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-sixth of hopefully 52 posts…
12Nov19
Three stops, three completely different scenes and styles, just another Tuesday night (wait, all that on a Tuesday night?) in livemusic paradise.
The Last Roundup Boys @ Skinny Dennis
We pregamed at Skinny Dennis, which I realized is a perfect spot for a pre-show show if you’re going to Music Hall of Williamsburg. 5 minute walk frmo MHOW is like walking into another dimension. I’ve written at length about my love for Skinny Dennis, it’s simply the best and I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that that place is in that spot.
I’ve still yet figured out who is exactly in which band that plays there on the reg, I am partly convinced that many of the bands on the Skinny Dennis slate are basically the same people with a different name slapped on it. Last night we saw the Last Roundup Boys and I think it’s the same as The Bar Band, or very similar. The band is fronted by Zepheniah O’Hora on vocals and rhythm guitar and John Lee Shannon on lead guitar and a couple other guys on bass/drums that I’ve seen multiple times at SD and elsewhere that I should probably remember or learn their names.
Even the bar bands in NYC are fucking awesome and these guys, playing all the hits country songs were really great for a quarter-filled Williamsburg honky tonk on a Tuesday night. Couple bucks in the bucket and you get great versions of Mama Tried and Big Railroad Blues (it should be noted that O’Hora, in addition to being a centerpiece of the young NYC country scene, is a big Deadhead and does a lot of GD DJ’ing, including recently at Brooklyn Bowl at the Grateful Shred shows (I believe?), although these versions were straight covers of the originals and not Dead versions) and I Am A Pilgrim. ZO has a great voice for the material, Shannon provided many a twang-filled solo and the whole band was entirely too good to be playing for pocket change, and yet quite perfect for the setting. It had been a little bit since my last trip to Skinny Dennis, another realization that I should go there more regularly, it’s the fucking shit.
Moon Duo @ MHOW
Last night was my 4th time seeing Moon Duo (I once saw them on a CMJ bill with King Gizzard!), and it was, by far, the best I’d seen them. By far. Their new record is an awesome evolution of their psychdroneboogie and it came off quite well live. The big kick was an amazing stage production that was of the have-to-see-to-appreciate variety. I covered it a bit in my review for Bowery which you should read here, https://thebowerypresents.tumblr.com/post/189041274492/moonduomhow, but it was inextricably tied to the music
in awesome ways, a visual display that made the show much much better than it would have been without it (and it would have been just plain awesome if they had their old projections). Holy shit, one of the best visuals I’ve seen this year. Read the review here.
Subtonics @ Letlove Inn
Having covered country and indiepsychdronefunk, it made sense to end our evening in Astoria with the Subtonics doing their brainfeedboogie jazz/rock thing at Letlove Inn. In a city filled with amazing secrets hidden in plain sight, A++ musicians making crazy good music for a few bucks on weeknights in divey spots, I think the Subtonics on Tuesdays at Letlove is the premier hidden gem of the 5 boroughs. I have never not been blown away by Costas and the semi-rotating cast of who-are-these-guys musicians that jam like nutbutter every week. It’s so fucking good, and it’s so easy to forget. I say “maybe I’ll hit Subtonics tonight after” regularly on a Tuesday night and then say “eh, too far/tired/lazy.” What I should be saying is I’m going to end up in Astoria no matter what. It’s that good.
Last night we kind of timed it perfectly, we walked in in the middle of one piece, stayed for about 35–40 minutes and still only managed to see like 3 and a half songs. I feel like I blinked and 30 minutes had passed, the amount of time I had scheduled to stay, the amount of time that might have given me a decent night’s sleep, but I could.not.pull.myself.away. I think I could have stayed there for another hour, time seemed to slip in strange paces in that room.
