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-fifth of hopefully 52 posts…
5Nov19 Fruit Bats @ LPR
Sometimes you pencil something in on your livemusic calendar, sometimes you circle a date, sometimes you pull out the Sharpie and sometimes you Sharpie it in, circle it, circle it again for good measure and maybe, on rare occasions, add a bunch of ♥’s in there just to make sure it’s clear that you’re really looking forward to this one. Whenever it was that the Fruit Bats show at Le Poisson Rouge was announced, Nov 5th was more or less decorated with metaphoric magic marker. A long way of saying that this one was a highly anticipated show for me. Eric D Johnson, aka Fruit Bats, are on my list for sure. I’ve seen FB proper 5 or 6 times over the many years and Johnson in some other form — whether as “EDJ” or with Bonny Light Horsemen or Alone and Together or random sit-ins or collaborations at Newport or elsewhere — probably another dozen and he’s never failed to hit me in that sweet spot. Johnson is that sweet spot personified. Add on top of all that the fact that I haven’t seena regular Fruit Bats show in over 3 years (I think the last NYC full band appearance was at Rough Trade in 2016? (unless I missed one somewhere, entirely possible)), and, yeah, I was looking forward to last night’s show, big time. And, naturally, he did not disappoint.
Johnson and his excellent band felt like an old house well-lived in, comfort rock and roll with cozy chairs of superlative songwriting to sit in, a natural flow to the set to navigate the domicile and that singing voice that just feels like home. With a end-of-year-list-worthy new album out and a back catalog of lovable favorites, the set was one wanted-to-hear-this-song! after another. Basically, if there was a Fruit Bats song you wanted to catch at the show last night, I’d be surprised if they didn’t play it. I was psyched to hear a bunch of the new ones pop in the live setting and also was way geeked for You’re Too Weird and a bunch of others.
As much as the show was this old, comfy home, a Fruit Bats set also proves to be the kind of house with its little surprises. Secret passages and trap doors and hidden nooks in the form of an extra guitar solo here or a twisted jumps-at-you lyric there, unexpected weird vocal phrasings or the rare-but-welcome full-band rock-out. It’s a treat to see a band so in control of the material with a frontman that feels, quite literally, impossible not to love. Johnson was a dose of laid-back comfort all on his own all night. He’s got a serious I want to be friends with that dude charm that matches his music perfectly. Couldn’t have asked for a better Tuesday night show, crammed in between two very different out-of-town trips, it really did feel like home.
I feel like I say this every time I go to a show at LPR, but it’s true in the way that makes me want to repeat myself, but as far as hominess goes, I am continually amazed that that room can just feel right for such a wide variety of music and bands… And that they go out there and book all those different acts. There is literally no genre that you can’t see there, they book it all and it always feels like the right room for it. Last night being just the latest example. I won tickets through an LPR-members-only contest and that made it all the more awesome. More than happy to be a member and would love to see other venues follow their lead.
One last note about the opener Andrew Combs who played in a duet, he playing acoustic rhythm guitar singing lead vocals and another dude playing leads on electric and singing back-up. I really enjoyed the half of the set that we caught. Combs has a natural country-ready wobble in his voice and the songwriting chops to match. The little twangy guitar solos (played by a dude who did not look like he should be playing twangy guitar solos… he actually looked like Rodney Dangerfield’s son in Back to School) were a perfect fit. Combs new album is a bit of a sleeper, definitely check it out.
6Nov19 Mikal Cronin, Shannon Lay @ The Independent (San Francisco)
I’m out in Berkely for a couple days for work, which means a little bit of jetlag and some out-of-town livemusic’n. After surveying my limited-but-solid options and checking to see if anyone wanted to join me, I made my plan and headed into San Francisco, got myself an obligatory, delicious big-as-my-head burrito and walked over to the Independent, a new venue for me. As I was walking over, I passed by a bar and noticed music coming out of it, made a mental note, asked the guy at the door of the venue when music was starting, realized I had some time to kill and headed back to that bar and popped my head in. There was a guy playing guitar in the corner of a bar that felt somewhere in between an art gallery and a sports bar (literally — basketball game on the TV and someone’s art hung on the wall in a limited showing), not to many people in there. The guy on guitar was clearly filling in for whoever was supposed to play, as he did not fit the description of a female-fronted Americana band in the least. But he was pretty good, I could tell, so I grabbed a beer and caught 40+ minutes of this guy’s set, a rather entrancing solo guitar thing, with some loops and effects and cool improvised takes on songs from Thelonious Monk to Hendrix to a Colombian cumbia thing to a very nice version of the Stylistics. It’s been a pretty rare thing for my livemusic addiction to let me down, rare to pop your head into a bar where someone is playing something and not find something to entertain. This was the most random of sets, clearly unplanned for both me and this guy, but defintely worth $5 in the bucket.
When I got to the Independent, it felt pretty empty, altough there were probably 30+ in there before the music started. It’s a pretty nice sized club with a modern but laid-back vibe. There were a small number of tables set up in the back by the bar, but otherwise just a big space in front of the stage and some small raised sections on the side with stylish built-in benches. I started up front when the opening act took the stage, but at some point the fact that I had been up since 5am and it was now midnight on the East Coast kicked in and I had to sit for the rest of the show… still had a great view of the stage and great sound. A very nice venue!
