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 fortieth of hopefully 52 posts…
0Sep19 Aldous Harding (Tiny Ruins opened) @ MHOW
I think I need to set my expectations higher because they keep getting blown away, nearly every show I’ve seen recently. Last night caught Aldous Harding, who has a rather awesome new album out if you haven’t heard it. Opening the show was Tiny Ruins who has an album out that’s so good, she just rereleased it with solo acoustic versions last week. That’s the way she played last night, just solo acoustic and it was quite lovely/exquisite/awesome. The Aldous Harding set, though, was whoah. Alternated between extreme, quiet beauty and funky progfolkgroove things, great band backing her, but really it was all about Harding who was magnetic and weird and funny in an understated way. I kept looking at her thinking it was some weird female bug-eyed manifestation of Bob Dylan or something, a winking jester. The guy behind me kept laughing and I couldn’t tell if it was because he found her hilarious (she was, but in a very understated way) or because he thought it was so good he just laughed, as we do (it was that good).
Both acts were from New Zealand and clicked together real nicely.
My full review of the show is here. And if you don’t read it, know that the way she used her eyes to portray the emotion of the music and her humor and to connect with the audience, sometimes rolling them back into her head in a trancelike channeling-the-music way, sometimes staring at people in the audience, sometimes squinting, sometimes fluttering, the way she did that was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in a musician. If you were in that room and not just staring back into those eyes, I don’t know what you were doing at the show.
I was looking forward to this one, but in like 70 minutes she blew me away. Wow.
2Oct19
Been a while since I squeezed three shows in a night, but…
Brian Marsella’s Gatos do Sul @ The Stone
As I’ve reiterated many times before, sometimes it’s nice to just go to the Stone because, yeah, sure you know a few of the musicians playing, but have no idea what the music is going to be like. Such was the case last night for this Wednesday night of Brian Marsella’s residency at the Stone. The names on the show listing for a band called Gatos do Sul included Cyro Baptista, Tim Keiper, Mark Feldman and Jon Irabagon, all people I’ev seen before, as well as a couple I didn’t know. What could be bad?
I got to the Stone a smidge after they had started playing, sort of surprised to find the room practically full. I walked to the guy at the door and went to hand him a $20 for the admission and he kind of shook his head and said something to me. In my mind I made an assumption and thought he was saying something like “sold out,” and I prepared to argue that there were several empty seats left, but then I quickly realized he was saying that tonight’s show was sponsored by the New School and… was free! I’ve been to many shows at the Stone and never done seen nothing for free there, what a score that was! (and explained why the room was packed, how did all those people know and not me, I wonder?). I found my seat, twenty dollars richer and dug into the music…
They were mid-swing in a serious Latin jazz thing. Probably the most straightforward “jazz” music I’ve seen at the Stone. I noticed that it was not Tim Keiper on drums (I have a feeling he was playing on Broadway last night and most nights this month, because I’m pretty sure he is playing in David Byrne’s band), but instead Kenny Grohowski, who is someone I’ve seen a bunch, but always in a loud-as-fuck, I-will-punish-these-drums kind of thing. He’s an intense drummer and I think last night was the first time I saw him do a more jazz/laid back thing. The guy is a pretty fluid player and has a lot more swing than I would have guessed. Matched with Cyro, they were a formidable rhythm section, really the focus of the music.
I think my late arrival caused me to miss an introduction, but I gathered that the band is sort of Marsella’s Brazilian jazz group. Strongly influenced by familiar rhythms and sound, but, of course, with Marsella’s freewheeling spirit infused throughout. I kind of thought of it as Brian’s loveletter to Baptista, but I don’t even think Cyro was the original percussionist in this band (an earlier listing had Rich Stein on percussion. Regardless, I will take any band with Marsella in one corner and Baptista in the other, those two guys have really developed some serious chemistry, both personal friendship and musical kinsmanship, over the past several years… Marsella’s Saturday night show is a duo with Cyro which should be good.
The set was a delight, with the music getting increasingly more interesting as it went on. The band mostly read from sheet music, Marsella’s compositions being the focus more than any one musician. There were plenty of solos, Itai Kriss on flute, Feldman on violin and Irabagon on saxophone (alto and soprano as well as clarinet) that were all good. The most interesting stuff was when Marsella’s pieces would find the horns and violins all knotted up with each other. There were a couple songs where Irabagon was on soprano and the mix of that with the violin and flute was quite nice. Mark Feldman is a fucking boss on the violin, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him play standing up before, but he took a few awesome solos and the flute really added this Herbie Mann vibe to everything, in a good way. Really enjoyable show that was surprisingly light on piano solos. At the end, the older gentleman next to me asked me who the pianist was… you know, the guy leading the whole show, introducing the songs that he wrote, etc.? That was pure NYC livemusic right there, dude checking out a wonderful free show having no idea who he was seeing.