What’s cool is that Costas is the leader, but he’s not a leader kind of leader, he creates a space as a lead guitarist that gets the drums and keys and sax (with those sweet sax effects) to explore on their own, somehow willing them to create a soundscape and then he just takes over. The music last night was groovy, but also very subdued, in a very good way, very experimental and meandering. I don’t know, are those even songs? Doesn’t matter, the music was awesome, not centered on any one musician or theme, just constantly moving, moving, moving, building a bit, but only a bit. So good. and then, what the hell, 10 minutes gone by, another 5, is this the same song? this is so fucking good. So good. I need to get back to Letlove Inn next Tuesday. Never not amazing.
14Nov19
Lux Prima (Karen O + Danger Mouse) @ Kings Theatre
So, last night was one of those nights where it’s actually kind of stressful to be in the NYC livemusic scene. Is there such a thing as too many options? Too many choices, enough amazing shows going on at more or less the same time that the laws of physics being what they are, it’s almost impossible that whatever you choose (and you have to choose something), you’ll have made the wrong choice. Such a conundrum. I think there were a good 15 shows that I would have loved to have hit. No exaggeration, some of my absolute favorite, no-way-you-can-miss bands and musicians were playing shows last night. Holy heck, what to do?
Well, the choice was kind of easy. The Lux Prima album from Karen O and Danger Mouse is one of my favorites of the year, an absolute gem of a collaboration, beginning-to-end a bit of a modern day masterpiece, album as mood in all the right ways. And they’re playing the album only once, and it’s at Kings Theatre, the most beautiful venue in the city, with a wonderful laid-back vibe and awesome staff that always feels like it’s counter to its ornate, old theater-vibe, and by writing it up in preview, I don’t even have to pay to go… well, that was a no-brainer decision, one that I wouldn’t regret making, but, being this was November 14th, the date with a gazillion shows on the calendar, I’d probably regret no matter what.
The theater was surprisingly/maybe-not-surprisingly kinda half full or so, maybe more. I was on the floor and it wasn’t empty by any stretch, but there was plenty of room. The lights went down around 9:18 or so, a little after quarter past, and there’s sound over the PA that’s sort of like a haunting rush of being by the beach at night — a roar of waves lapping up on shore, but you can’t see it. Kind of comforting, kind of scary. One by one the band took the stage — drums, synth, guitar (Sam Cohen! (who is on Danger Mouse’s label)), a 4-person string section and a 3 backing vocalists. The band starts to play the main “theme” of the album, “Lux Prima,” an orchestral, cinematic thing, fully fluorished, a lowtempo groove permeating like salty mist from the ocean just out of view. This went on for a few minutes, a single bright light shining on an empty spot front center of the stage, as if waiting for a star to appear, LED tubes scattered around the stage, low key production, but effective for setting the mood. At this point, I am well prepared for a show that is about to blow me away. I’m not saying I expected it, but I was prepared for the possibility.
A possibility that never arrived, alas. The show was very good, don’t get me wrong. When the band left the stage and the lights came up, a little more than an hour later, there was nothing in my mind that wasn’t saying that was a good show. It was. I am glad I was there. But it didn’t transcend the way the album does. I guess in retrospect it’s no surprise a one-time-only performance of a 45-minute album straight through may not meet the transcendent plateau. Drivnig home after, I couldn’t help but compare it to the Jim James + Orchestra show at LPR, wondering if this show would have fared better in a more intimate setting.
