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 forty-first of hopefully 52 posts…
10Oct19
We took the day off and had a rather amazingly full day in the city yesterday. I’ll try to stick to mostly reviewing just the music here, though…
Andy Statman Trio (The Stash Band opened) @ Mercury Lounge
After a bunch of eating, walking, seeing, looking, watching, eating, we hit the early show at the Mercury Lounge, which was Andy Statman. We got there towards the end of the opening set and I was glad to get to catch a little of The Stash Band from Massachusetts. When we arrived Andy Statman was on stage jamming with them, so that as a cool bonus. Clearly the bands were very friendly. The band was kind of a hybrid acoustic folk kind of thing — acoustic guitar and upright bass, drums and clarinet — they did some bluegrassy stuff with Statman and then when he left they did something that was sort of freeform Sun Ra-meets-Bill Monroe and then they ended with a song that Statman requested that was kind of this weirdo folk storytelling thing. All in all very enjoyable.
A quick changeover and Statman’s trio took over the stage. The room had maybe 25 people, which is to say, pretty empty, mostly people sitting in the couches along the sides of the room. The first half of the set had Statman on clarinet and was very much a stretch of sort of Jewish jazz, somewhere between very mystical religiousness and very fun klezmer. It fit the bill perfectly as we were one day off from Yom Kippur and also celebrating our 20th anniversary, the wedding 2 decades ago, which was marked very strongly by the klezmer band that played the reception. What is great about watching Statman play in this trio is that the three of them — Statman, Jim Whitney on bass and Larry Eagle on drums — are very much a unit, a chemistry very much derived from the fact that they play together most Thursday nights in a residency that goes back, as fate would have it, almost exactly 20 years. So, they’re playing these songs and then they’re just winging it, improvising, Whitney takes the lead and Eagle takes the lead and these sort of these extended moments where they’re not really sure where they’re going, but they’re confident in the going and certain they’ll get back… and the did, every time.
Halfway through, Statman switched to mandolin and the set turned on a dime to a more Americana-bluegrass thing. It’s pretty impressive the way they bend genres so easily, not just Statman doing it, which is almost easy, because he’s switching instruments, but the whole rubbery trio just conforms so easily. Of course, I jest about Statman having it easy, he’s inexplicably a master of two very different instruments, a mind-meets-fingers virtuoso who seems to pile an infinity of notes into each musical gesture. The end of the 75 minute set had sit-ins from a guest signer who did a couple classic country tunes (“Window Up Above” and “Six Days on the Road”) and then a little jam session with the guys from the Stash Band. Did I mention the Phish-donut-print towel on the drum kit? I assume it was the openers, but who knows?
Good show.
Kacy & Clayton @ Union Pool
Quick cab ride and we were in Williamsburg in time to catch literally the last half verse of the opening band. Ah well… the only part of our day slightly misttimed. Kacy and Clayton are a second-cousins folk duo from Saskatchewan which almost seems tautological… I mean, where else would they be from? Several years ago I saw them once as an opening act and wrote a review of the headliner in which I mentioned their set (I mean, they were even less known then) and I compared them (favorably) to an old folk act and they responded in a way that made me think they were offended. Not sure why, some musicians hate to be compared to anyone else, but the fact of the matter is, these two just have a very classic folk sound. Like 60 years ago, they would have packed up their bags on their ranch in Saskatchewan (yes, their family has ranch on the Southern border) and headed to Greenwich Village to try their luck at the folk scene downtown. That’s what they sound like at times, although they have a touch of country and some other stuff. Not a bad thing, if you do it well…and I think they do it pretty well. Their new album is actually pretty great, I think you should check it out.