DMBQ @ Union Pool
Headed to Brooklyn for a band described as Japanese psych-rock. They’re opening a bunch of Ty Segall shows, but this was a night off for them, so they played a gig at Union Pool last night. Sunwatchers opened, but I missed that. Again, I had no fucking clue what to expect. They were still setting up when I got there, so had to hang out a little bit. When they were almost done the guitarist played a chord and it was was loud. Really loud. Really, really fucking loud. Glad I had earplugs in my pocket, I couldn’t get them in fast enough. Holy crap that was loud.
And the set was, unsurprisingly, loudasfuck. In a good way, but damn, anyone in that room that didn’t have earplugs in is nutso. DMBQ is a trio, guitar bass drums and the music was purely physical. Wild maniac drumming (drummer wore no shirt, natch!), little woman playing a Fender bass that was probably just as tall as she was — she looked pretty unperturbed while playing, but the sounds she was making filled the room, you felt it more than you heard it, and a guitarist who executed his first high-kick within 10 seconds of the first song — fuck yeah!! — and was an absolute 11-is-one-higher-than-ten monster shredder. The guitarist was all over the place on stage, writhing and, for some reason that maybe doesn’t translate from Japanese to English, was occasionally making himself drool large gobs of saliva onto the stage. This was headbangers delight, like taking in a show from inside a speaker cabinet, wind past the ears, pant-legs-are-vibrating, rock and roll, songs sung/screamed in Japanese that lasted 10 minutes a pop. Room was about 1/3 full, serious fun. Glad I stopped by to check ’em out. If you’re going to Ty Segall, interested to see how they fill a larger room.
Megg Farrell @ Skinny Dennis
I left Union Pool a little early and walked down Metropolitan to Skinny Dennis which was relatively empty, mostly middle-aged dudes/bros. Again, I managed to get there between sets, but pretty easy hang waiting for the show to start. My impression that this was the 3rd set of 3. I’ve really enjoyed Megg Farrell’s album that came out earlier this year and know she plays SD once a month or so, so was glad it worked out to see her. She played a 4-string “tenor guitar,” had a bass/drum rhythm section and then 2 lead guitarists. They opened with Patsy Cline’s “Lovesick Blues” which set the tone for a set that was mostly classic country covers — a Merle Haggard tune, Why You Been Gone So Long, which I know best from Tony Rice playing it, etc. etc. — played very well. Farrell has a great voice for the material and the two guitarists each took great solos nearly every song. One guy was kind of the wow! fast picker and the other guy was more of a classic-twang kind of player, but both were great. They did at least one original and, frankly, I would have been happy with more, it was as good as the covers, the album is great, you should check it out. I find the bands at Skinny Dennis to cover a pretty wide range of awesomeness, from yeah-they’re-fine-for-a-bar-band to this-is-a-legit-band to hellllls-yeah! I’d put Farrell somewhere near the top of that range, really enjoyed it and will definitely return and be keeping my eye on her. One worth checking out, for sure…
$12 + tolls for 3 great shows on another only-in-NYC Wednesday night…
3Oct19
Sometimes you just have one of those nights, you know? Last night was one of those nights, I am still absolutely aglow from the music I took in over the course of pretty much 5 hours non-stop. I woke up this morning thinking that the three shows I saw last night were of such insanely high quality, that probably 90% of the country probably doesn’t get 3 shows that good in their town in a single year and here I took it all in in a single night, utterly dumbfounded with the ridiculousness I found at each stop. maybe even more so by the ease of access. Best city ever…
Chris Lightcap’s SuperBigmouth @ Jazz Gallery (early set)
I got a later start than I had hoped + traffic, but even though I arrived about 15 minutes after the posted set time of 7:30, I still made my way into the Jazz Gallery and into a pretty good seat with a few minutes to spare before the lights went down. Let the games begin!