So, like, what about the show, right? Karen O comes out in a dazzling sequined bodysuit matched with an even more dazzling sequined hood, a sci-fi version of Little Red Riding Hood perhaps, although hers was green and she was not little… she loomed large on the stage, untethered microphone in her hand. She came out shortly after Danger Mouse who stood behind a keyboard back center stage and took the Lux Prima theme into a nice groove for Karen. And she started singing, her voice maybe a little unsteady, not a strong confident voice, more like someone ready to chat with friends amiably, not control a big theater like Kings. And no sooner did she start singing then she lost her train, maybe she forgot the lyrics, maybe she was nervous, maybe there were intoxicants involved, maybe she was just giddy or in a weird mood, but whatever it was, she just stopped singing, not quite lost but also not quite there. If this was a small indie band or something, the band would have been able to pick it right back up, no problem… but this was a large ensemble that probably wasn’t 100% sure of themselves and so they kind of had trouble going again, but eventually they got there and go through the song. She had a similar problem in another of the first few songs, basically biffing 2 of the first 4 numbers, kind of adorable in some ways, kind of frustrating in others. There is something to be said for livemusic for LIVEMUSIC, it’s live, it’s exciting for many reasons and one of those reasons is that mistakes can be made, and you in the audience get to see them, know that it’s being done there live in front of you, watch to see how the musicians react, how they correct, how they make it work…or don’t.
Luckily, Karen O is a bit of a giant and her magnetic personality and stage presence overcame the difficulties. Luckier still, the band was phenomenal. The best moments of the show were ones that felt like Karen was singing on top of the band, this orchestra playing an entrancing soundtrack to a movie that does’t exist, science fiction, romance, thriller, mystery… this film had it all. There were moments in almost every song where she was singing a line over and over, lyric as mantra, it was in these moments, when her voice melded in with the band that were the strongest. At least for the first half of the show. The second or third song featured the first of several ferocious Sam Cohen solos; the drummer was perhaps central to it all, loudest in the mix (oh, that worrisome Kings Theater mix, why is it so confounding?), I want to know who that drummer was, he was the hero of the night to me; the strings and the orchestra, when they came in, added all the drama and flair. The band was phenomenal, as good as I wanted them to be, even if I couldn’t always hear them all as well as I’d have liked.
After a few songs, Karen left the stage and the band went on an extended run on that theme again. She returned in a new outfit, a Cleopatra from the future. From then on, the show really felt much stronger. Ironically, the music got quieter, weirder, more introspective. The slower the tempo got, the stronger the music felt to me. Karen moved around hypnotically, little dance moves, natural twirls and undulations of arms and head. Between the outfit and the moves and the singing which got better as the set went on, she was utterly enchanting. A couple more songs and she came back in another outfit altogether, disco astronaut, a silver streak. A couple more songs and it was over. On one hand, they left making you want more. On the other hand, that was that and 15 or 20 more minutes of it wouldn’t have made it any better or worse.
( One thing I forgot to mention for the Lux Prima set is that for a couple songs a two-person horn section came out and that included Jordan McLean on trumpet and, I am pretty sure, the guy who plays trombone with Rev Vince. Dave Smith, maybe.)
A good show, no regrets, but…
Wayne Krantz, Evan Marien, Ari Hoenig @ 55 Bar (late set)
…a bit of a drive, but a necessary one. It had been like 3 or 4 weeks since my last Krantz visit and I was in dire need of some Wayne in my life. We got there in time to settle in close to the front and was happily surprised that the music started a little early, right at 11:23. I would have been annoyed if I had been rushing from somewhere else, but it worked out this time.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said? HOLYSHIT! HolyF’INshit! Every week is the best ever and this week’s was, indeed, the best ever (until next week).
The trio was feeling it, they were tight as hell and incredibly experimental. The first two songs, especially, found Wayne doing things I’ve never seen him do, redefining his instrument for the umpthousandth time. Seriously, I noted this in a review a few weeks ago, but I am now obsessed with the fact that WK does entirely new things with the guitar every week. How is it even possible? He has this way of playing each string in a chord or solo in a different way, so that some vibrate one way, some echo another, some notes come and go like twinkles of stars, other linger in the air like soap bubbles before eventually popping. How does he do it? A couple absolute mindboggling solos from Wayne last night.