The album is with a full band, but this show/tour was just the two of them, Kacy standing, singing and playing guitar some, Clayton sitting and playing guitar and singing a little. They did a bunch of material off the new one, obviously, and others as well. I got a real chuckle out of the fact that one of their songs is called “High Holiday.” The new songs are very much their best, I think, so the selections last night were pretty good. Pretty good is about how I could describe these guys. Their voices are not amazing, but pretty good, their harmonies are not the best I’ve heard, but they’re pretty good, Clayton’s guitar playing isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s pretty good, I’ve heard better songwriters, but they’re pretty good, their banter humor is a bit weird in a is-that-what-passes-for-humor-in-Saskatchewan, but, you know, it’s pretty good… put it all together and they’re pretty good. Their newer stuff has a more progressive, a little bit darker sound to it, something that captures what I imagine the wide open spaces of their home might feel like.
A pretty good show.
Wayne Krantz, Orlando Le Fleming, Cliff Almond @ 55 Bar
The guy at the door when we got to 55 Bar last night (we’s totes buddies now) was raving about the early set with high praise for finally-getting-it Orlando le Fleming. I have no idea if the early set was better than what we ended up catching with the late set that started a moment after we arrived in perfect timing, but holy shit, seems like Wayne & Co (whoever the Co. is on a given Thursday) have turned another corner… they are feeling it.
With Orlando and Cliff it seemed the goal was to squeeze as much into every moment possible. As many ideas and as many notes as physically possible, like when your clothes are completely saturated with rain from walking through a storm that water starts to puddle up on the outside. That was last night’s set, ponding of music on the metaphysical surface of a surprisingly-full 55 Bar. At 30 minutes in, they started Manic Depression, the song that usually ends the set. Did they think they were already there? Was Wayne having some sort of extrasensory relationship with the time-space continuum, things slowing down for him or speeding up for us? Or just changing things up? Who knows, but like everything else, the version was a torrent of improvisational ideas. What a thrill it is to have your mind bent over the rail by guitar bass drums. What a fucking thrill. Every week, even better. Last night was a good one, the second half was mindblowing, dance-in-your-chair, fuck-your-sanity awesomeness. Every piece seemed to open with “jam” just full-throated exploration that eventually found a familiar riff before launching off again. There’s this song that has a surprising heavy-metal riff pop up out of the blue, probably my favorite thing they do… the last two weeks it’s been superlative, as good as anything your favorite band has ever done, just 3 completely independent, 3-man improv sessions with a headbanger riff in between each one. Fucking amazing.
13Oct19 Wilco @ Brooklyn Steel
At about 7:15 last night I was about ready to settle in for some couch time out in Western Suffolk County, wanting pretty badly to catch Wilco but no ticket/money/plans to make the show. Long story short, less than 90 minutes later, I was walking into Brooklyn Steel to a show that had just started, the livemusicgods smiling down on me and me smiling right back at ‘em.
I mean, as I texted to someone earlier in the weekend “I’d hate to miss em,” which is generally true when Wilco comes to town, but having now taken in that Sunday night masterpiece in Brooklyn, I really would have hated to miss that one in particular. If ever I’ve seen a perfect set of Wilco — the song selection to the execution, to the energy in the room — this felt like it was it.
Wilco has long had this IDGAF feel about them, from Tweedy’s occasional snide chip-on-shoulder stage banter to their do-it-our-way band history, they give off an air of stubborn independence. Lately, that IDGAF attitude is more of a creative independence, and their latest album Ode to Joy, probably their most understated, subtle album in like, ever, sums that up to me. I’ve heard more than one person call it “sleepy,” and I wasn’t sure if that was meant to be an insult or not. It’s quiet and not quite in a stunning beautiful way… more like, in my opinion, a takes-time-to-warm-up-to-it way. I really dig it, but I dig everything and I dig everything Wilco does, so that doesn’t mean much. When you listen to it, though, it’s hard not to think that Jeff Tweedy don’t give a shit if you like it or not, this is the album Wilco is putting out in 2019 and if it’s polarizing in any way, well, then IDGAF. (for the record, I think it’s pretty well received generally). That’s the notion, at least. But there was one throwaway line of banter last night that I found revealing. Someone shouted out “Schmilco!” between songs early in the show and Tweedy kind of joked that the best thing about putting out a new album is that people start to like the last new album… the implication that everyone hated the last one and now they’ll hate the new one and like the old one… or something like that. It was a joke, and a good one, but it’s also clear that he DGAF what people think. Which is a pretty good thing, in my opinion. And if he’s worried about it, the general sense I have since the last note of the show last night is that everyone is head-over-heels happy with the show. As I was walking out I overheard more than one person say, in one way or another, that it was the best show they’d seen in a long time, and whether they were talking about overall or just Wilco, it’s pretty high praise and, if they meant the latter, I have to agree with them.