The opener was Shannon Lay, a songwriter from L.A.Her new album is very good, I had it in one of my Weekly RecommNeds JamBase columns earlier this year, you should definitely check it out if you haven’t yet. She played with an all-female quartet which started two guitars/bass/keys, but had the members rotating between those and drums for different songs. This set was really fantastic and really matched my mood of just wanting some engaging, but relaxing sort of music. She’s got great songs and there was just this very relaxed vibe to the sound, or maybe that was just me projecting. I actually, happily, drifted in and out of wakefulness; lack of sleep + big burrito + a beer + this music was a very lovely narcotic. Lay had great, friendly stage presence: she’s a kind of tall women with dyed red hair, but she exuded this we’re-buds charm, kind of like Eric Johnson does… an LA thing, maybe? The band really felt like it was there just to provide back-up to her, they’d stop playing individually or collectively for stretches of songs or whole songs, only coming in where needed… and when they came in, it felt like the punctuation in an otherwise beautiful sentence. They didn’t do a ton of harmonnizing, but when they did, it was exceptional. She even brought out a guest, Bridget Dawson who is in the OCS (the kind of folky version of Oh Sees with John Dwyer) which felt like a nice treat as well. I really loved this set, truly rewarding on many levels, not least getting to see someone I have enjoyed listening to totally deliver in the live set. Highly recommended.
The headliner was Mikal Cronin who is someone I have also really enjoyed listening to, but I don’t think I’ve seen play before. His new album is a bit more folky than previous ones, but his live set was nothing short of spectacular power trio rock-out. Just loud enough, just exploratory enough, tons of awesome energy banging around on a set full of awesome riffs and songs. I can’t say it was enough to get me out of my seat, I was pretty fucking zonked at this point, but damn, that was a killer set top to bottom. By the time Cronin got going, the crowd had grown to 100 or so, a good size for the room and the music on a Wednesday night, plenty of room to move or get close or hang back without feeling awkward. The wide open space kind of lends itself to multiple vantage points and the lights were top notch, felt almost exactly like the lights the previous night at LPR, down to similar color palettes and designs…. I guess the Independent kind of felt like the Le Poisson Rouge of San Fran or something, and the show definitely felt like a nice coda to the Fruit Bats show in several ways. The other option for last night was Built to Spill at the Fillmore, which may have been the preferred choice on paper, but it was twice as much in a room several times larger and probably ended an hour after this one did, without well-placed benches to sit on… I realized about one song into Cronin’s set that I had made the right choice and right when I thought I’ll leave after the next song, he announced he had one song left. 60 minutes of straight fire was exactly what I needed. Great set… two great sets, two great musicians, pretty different, but actually well-matched. These two play Bowery Ballroom on 11/20, I think that’s gonna be a good one.
7Nov19 Vetiver @ The Chapel
Night two of two in San Fran…
Something I think about occasionally is how all these terms to describe music when I/we were younger that were totally pejorative are actually pretty appealing. I touched on it yesterday but puts me to sleep is one of them. Another couple I laugh at are “easy listening” and “adult contemporary” which are kind of genres, genres that I might have sneered at years ago, but like, what’s wrong with music that’s easy listening? What’s wrong with contemporary music for adults? Last night I caught Vetiver at the Chapel, a set of music that was very contemporary, very grown up, and very, very easy to listen to.
Yesterday I also alluded to the fact that the Mikal Cronin/Shannon Lay bill felt like a tack-on to the still-smiling-from-it Fruit Bats show at LPR. The Vetiver show echoed even more strongly: Vetiver and Fruit Bats are actually kind of just two guys (Andy Cabic and Eric Johnson) and the last time they played NYC was last fall when they were on a tour that was billed as Vetiver/Fruit Bats but was actually just them doing single sets (a show that happened, unfortunately, on the only day it snowed big last season, and so I missed it, alas!); the two of them even put out an live EP from that tour (I think?). So, it was kind of cool to see them one-after-the-other like that, two sides of a coin, maybe.
Not that I’ve been to them all, not even close, but The Chapel is defiitely one of the more appealing SF venues, I’ve managed to see a show there the last 3 times I’ve been visiting the Bay. Quite literally in a chapel, it’s a space that was meant to host shows like this, understated, open, warm. It’s a good space and I’ve seen three very good shows there.
Yes, the set last night was very, very good. Cabic has a brand new album out just last Friday and this was the start of the tour supporting it, according to him with a new band, or new version of his band. Holy crap, if that was their first gig together, they’re going places, because the band was great. They started with Andy on acoustic guitar and it just sounded so good paired with his lead guitarist, Cabic kind of fingering these crisp licks that the lead guitarist danced around with these light-footed Jerry-esque phrases. The first few songs were sort of this groovy folk rock, like I said very adult contemporary and very, very easy listening. They did a nice job mixing the new stuff with older material. I couldn’t tell you one song title from the next, unfortunately. The lead guitarist took a nice solo or two in every song, just perky little melodic things that felt very Bay Area in nature, a perfect sound for the room. If the show just proceeded like that, it would have been great, but then Cabic switched to electric guitar which really put some hair on the chest of that set. I wouldn’t say that the band jammed in any acceptable form of the term, but they definitely found a lot of space to push the material, things getting groovier and rockinger the deeper into the set they went. Cabic is a helluva songwriter, his stuff had shades of Cass McCombs and Hiss Golden Messenger and even, at times, the laid back groove of Jack Johnson. Much like the Fruit Bats on Tuesday, it was just a great show, great songs, performed at a high level by an awesome band with a very easy to love vibe. The crowd was super enthusiastic and just the right size, with plenty of space for everyone, but still feeling full. A great Thursday evening in San Francisco. My only regret was not having a Krantz set to hit afterwards.
(Side note: because I keep track of these things, and find this amusing, I went and checked and last night was the 3rd time I’ve seen Vetiver and the first time was on a bill with Fruit Bats and the other time was on a bill with “EDJ” (i.e. Eric D. Johnson), so I’m now definitely counting last night as another weird/appropriate coast-to-coast bill with Fruit Bats)