But as much as any Thursday at 55 Bar, this was a 3-man affair, each of the players absolutely bananas. It struck me last night (every night something different strikes me, it’s what makes it worth going back to week after week), it struck me that this band plays a very funky funk and a very rocking rock and that funk and rock are built entirely on the power of repetition, riffs and phrases and beats and bass lines that loop, more or less, giving the listener something to latch onto, giving the body something to dance to. That’s music, right? But you watch this trio, especially on a night last night and none of them, not Evan or Ari or Wayne, are repeating anything, not at all. Marien was especially fluid and one-directional, never looping back on anything, just one continuous string of notes from the bass, no riffs, just pure solo more or less. He took the lead several times last night, and was totally fucking amazing. At one point he took the lead for an extended stretch (I think this was in U Can’t Touch This) and it was like he was channeling the love child of Jaco Pastorius and Bootsy Collins, for real, that good. Good lord, laugh-out-loud amazing.
So many of the Wayne jams follow a pattern of some sort, the interleaving of the main theme of the “song” and the improvised section, often hititng the twice; so some go theme/improv/theme; some go improv/theme/improv/theme or vice versa: theme/improv/theme/improv/coda finish. Last night several pieces got so “lost” that they hit the theme only once. During “Another One Bites the Dust,” the jam got so hairy, Wayne actually walked over the Marien and checked his sheet music before hitting the final riff out of a very-out-there improv. “I forgot what song we were playing!” he announced to the crowd in a rare bit of mid-set banter. That’s something you don’t hear WK say too often. The highlight number again was that “heavy metal riff” song they do, typically going improv/riff/improv/riff. Last night it was just a very long jam, a crazy three-man faster/faster/faster thing that finally hit the riff and just ended. A very rare improv/riff. Damn.
I wouldn’t believe I could write at length about the same gig every freakin’ week, but it’s just that special, that new and interesting and flabbergasting that I don’t know if I’ll ever run out of things to say about it, much in the same way that Wayne never seems to run out of new and intersting and special things to say with that guitar of his.
And I didn’t even get to mention Ari Hoenig being ridiculous or the fact that they didn’t even end with Manic Depression… they ended at exactly 59 minutes of awesome. Perfect. Go next week, I’ll see you there.
15Nov19
5 hours pretty much straight of so-fucking-sick tunes last night in north/east Brooklyn. Mind still reeling from the final stop.
Kikagaku Moyo (Minami Deutsch opened) @ Warsaw
An accident on the LIE stole a few mintes of the opening set from us and goshdarnit, I want those minutes back. Those Minamiminutes. MD was a FreaksList discovery for me a few years ago and have been sinking my teeth into everything they’ve put out since then. In the studio, they’re a killer jamming prog band, more Eurojam than Japanese. Live, as I found out about a millisecond after walking into the Warsaw, they are a deeply psychedelic machine — two guitars, drums, bass — of the type that takes whatever “song” they’re playing as a suggestion for furious out-there improvisation. It’s easy to get caught up in cliched adjectives to desribe music — sick! killer! mindlblowing! — but what else can I say, they were sick, killer, mindblowing and then some. They squeezed an evening’s worth of jams into their 30–35 minutes, the sold out venue nearly full by the time they ended, everyone sort of wondering if they had just seen the headliner.
My thought between sets was that MD was sort of a looser, free-form band and that Kikagaku Moyo, who definitely jams, is more about their compositions, proggy type shit with moments of loveliness and moments of orchestra complexity, powerful riffs and surprising funkiness. That’s the KM that I have known for the past few years, watching them grow from a where is everybody? set a few years back at Sunnyvale to a oh, there they are awesome packed set on the Elsewhere rooftop this summer. I listen to a lot of bands from overseas and figure I’ll never get to see about 99% of them and it’s weird to me that certain ones resonate, make the effort to come over here and, if they’re good enough and lucky, catch fire. For whatever reason, I don’t know why, Kikagaku Moyo was one that has caught fire. It wasn’t a given. Maybe it’s the slick use of a jamming sitar, or they’re just that good, who knows. The first time I saw them I considered myself lucky that they made the effort to come to the States at least once and that I got to see them. I never figured they’d be selling out Warsaw within 5 years. Each time back they’ve gotten better and better, made all the right decisions with the direction of both their studio releases and live show, evolved in interesting ways and, although not a given, moved to bigger and bigger rooms. By my count, last night was their third set in NYC this year! Damn! All I’m saying is, that it wasn’t a given that they’d get to this point and not a given that they’d evole the way they have.