,.. and where to begin with this one? I mean, let’s get this out of the way right off: holyfuckingshit!. This was a good, good, good, great fucking set of music. Let’s continue with this: Moore’s Law. You know it? The basic version states that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 1.5 years or so. Doubling the number means you can, essentially, do twice as much stuff as you could before while taking up the same amount of space, and this phenomenon has led to more or less you having a powerful computer in your pocket or on your wrist, amongst other things. More, more, faster, more, better. But it also means that you can just do more complicated things than you could do before, process things that used to be impossible. That’s sort of what SuperBigmouth is. To back up a little, this is two of Chris Lightcap’s bands — Superette and Bigmouth — that he’s more or less slapped together. He’s put twice as many musicians on stage than he would have had otherwise. But this doesn’t just mean something that’s bigger and badder, more, more, more, although it is that as well… it’s 8 amazing musicians instead of 4, it’s two drummers (Gerald Cleaver & Dan Rieser) instead of one, it’s two guitarists (Jonathan Goldberger & Curtis Hasselbring) instead of one, it’s two sax players (Chris Cheek & Tony Malaby) instead of one… it’s also, for those taking notes, Craig Taborn on piano and organ and, naturally, Chris Lightcap on bass — so yeah, it’s a big fucking band and they are bad fucking ass. Holy shit, these guys are all masters. The sound is big and ferocious. But, it’s more than that. It’s also a vision of beautiful, brain-melting complexity. Lightcap has written pieces for this group that you just couldn’t do with a smaller band and taken advantage of all those extra musical transistors to create a stunning range of genius-level interactions. So, it’s not just two guitarists playing twice as loud and twice as awesome, it’s two guitarists interacting with each other and interacting with the horns and the drums and everything else, and that holds for all the musicians. all the parts, each running their own “code” and firing music by each other at the speed of fuckingawesome.
And hey, how about a paragraph for Chris Lightcap? This all starts from his brain, obviously, he’s written some amazing music. The album comes out today and you should absolutely, positively put it high on your listening list. This music grooves and rocks and unfolds like the best mystery novel you’ve ever read, you won’t know whodunnit until the end and then you’ll want to flip back to past sections to see just how he pieced it all together. I mean, if you don’t like this music, I don’t know what to say. But, let’s be clear, Chris is an incredible bassist. Incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him when he hasn’t blown me away, I think he’s in my top 5. He’s like Chris Wood good. Last night he was mainly on electric except for one or two tunes on upright and damn, did he just crush it. I mean, I love it when bassists are the bandleaders and the composers for shit like this, but even better when they don’t give themselves a bunch of bass solos or flashy shit. Lightcap was in good balance, high in the mix, driving the train, for sure, but more like delivering these wonderful, elegant, repeating bass lines. They were both simple and complicated both, and they were the throughline for each piece, gluing occasionally disparate sections together and making them one.
The rest of the band was also fantastic. They followed the written pieces perfectly and then took the improvisational sections to so many interesting places. I don’t remember all the songs they did — one of those few nights when I wish I had been taking notes, there were so many things to remark upon, so many details, so many amazing moments — but the second or third piece was a breathtaker, starting off in a very quiet space, the band zigzagging overlapping ambient melodies on top of each other with Lightcap playing this 12-note riff that had a deceptive wrinkle in the middle, just genius shit. And then he horns dropped out and Taborn came in with his own deceptively simple/not-simple melody, so you’ve got bass and piano just churning these right-angled melodies that were so different, but absolutely snapped together perfectly, a duck or a bunny depending on what angle you looked at it… and then the guitars. Whooo, those guitars, Hasselbring flinging rhythm and JG doing this outer-space effects-laden ridiculousness. The song was like a cuddly kitty cat that you just want to pet and snuggle with and then all of the sudden it’s this ferocious beast that’s clawing your face off. In a good way, of course. The song after that was like Led Zeppelin written for double-quartet, a vision of double-drummer fuck-ya-up. The set kind of bounced around like that, it was a theme for my night, so many genres mashed together in the nuclear-fusion heat of the sun that they’re creating new elements for the periodic table. Holyfuckium is what I call it. My night was full of it and damn, did it not start off with a bang! I hold back my 5-star ratings for the very best shows and this one absolutely earned it. I would have stayed for the late set, even when CL said it would be a lot of the same songs (“but probably played very differently”), but instead jetted down the stairs to the car and off to…
White Denim @ Le Poisson Rouge
I first saw White Denim almost 10 years ago. Someone had recommended them to me and I went to check them out in an opening slot at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I didn’t really know what to expect. Needless to say, I was floored by that early trio version of the pre-D band. Floored. They stopped playing exactly twice in the middle of a 45-minute flamethrower of a set. I remember writing in my review: “was it 3 15-minute songs or 15 3-minute songs?” but concluded it didn’t really fucking matter. I was thinking about that initial impression last night during the delicious, ferocious, bodacious 2-hour White Denim show last night, a decade later. Last night we learned that those groupings of songs (seems like typically 3, but sometimes 2 or 4?) are called “chunks” and also we learned that this band in its current form is as good as ever. Good as fucking ever. Have I used the word “ferocious” yet? LPR was sort of comfortably packed, not quite sold out, but pretty damn close, for sure and the crowd was into it and the band was into that, which is when the magic usually gets made.