A Wilco show is just too big and hairy and all-encompassing to review fully song-by-song and last night’s felt doubly so. Highlights abound, certainly, the setlist can be found here. The fourth song was “War on War” and, to me, that’s when the show kicked into it’s glorious high gear. In a way, the song kind of encapsulated the show overall, the dynamics, the way the band navigated the beautiful intricacies of Tweedy’s songwriting and then kerplow! exploded into full best-damn-American-rock-band-of-the-century energy. You could almost see those old school Batman exclamations fill the sold out room when the band ratcheted up to full power — SLAMMO! ZAMMMM! The band was in a great place, I think whatever happened the night before in the much different setting of Radio City Music Hall, good, great, or reserved, somehow fueled the ensemble Sunday, plus maybe the fact that they were webcasting the show for free.
As good as everything was, I spent much of the night completely zeroed in on Glenn Kotche. I didn’t intend to do it, I was more than prepared to spend my night lounging in Chez Nels Cline. I dunno, maybe it was the crystal clear mix where I was standing that made the drums stand out. I don’t think so. I think it was just that the guy was so.fucking.good. All those dynamics, all the quiet-to-loud and loud-to-quiet, the folk-to-rock and rock-to-Americana and singer-songwriter-to-totally-jamming out, all that was channeled through the man behind the kit, I was totally mesmerized by his playing, just a perfect 2.5 hours of drumming. It struck me how well they use Nels Cline in their live show. This is a band that goes out there every night with arguable the best guitar player on the planet, someone who can literally do it all, I’ve seen it, as well as anyone. A lesser group would use Nels Cline the way a lesser chef uses salt, a crutch. Because Nels Cline is one salty motherfucker, but his power comes not from overuse, but from proper use. This was not a show littered with unnecessary, over-the-top guitar solos. Sure, they could go that route, it would be pretty great, but they don’t. Nels picks and chooses his moments, that titan solo in Impossible Germany the centerpiece of the night, of course. You can’t go to see Wilco and not see Nels rip the fabric of reality in “Impossible Germany” and last night was as good as ever. It’s always as good as ever, but something felt even more above-and-beyond last night and the crowd seemed to respond to it. The band seemed to respond to it. Fucking wow!
Other highlights included an incredibly “Laminated Cat,” a glorious almost-jammed-out thing that was bookended by awesome “Via Chicago” before and a groover “Random Name Generator.” I don’t know if it was purposeful or not, but the latter half of the show seemed overly emphasized on “love.” Specifically/explicitly with “Love Is Everywhere” and “I’m Always in Love” and the crowd-pleasing “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” (which segued right out of “Heavy Metal Drummer” perfectly) but also implicitly in several other songs. For all the questions about the new material live, I thought the songs off Ode to Joy were perfectly played and perfectly placed throughout. They had that new feeling, but they also felt like old souls, their quietude dripping with maturity, compared to the older “mature” material which had the band ripping like young rock stars… namely the final encore of the night with four straight back-catalog rippers: “Red-Eyed and Blue,” “I Got You,” “Outtasite” and the night-ending “I’m A Wheel.” It’s amazing to see band go that long, cover that much of their repertoire over a night, absolutely crush everything they play and still have songs like that left in the tank to push it all over the top. They played the four of them almost as if they were one song squeezed together, bright lights, big room, big bright energy.
All hail Wilco.