So, I was expecting a version of KM that I’d seen before, but maybe tailored for a bigger room. But no, that’s not what they did at all. I think it was pretty ballsy, but they opened the show with a very long, drawn out, to be honest slow moving jam, almost a glacial drone, that was intensely psychedelic. This is a band that has a bunch of serious ragers and some addictive groovers in their sack of tricks, and they basically came out and did an extended noise jam to open their biggest headlining show in NYC, basically their biggest show ever, if I may be honest about it. They followed that up with something that was a bit more structured, but still pretty subtle and introspective. Damn, I couldn’t believe it. The thing is, as much as that audience wanted to explode and party Friday night style, the music was so fucking good, the band totally absorbing and interestisng in their intricate interplay, weaving their exotic melodies through this heavy mass of sound, they were so goddamn good, that it didn’t matter what they played. The opening bits served as a bit of a full-audience hypnosis, a pocketwatch swinging back and forth in mind-altering rhythm, the collective crowd completely entranced. And then… BOOM! They started in with their A+, prog-alicious, fire jams. The set was a masterpiece, but by far the most jammed out and exploatory I’ve seen these guys play. And then in the middle, they went to the acoustic thing, the drummer coming out with an acoustic guitar, sititng down and playing some Japanese freakfolk shit that was just as mesmerizing and hypnotic as the psychjams they’d been laying down. The Japanese lyrics added an extra layer of mysticism to the sound and again, I was seriously impressed with the band’s ability to keep their spell over the audience, and Warsaw is not a cozy place, it’s a place where attentions can wander, especially as you get towards the back, especially on a sold out Friday night, but the band kept eveyone completelly entranced no matter what they did. I mean, holy crap, somehow these 5 Japanese dudes have unlocked the secret.
I’ve loved every show I’ve seen from these guys — last night was my 5th Kikagaku Moyo show — but that was easily, not even close, the best I’ve seen them. Makes you wonder what’s next. Can’t wait to find out.
National Reserve @ Skinny Dennis
It’s quite a city where it’s 11:30 and you’ve got an hour or two to kill before your next destination. Skinny Dennis was in the right spot at the right time and even though we walked in right as the penultimate set was ending, it was the right call for a Williamsburg Intermezzo (#fakejambands). The place was packed for a Friday night and I was definitely in the long tail of oldest person here, but it’s never not great at Skinny Dennis. My main reason for wanting to stop by was to confirm that “JNO All Stars” is actually The National Reserve. I will one day find out the backstory to all these alternate band names and wait, is that the same band? situations at Skinny Dennis, but for now, I’m just a newbie.
I freaking love The National Reserve and they did nothing to dispel that in the 30 or so minutes we caught last night, the tail end of one set and the first half or so of the final midnight-to-1am set. Sean Walsh is a lovably imposing figure fronting the band and he has a voice absolutely made to sing these songs — his own and also some great covers — and command a packed SD, a room filled with people who are finishing out their nights (several folk from Billy Strings up the road were there) or on dates or just trying to pick up a guy/gal. Perfect bar-ready country-rock that pairs perfectly with cheap, cold bottled beer. Can’t beat it. Highlights for me were the covers of Sittin’ On Top of the World and It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. They do a great job making their covers sit on the precipice between very recognizable and not very recognizable, making them their own and staying true in equal doses. The Dylan cover, which we left after, was superb, as good a version of that song I’ve heard, the tempo slightly off, Walsh taking liberties with the pacing, an extra growl of twangy guitar. So good. Playing again this afternoon, I might have to drop in again!