The show was like binge watching one of those WTF? shows on one of the streaming services. One of those series where every episode has some jaw-dropping moment that flicks your pleasure center, releases some endorphins and causes you to quickly jump the next episode when the current one ends, because how the fuck are they gonna top that?? and what the fuck is gonna happen next? I mean this show was relentless, songs on top of songs, chunks begetting chunks, everything happening at a we’re-not-so-young-anymore! pace that had me and most around me dancing their asses off with barely a moment to rest. The current lineup was great when I saw them at Monty Hall and Brooklyn Bowl last year, but they have clearly solidified into something formidable. The new(ish) drummer (Greg Clifford) was a powerhouse of funk and rock, at supreme comfort with the not-that-easy material and providing the internal combustion to get that motor working at full horsepower. Yikes! The addition to keys (Michael Hunter) Tfelt like a welcome change last time the band was through, but last night it felt like a where-you-been-all-my-fandom essentiality. The proggy shit sounded more proggy, the groovy shit was dance-yo-ass-off groovier, the rocking shit felt pump-your-fist rockinger. And the comfort of the “new” guys with everything meant that Petralli and Terebecki on guitar and bass had a lot of freedom to just go off. And go off they did. Petralli was as shreddy as I’ve ever seen him, masterfully using different tones to match the style he was playing, serrated-edge for the pure facerock, Garcia-enveloper for the adrenaline-funk and so on. I mean, when you see a band like this where each of the four musicians is playing at such a high level, it’s a thing to behold. It absolutely did not matter what they played — and in 2 hours they played almost everything you could hope for, dipping into all phases of their repertoire, chunking shit together without a care for whatever whiplash they might induce in the crowd — they crushed it all. There were some subtle shifts in some of the older stuff, especially songs that had been originally written with two guitars, that gave them a very new feel to me, in a very good way. At the end of the night they played “I Start To Run” which, over the years, has often been the closer for them, a straight-blues/rock rager that fits that role well. I figured that was the case last night, it felt about that time, one last song and then an encore break before the night ends. But no, they finished that, let us catch our breath and then promised “one last chunk” for the night. Then proceeded to play at least 4 more songs, maybe 5, with another short break mixed in, They went to 11pm on the nose and made the most of every single damn minute.
I”ve seen these guys aplenty over the years, I think last night was my 14th time and they’ve blown me away at almost all of them. Last night felt like something bigger than that. Like approaching the ideal of what I imagined they might become, finally reaching that potential. It was so great to see their repertoire laid out like that, worked and reworked, stitched together into a anvil-to-the-head 2 hours of pure, raging fun. After the show I was told I had a smile on my face the whole damn time and, hell yeah I did!
Wayne Krantz, James Genus, Cliff Almond @ 55 Bar (late set)
Smile on my face and still some gas in the tank, it was a very short hop to 55 Bar, parked the car, paid my $15 (!!?!?!?!) and got a spot about a minute before the music started. It was that kind of night, really was like a non-stop flow of music. Not only non-stop, but each iteration of the evening seemed to build on the last, three very separate shows in very different setting snapping together the way three courses in a delicious meal might work with each other. That being the case, it was time for dessert. Time for Wayne.
Last night he was playing with some serious WK veterans, James Genus on bass and Cliff Almond on drums. The room was relatively full for a late set, I wonder if it’s just random or if it’s because Genus was playing. On a night filled with fantastic bassists, Genus was as masterful as any of them. Something about his playing and his presence seems to bring out the best in Krantz and so, I highly suggest you go the next time he plays with him.
