet they don’t, they keep it in the frame of their songs and their songs are so damn good that you don’t mind in the least. The night ended with Whitney playing and while they kind of “stood out” the most in terms of “do they really fit in here?” they absolutely were a great choice to end the night. Another sneak-up-on-you kind of band, because damn, they are good. Super groovy, while still pretty chill. The drummer is the frontman, which comes out a little weird when you see them (the drums are basically front and center), but it somehow works. I thought it was super cool when they brought Morby & Duffy out to play and then played Morby’s “I Have Been to the Mountain.” Superfuckingcool. I actually have a ton of respect for a band that recognizes the songwriting genius of Kevin Morby and says, you know what, we’re going to learn one of your songs, even if you had your own slot today, this festival would be better by hearing one more of them. And damn, they played a serious version of this one, totally killed it.
We ducked out a little early to get back on the road home, completely satiated with great music, good food (the food was pretty darn great, although they ran out towards the end (and they needed 5–10 more toilets, otherwise a perfect scene)), great people and some amazing wibe.