Kikagaku Moyo/Minami Deutsch Jam @ The Broadway
Sometime during the late afternoon a postshow jam session featuring members of the two bands from the Warsaw, going down at the Broadway in Bushwick was announced. Uh, yes please!! [[side note: someone at work yesterday was talking to me about something and said the words “and I only got like 5 hours of sleep!]] and I could only smile thinking only??]]
I don’t even know how to properly review this thing. Because they waited to open the doors to the upstairs performance area at the bar, I ended up lingering and got stuck behind a crowd to get up there and didn’t get into the room until they’d already started and so was kind of in the back and couldn’t really see what was going on. Nevertheless, this wasn’t a need-to-see kind of thing. It was barely even a need-to-hear kind of thing. The music that was being made on stage by some combination of players from both bands, the music was something that didn’t go through your ears, it just kind of passed through your skin, jam osmosis, like hot or cold just takes over your whole body. This set was a whole-body/out-of-body experience. If that music was a drug, it’d be the best fucking drug ever. Give me more, more, more. Quite simply one of the best sets of music I’ve seen this year.
The first “piece” was a gargantuan jam machine. It was like watching 6 or so Japanese jamsters hop into a sled at the top of the hill and barrel down under the unrelenting force of gravity, spitting up ice and snow and, fuckin-A, smoke, until they reach the ground. Then they’d trudge back up the hill, maybe a little higher this time, and do it again. Seriously, they’d just start riffing and then just built up momentum, like ridiculous amounts of momentum, sort of controlled, but sort of completely out of control, and they’re just teeeeeming down a hillside of rockjam, guitars and bass and drums and there’s a dude just hitting a triangle on stage and it’s maybe tying the whole jam together?, and they just get going and going and going and it’s faster and harder and more ecstatic than anything you can imagine and, holy shit!, there’s still like 50 yards til the bottom, there’s now way they’re going to survive this is there?, now way we’re going to survive trying to keep up with this, right? I mean, it’s 1:45 in the morning in deep Bushwick, am I hearing this music or just feeling it or am I just dreaming? Faster, harder, awesomer and then splat at the bottom of the hill. Band meanders a bit while it reloads, stomps back up the hill en masse and then hops in the sled and woooooooo! Over and over like that for like 20 minutes. Holy shit, insane.
I think they went about 80+ minutes, everything they did, I mean everything they played over that 80+ minutes was ridiculous. Whatever you are looking for in a late night jam session, they did it. It was heavy rocking, it was blissfully dreamlike, it was mindfuckingly psychedelic, it was funky and dance-ready. It makes absolutely no difference, but I’m not sure if they were just making shit up and going or if they were playing songs… because there were melodies in there that sounded like they were preconceived (there was even some short singing in there, but absolutely possible that the lyrics and melodies were made up on the spot). If they made those up in Bushwick last night, holy shit, wow!, if they brought them with them from Japan, well, thank you very much, because they were the launching point for some of the craziest awesome jamming I’ve ever seen. The set was like one of those mixes that get passed around of Phish that are just the jams, man!, wild, inventive, wait, those guys are in two different bands!?, amazement.
After about an hour of this madness, they were ready to call it quits. I had absolutely gotten my $10 worth and then some, but the crowd demanded more. They asked for more musicians and a couple dudes hopped up on stage and they took off again, anothher 15 or 20 minutes, maybe a little less in the tank than the opening stretch, but it’s all relative… you won’t find better jams after 2am anywhere, I guarantee. I am pretty sure this was not recorded, which is probably for the best. I’m still not sure it actually happened.
In a word, wow!