I’ve literally see this gig almost every Thursday night of the entire year, I’m not even sure how that’s possible, but it’s true. It’s fun to go, it caps off a Thursday night perfectly, but the fact of the matter is, even after seeing it so many times, it still blows my mind like nothing else. The amazing thing is, that they play more or less the same damn “songs” every week. I’ve heard most of the shit he does during the late set, no shit, over 25 times this year alone. And what’s amazing is how it’s still unbelievably fresh, unbelievably mindblowing, unbelievable period. Last night I was struck by how innovative, how different, how evolved and creative and break-new-ground genius the music was. Hundreds of gigs into this residency. dozens played this year alone in which he’s playing more or less the same pieces, and still makes them sound like something brand new, still does something I’ve never heard him do before. I’ve talked about my favorites in terms of the bass and drum backing band, but the fact of the matter is, it’s more the combination of the two than the individuals. Cliff Almond is a banger. He hits ’em hard and fast and he’s pretty freakin’ great at playing the drums like that. Genus is a more melodic player on the bass. He used a 5-string last night and it suited his style quite nicely, not quite the take-the-lead 6-string — I don’t think he actually took any leading role last night at all, all for the better — but doesn’t quite sit in the pocket either. He’s somehow very fluid and groovy in a subtle way while still contributing to an incredibly ferocious set of music. Have I used the word ferocious yet in this review? That’s the theme of the night.
The trio really excelled in the more compact, get-to-the-point improvising that Wayne has been working through these last few months. But every single little foray into the unknown was truly unique, not just in the every-snowflake-is-different sense of unique, but more like inventing-colors-you’ve-never-seen-before sense. I mean, every song contained multiple “jams” some short, some extended, each of these contained motifs I don’t think I’ve ever heard at 55 Bar before. I mean, how is that even humanly possible? How can this guy keep this thing so fucking fresh and still make it jawdroppingly, ass-shakingly, literally-laugh-out-loud good? How? How? How?
Every week is great, last night’s late set was exceptional. They topped an hour for the first time in a long time. That means they were feeling it, and it came quite naturally. If I was as brilliant as Wayne Krantz, I’d be able to come up with new ways of saying “holy shit , that was good,” but I’m not, so I’ll just have to say, holy shit, that was good.
4Oct19
So far, so ridiculous for October. Two more amazing shows last night.
Arc Iris @ The Owl Music Parlor (300!!)
First stop was in Lefferts Gardens, the cozy, intimate, awesome space The Owl for Arc Iris in the midst of a very short tour playing special “acoustic” shows in small spots. The Owl holds maybe 40 or so and wasn’t even packed for this very awesome show. Like Landlady, Arc Iris is criminally underrated, an unbelievable act led by Jocie Adams, who is, in my estimation, an unrecognized genius. The rest of the group is Zach Miller on keyboards (typically a full cage of synths et al., but last night playing a single small upright) and Ray Belli on drums. Their usual shows are somewhat theatrical and feel big and mysterious, especially Adams who comes off, to me, as larger than life… the first couple times I saw them, she wore a bedazzled body suit which midway through the show sprouted huge wings. Last night was a bit more subdued than that, you might imagine, small space with no production values beyond some lighting on the floor that would occasionally change color or turn off or on to accentuate a couple songs. It was interesting, Adams usually has this mysterious, almost intimidating energy about her and last night she was more just this sweet, kind of vulnerable woman making music. It was a different vibe for Arc Iris, for sure, but, in a way, it made the music pop even more, naked of its adornments and distractions of the production. Don’t get me wrong, I love the full-monty Arc Iris, probably prefer it, but this was a special one-time thing and I absolutely loved the show.