16Nov19
Live From Here @ Town Hall
I wrote this up for Bowery Presents House List here, so not going to give too much of an additional rundown on this one. Needless to say, the LFH magic was in full effect. I had a feeling this could be a sleeper version as I think the lineup didn’t quite pop for some the way some of the lineups do. I don’t know that it was the best Live From Here I’ve ever seen, but it was absolutely fantastic in the way the best LFH’s are. I had a very strong feeling of the show really settling in, the format continues to be tweaked and I thought the beginning of this fall season felt a bit rushed, like they were squeezing so much in that there was little time to breathe in between songs and acts and whatever else was on the docket. Last evening’s had a very relaxed vibe, I thought, the pacing felt rehearsed, but in a good way, like Thile and everyone were just very confident and laid back about the whole thing. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but that’s the way it felt to me and it carried over into pretty much all the acts.
I think Big Thief merits a sentence or two, they came onstage after a rather gorgeous and somber duet between Aoife and Chris and just plugged in and BAM! killed it. The band has 2 terrific albums out this calendar year, I dig ’em a bit, but somehow they get lost in the shuffle for me of all the amazing music out there. I have never seen them live and the four songs they played last night, especially “Not,” but really all of them, were flat out awesome, like super killer, great songs, amazing band, at least one Crazy Horse guitar-meltdown… I mean, they flat-out wowed me. I need to see this band play a full show. Dang!
Anyway, great Live From Here, the house band felt very “featured” in a great way as well. I thought drummer Eric Doob was a quiet MVP, allowing the band to go from indie rock to opera and all points in between and sound more-than-plausible. And now I’ve managed to review this show twice, I’ll stop here.
Billy Strings @ Brooklyn Bowl
Got a late miracle into this very sold out show last night. Thank goodness! What a freakin’ show. It’s an amazing thing when the hype matches the talent, when all the pieces seem to be in place, when you’re catching a rising star and you know it and they have to know it and you’re in a room filled with people who know the fuck out of it. It makes a happy situation, the situation of just going to see great music, which is enough on any given night, it makes that happy situation even happier and you could feel it very strongly in the room last night. I mean, it was fucking packed in Brooklyn Bowl last night, pretty much jammed right back to the bar which is about where we were standing. But it was the friendliest, happiest packed-to-the-gills Brooklyn Bowl I’ve experienced. And from the back of the room I felt like I could take it all in, the music sounded amazing (best sound I’ve experienced at the Bowl), the room looked amazing lit up and filled with smiling dancing bodies (best lights I’ve experienced at the Bowl). It felt like a moment in all the ways you want it to.
We came in in the middle of what turned out to be a way-out there amazeballs jam on Me & My Uncle. Not sure if it was the opener, but it was a fine way to start the second part of my night. I mean, take your coat off and make-yourself-at-home kind of welcome to the show, the band was mid-sickness, absolutely setting the tone for the night, creating an on-the-spot psychedelic masterpiece with the tools and motifs from traditional bluegrass. Strings’ name is on the marquee and rightly so, I’ll get to him in a second, but this really is a band and those first few minutes where they were creating this nothing-like-it kind of sound in the bluegrass genre, so clearly bluegrass, but absolutely nothing like it, not Yonder Mountain, not Greensky, something very new, it was the whole band, the quartet of strings, weaving in and out of each other, fully-immersed full-band listening, high-level jamming. Well, if you walked in off Wythe into that jam knowing nothing, you’d have trouble guessing who the leader of the band. Which one’s Strings?
And even so. Even so this quartet featured some killer mandolin and banjo, each of those taking at least two or three melt-the-brain solos of their very own over the course of the night, even so, there’s one fucking star in this band. Billy Strings is what I call a 5-tool player, writes a damn good song, can sing his heart out, superlatively good at his instrument (acoustic guitar) puts out amazing albums, and absolutely kills it live on stage. He’s amazing at all of these things, and can lead a band through a jam like few others. There were times when he used a few effects, but he didn’t need them to make truly hallucenegenic music with his guitar. I couldn’t help but thinking this is the acoustic Wayne Krantz. The way he played the guitar last night was like someone inventing a new instrument, the way he hit the strings and the music coming out of them was like nothing I’ve heard before, solos that seemed worked out 12-chess-moves ahead, the way he zigged and zagged through his bandmates, and they reciprocating in mind-twisting complement. I mean, fucking-A the jams, and there were a bunch of ’em, with maybe 4 or so true legpost jams on which the show sat firmly, 4 or 5 moments of where-am-I transcendence usually reserved for the highest level jazz-like ensembles. I mean, fucking hell.
But if this was just a band that jammed they’d be good and fun and probably sell out Brooklyn Bowl, but they wouldn’t be the special thing they are. This is a band that’s firmly rooted in the Americana traditions, both in their covers and originals. This is legit bluegrass music who would be just as compelling playing a straight set of bluegrass traditionals on a sunny daytime stage at your favorite bluegrass festival. They brought that family energy to the stage last night, amazing originals, sweet covers, conversatoinal jams, a fantastic audience… what more could you ask for?
17Nov19
A great week ends in typically great fashion…
Mike Neer’s Steelonious @ Barbes
Somewhere between the great and vast residencies of NYC and the just-passing-through National acts are a bunch of locally “bands” that get together once in a while in their favored haunts. Some of them I’ve seen, some of them I’ve got on my want-to-see list and plenty I’m sure, I don’t know yet and once I do I’ll want to see them. The city overfloweth with livemusic goodness.
Mike Neer’s Steelonious is a listing that pops up on the Barbes calendar once every month or two or three and I’m always intrigued: steel guitar-based versions of Thelonious Monk songs. I love Monk. For so many reasons. I love how I first heard of him, a poster on the wall of the college house of whom I considered the coolest person I knew at the time, the guy who introduced me to Phish in my impressionable youth, someone I visited when he was in college and I was still in high school. There was a poster of “Straight, No Chaser” on the wall in the living room and I was like “cool poster” and he was like “it was here when we moved in.” And yet, still, through some osmosis of cool, that was enough to get me to check him out and fall in love with his ridiculous catalog and unique compositional prowess. What’s amazing over the years is how that catalog has been a continuously soft lump of clay for so many musicians over the years, not just jazz bands, but well beyond. TJ Kirk is a band everyone should know, but there have been plenty like it. I remember going to see this crazy band called Brilliant Coroners in the Tap Bar at the old Knitting Factory, wildly inventive experimental rock versions of Monk tunes… I would love to see those guys again.
This band is in that tradition. It’s a weird tradition that somehow figured out that this music made largely for piano and saxophone works really well for guitar. I mean, ask Bill Frisell. On top of that, you have the indisputable fact that steel guitar makes everything better in every way. Indisputable. I walked in and they started up Bemsha Swing and I knew I was in the right place. Took me a second to realize that Will Bernard was on guitar and a couple more minutes before I was like wait a minute, Will was in TJ Kirk and then I knew I was in the right place. The set was about 75 minutes long and featured actually only about half Monk tunes with some other similarly-themed pieces by Eric Dolphy and Horace Silver. They did “Epistrophy” kind of straight up and one tune they did kind of surf-rock and Bye-Ya really dug its teeth into its Latin rhythms and another was more a Western Swing. The band was fantastic, also featured Andrew Hall on bass who I think is in Brain Cloud among others and a great drummer whose name I don’t remember. Neer and Bernard shared soloing duties and really complemented each other nicely. The highlight was a transcendent version of “‘Round Midnight” with a Neer lap steel solo that had me out of my mind for a moment or two, just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. I had a feeling I was going to like these guys, but they still exceeded my expectations… will be eagerly looking out for their next gig.
L.A. Salami @ Rough Trade
I reviewed this show for Bowery here.
I think Salami is probably one of the top 5 songwriters out there right now and a magnetic performer on top of that. I’ll give that it was a late-fall Sunday evening and warm-and-inside-and-near-my-bed is tempting, but, man, this show was kind of criminally underattended. Not that it was empty, but somehow this guy is not on enough people’s radars. Really outstanding set. This was my 4th time seeing him and he has kind of blown me away every time. More in the review…