The first 5 or 6 songs were taken from a commission that they’ve apparently done, working with a ballet troupe in their Rhode Island home. I can only imagine how cool it would be to see them play to some choreographed ballet. These new songs were, each and every one, awesome. Fully Arc Iris in their scope. Meaning somewhere between prog and folk and pop and groove, artistically sopped in Adams genius, bopping in the funk of her bandmates. There was a couple of songs, Pigs Pt 1 and 2 that were so good, catchy and weird and groovy. Adams has bits of an interesting range of classic frontmen/women in her, a little bit of her idol Joni Mitchell, a little bit of Elton John, a little bit of Peter Gabriel, a little bit of James Brown, plenty of just plain Jocie Adams. She has a good voice, but it’s not one of those knock-you-out inhumanly good voices, it’s good, you know. When they play their normal show, it’s draped in so much sound, you don’t get caught up in whether the’s got this killer voice or not, it’s fine. Last night, her voice was more a driver and I kind of appreciated how she still didn’t have to have this holyshit voice, it’s totally not what makes her awesome… it’s the material, those songs, an utterly unique progressive sound and they really shone through. Still, she also added some super cool vocal effects, odd little outerspace sounds and drugged-out echoes and auto-harmonizing. They did a few older songs and also a couple of covers, Led Zeppelin’s “Friends,” which is featured on a must-hear 4-song EP of covers they put out this year… this version is probably my favorite cover of the year, coincidentally was on my #minimix this week and so I was so very excited they played it during the show. Absolutely killed. If you want a place to start with Arc Iris, that’s a pretty good one, it’s a familiar song that’s made utterly unfamiliar in amazing ways, an impressionist painting of a flower… it’s a flower, yeah, but it’s also a work of art on a few more levels. That’s an Arc Iris cover song. Actually, they don’t even say they’re covering a song, they say they’re “reimagining” it, like Romeo and Juliet was reimagined as West Side Story or something. That’s about right. Last year they put out a full album reimagining Joni Mitchell’s classic Blue record and they played one of those last night.
I was surprised when they took a break after an hour or so. I could see the setlist from where we were sitting and there were only like 5 songs left, but a quick setbreak felt right, a few minutes to break the absolute spell the band had cast on the room, shake off the magic and put the music into context with reality for a moment before sinking back in. I guess I haven’t mentioned much about the other members of the band. It’s not surprising, it’s easy to forget there’s more than just Adams up there, but the other guys are pretty great as well. They kind of have this mini-Benevento/Russo duo thing going, a nice chemistry and a tight exploratory groove sound. Even though he was playing a plain old upright, Miller still used some effects as well, and combined with the shit Adams was doing with her voice makes me say “acoustic” and not just acoustic. Belli had a nice balance between keeping things moving with the lively energy of an Arc Iris show and also keeping things space-appropriate. Altogether, the trio sounded great, were in great spirits and put on a helluva show. Can’t recommend these guys enough.
Pirata @ The Sultan Room
From Lefferts Gardens to Bushwick was a bit of a cross-Brooklyn haul and by the time we got to the Sultan Room, the first set was well underway… in fact, we caught maybe only the last 10 or so minutes of the set. Still, it was plenty enough to get a real taste of what was going down (and what we had missed, alas!). In a word, the music being made upon arrival was sublime, just pure trained-at-Hogwarts magic. The band is Joe Russo, Dave Harrington, Jonathan Goldberger (second night in a row with JG!), Spencer Zahn (playing exclusively upright bass) and Stuart Bogie (sax, clarinet, flute, natch!). The music was purely improvised, but what I heard when I adjusted my ears to the scene was like some ambient jazzgroove take on the Grateful Dead’s “The Other One.” I don’t know if it was just because of that initial expression, but the feeling carried over to the rest of the show, almost every jam felt like it had its origins in some Dead tune… not that they were jamming on that tune, not even close. More like each “piece” was some inside-out version of a familiar Dead melody, one kind of sounding like Here Comes Sunshine, one like Dark Star, etc. etc. And here, that “like” is doing a lot of work… it didn’t sound like them at all, just seemed to have some far-off origin in a riff of those songs. Of course, that’s more or less the work of my own imagination, but it gives you a starting point on what the music was.
The second set was, to be blunt, some of the best improvisation I’ve seen this year. There are so many things I could say about this music, about the people making it, the without-a-map explorations that this “band” took, each turn the right one, each piece going exactly where it needed to go and each ending right around when it was ready to end, the next one starting anew, almost in a vacuum, unaware of where the last journey had started, crossed or ended. I mean… wow! Fucking wow!
Here are a couple things I loved about it. I loved that the naturally tendency of this band was to go quiet. So many times you see a group like this get together and meander a bit and then lock in and build to a peak. There were peaks last night, no doubt, there were some really amazing peaks. But more often than not, they’d actually start at some high energy spot, Joe ram-a-dam-dam’n his way through some ungodly rhythm and Bogie blaring away or Goldberger shredding the guitar mozzarella like he does, and then as it went on, as the band actually locked in, the natural space for it to go was to some quiet, thoughtful, subtle, whisper of a space. And the great thing about it was the crowd let them do it. In fact, maybe the crowd was actually dictating this direction.
That was another thing I loved about the show last night, this big, unwieldy audience. I mean the place was packed, comfortably packed, but it was full. I’ve been to The Sultan Room as much as anyone and it’s always felt kind of empty in there. Not in a bad way, but it’s never been even close to full the times I’ve been there and it’s always been the right amount of people for the often experimental-but-awesome music I’ve seen there. Last night the energy was totally different. I mean, it’s Joe Russo, so the place is filled, a large percentage of the crowd being from the JRAD scene, and man, let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s talk about the fact that Joe Russo has gained this certain level of, sure, let’s call it “fame.” I mean, the dude fronts a band that sold out Red Rocks, that sells out pretty big rooms, he’s a guy. I don’t know that I’ve known any musician of that stature who takes their newfound “fame” and uses it so selflessly. Uses whatever notoriety he has a musician and uses it purely to lift up other musicians, other people that he cares about and respects. He’s always been that way… I mean JRAD is that, it’s a band with his friends, it never would exist with just a bunch of musicians. And so here’s a guy who can now choose what he wants to do in his spare time and what he chooses to do is play with a bunch of friends, awesome musicians, make the best music he can and also expose his fans to all these amazing players that they’d otherwise probably never check out on their own. Has anyone ever done that before? Done what Joe does? I don’t know of any. There’s no way even 10% of that room is filled like that if there’s a different drummer playing. I know, I go to those shows. Those shows are fucking amazing, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not packing that room like that. So, like everyone in that room is there because of Joe Russo and aren’t they all better off for it, and aren’t the other 4 guys on the stage better off for it? Fuck yeah. It needs to be said, it’s freaking amazing. Russo is the biggest mensche in the musical world and I love him for it.
And so that crowd is there, it’s packed, it’s party ready. I mean, there was plenty to rock out to and plenty to dance your ass off to, but there were also so many moments where the music faded down, not faded out completely, but just went to an incredibly quiet place. An especially quiet place for a Friday night in a full room like that. A full room with those Sultan Room lights. A full room outside of which they were already selling nitrous balloons(!). And the room let them find those quiet places, make beautiful music. And weren’t we all better off for it, because the music was something special. It was everything you would want it to be when you see those 5 names, it was peak Russo and peak Goldberger, peak Bogie and peak Spencer Zahn, making magic with just an upright bass. And how about Dave Harrington. Talk about menschy-as-fuck. The dude is as good as anyone, he is, believe me, and he has no qualms letting the guys around him take the lead, giving all his magic beans to Goldberger to grow his beanstalk of fuckyeahitude to the sky, and JG was jaw-drop amazing last night, and DH is plenty happy to trim and prune and water and feed and nurture the jams. Sure, he took a few vicious solos of his own, but more often he was the guy-behind-the-guy and wasn’t the music better for it and weren’t we all better for it.
Damn, that second set was some musical perfection. I hope they do it again.
5Oct19
Past four nights I’ve seen 10 amazing shows, topping 300 for the year (also at over 400 sets and 250 different bands seen). Having a pretty damn good stretch right now and last night was more of the magical same…
Charlie Parr (JR Bohannon opened) @ Mercury Lounge
I started off at Mercury Lounge for a really wonderful one-two of very different kinds of “folk” music. I arrived about halfway through JR Bohannon’s set. I’ve seen him before, but this was easily the best and I was a little disappointed I got traffic’d out of a couple songs, because it was so damn good. Bohannon is one of these guys who picks instrumental acoustic guitar music. Last night it struck me that the closest analog of the large number of guitarists making such music would be William Tyler. His songs seemed to tell a story, with each of his 10 fingers a different character, propelling a narrative of beautifully picked guitar strings. The music was just flat-out gorgeous, that’s all I can say about it. Absolutely perfect. The final tune he switched to a twelve-string, and I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone do an American-primitive style fingerpicking on a 12-string, but it was some serious faeries-floating-in-the-air magic, just unnaturally gorgeous stuff. The room was about half full and everyone was in such a hush the entire time, the kind of energy where you don’t even want to breathe because it might end up being too loud and break the spell. He even mentioned multiple times how attentive the room was. He also said that he has an album coming out on 11/1 and if you enjoy stunning guitar playing, I have a feeling it’s going to be a must-listen.
The crowd crept in a little between sets. Bohnanon played in about as simple a set-up as you can, just a chair, a guitar and a microphone. As such, the changeover was extremely quick. Refreshingly quick. How many times do you see a show where set times are listed as 8 and 9 and the headliner goes on 15 minutes early?? I was pleasantly shocked when Charlie Parr sat down and started playing at 8:45, but since this was the first of two for me and I had been planning to leave early, it was a most welcome development. I mean, really, so often I’ve been at shows like these and even though everyone is clearly ready to go, the musician just waits 15 minutes for no reason other than to wait. Thank you Charlie Parr!
Actually, thank you Charlie Parr once more! Holy crap, his set was a freakin’ keeper. I discovered the Minnesota musician from his 2017 album Dog and then caught him at Newport last year, both the album and the live set really hitting a stripped-down, familiar-but-unique sweet spot for me. Here’s a quick funny story I put in my Newport review last year, but I think of it whenever I hear or think about this guy. A friend of mine came to visit last summer (pre-Newport) and we went to the beach and we were driving back on the causeway which was backed up as it does on occasion and the title track to Dog comes up on his shuffle and he’s like “have you heard this before” and I’m like “yes it’s awesome” and we start talking about how awesome this record is and he’s totally not paying attention and kind of starts accelerating the car before last-minute realizing he’s about to high-speed read-end the stopped-in-traffic car in front of us and slams, slams on the breaks right before any collision occurred… and so I like to joke that Charlie Parr was almost the last thing I heard before I died and I would have been alright with that. He’s that good.
While the set at Newport had a small ramshackle backing trio, last night he was also solo, just sitting in a chair. He played two different resonator-style guitars, one made of wood, one made of metal. He had the look of someone who had just come out of the woods in Minnesota, the look of a guy who hops on trains with his guitar strapped to his back and the rest of his possessions in a cartoon-style bindle, traveling from town to town busking for pocket change and his next meal. That’s the look at least and I mean that in the best way possible. He looks like he was made to play the raw-and-ready blues-based folk music that he plays. He also sounds like he was made to play it with a where’s-that-voice-coming-from? voice, a sweet, soulful thing that is as real as it gets. He also plays those guitars like they’re meant to be played, not the clean picked beauty of Bohannon, but dirty, mud-slinging picking and slide playing, dusty-road blues riffs and surprisingly elegant fingerwork. He opened his set with a cover of the classic “CC Rider” and that kind of sums up his sound pretty well if you want a familiar starting point. He played mostly originals, new stuff and old stuff, the names of the songs probably don’t matter too much to you, they were all awesome. Playing solo really works for him, he was able to easily transition between delightfully sloppy and wow-factor precise without missing a beat, his singing and his playing a single entity. He was also funny as heck. Not funny like he had canned material or was trying to be funny, but a naturally funny storyteller. He riffed a couple short anecdotes of things that had happened in the last couple of days, not material he’d been working on all tour, but just shit that happened, and they were the kind of brilliant, observational, you-can’t-make-this-up kind of shit. One about having a lot of trouble finding parking on a campus in Boston last week and then finally parking his car and walking to this radio station for a spot and happening upon a demonstration and as he got closer to the demonstration he realized that they were chanting for… more reasonable parking.
My original plan was to jet a little early to get to the next show, but I kept doing the “just one more song” thing. Glad I did, because I heard some great stuff, including what’s easily the best track on his newest (awesome), just-out album. The song is “Cheap Wine” and it’s quintessential Charlie Parr, with its wit and it’s of-another-era folk croon and it’s surprising amount of danceable rhythm. I finally ducked out a couple songs early, well over an hour into the set that was every-song-was-killer good. Check out Charlie Parr, I think you’ll dig.
Ty Segall @ Brooklyn Steel
Missed the first couple songs from Ty Segall, but it was but a small chip of what would be a two-hour long raze-to-the-ground set. This was his final night of 5 of them, originally slated for Warsaw, they got switched to both the Bowery Ballroom and Brooklyn Steel. I imagine the Bowery shows were something else, I think one of them went from 1am-3am (yow!), but this was the one I could make and I was more than happy with it. My full review is here. They played First Taste and Manipulator in full, one after the other and the contrast between the two was pretty interesting. They killed them both and I had a freakin blast.
I will admit that I have only seen Segall once before, back in 2012, and it was one of my least favorite concert experiences in a long while, like this-is-the-worst-concert-crowd-ever unbearable. That show soured me on Ty for a long while, somewhat ridiculously on my part, but his genius and prolific-as-fuck output is tough to deny. He’s awesome. So it made me doubly glad I made the show last night. I won’t be missing him whenever he returns.
