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-ninth of hopefully 52 posts…
With just 4 weeks left in 2019, I think we just might make it! A lot of shows, a lot of writing about shows and still plenty more to come, I hope.
2Dec19
Sam Amidon @ Club Passim (Cambridge, MA)
This week I’m out of town which affords me the chance to see music in new places… or at least new-to-me places. Even though I spent 4 years up the road from Harvard Square, I never once even heard about Club Passim in Harvard Square, a perfect little basement folk club. Part of the reason I am the way I am with music now is that during those formative college years, my musical peripheral vision was so limited that I’m embarrassed about all the music I could have seen when I was at a ripe young age. It’s ridiculous that I never once went to this place, but glad I did go last night.
Sam Amidon is one of my many favorite musicians, a magical folk player that plays music that’s been around for generations and yet sounds like no one I’ve heard before. The opener was Eamon O’Leary — you’re never going to believe this, but he’s Irish. He played backed by a female vocalist, singing original folk tunes with his guitar and voice, the kind of finger-picked guitar folk that influenced guys like Ryley Walker, although not nearly that guitar-centric. It was a nasty, cold, you-should-be-home-cozy-in-PJ”s kind of night, a very who goes out on such a wintry Monday night Monday night, and the scene — a comfortably cramped downstairs room, everyone sipping beers and eating comfort food (I ordered soup & grilled cheese, I felt there was no other choice when I saw it on the menu), dampened parkas and sweaters and hats drying over the seatbacks, lovely, simply folk music from Ireland being played at one end of the darkness — the scene could only have been made more perfect if there was a fire crackling in one corner of the club. Alas, the crackling would have to be provided by the music, which was just fine.
The Bill Frisell shows I saw at Jazz Standard a couple weeks back have really lingered on in my musical mind, the spirit, energy and sounds of those gigs evoking themselves in other shows I’ve seen since then. Last night this was the case once again. The first time I saw Sam Amidon, several years ago, he was actually backed by Frisell and last night as Sam put me into the same kind of trancelike stupor that Bill does, the connection felt very deep once again. I’ve written about Amidon a bunch, the way he straddles the folk and jazz worlds (with a tiny dollop of indie). When you see him play and hear his voice sing these old Appalachian and country songs, hear him play guitar and banjo and fiddle, the kind of guy who channels as much as sings in the here and now, when you hear Sam Amidon play music you are hearing someone who was born to play this beautiful, creaky old folk music. He is a student of the genre and comes at it from a perspective of love and awe and passion that comes through in ways that make it feel new and weird. But in his heart, I think, he’s also a major lover of jazz, maybe a frustrated jazz musician… he once told a story at a show I was at about being the only violin player at a jazz camp when he was a kid that was kind of funny and endearing and spoke to this disconnect between what he wanted to do and what he was meant to do. What Sam’s real art is, then, is finding a way to marry his love for jazz with his purpose in folk. He does this by infusing an improvisational spirit into his music and also, more directly, by playing with jazz musicians in his band. Bill Frisell being one example, a big jazz band at a Winter Jazz Fest show at LPR a couple years back being another. It’s not a new concept, this marriage of genres, but he does do it in a way that I’ve never heard anyone do before.
Last night/this tour, he’s playing with an electric guitar player and a drummer, two guys from Toronto that were a terrific backing band. The show opened with “Juma Mountain” off his The Following Mountain album, the drums and guitar creating this mystical energy around Sam’s voice. It’s not that the music itself is Frisellian directly, but it’s more that it has the same effect as Frisell at his best: a dreamlike, shimmering thing, like the world goes wavy the way an old movie might go wavy when gong to a flashback or dream sequence. The whole set was a cinematic dream sequence and I often found myself closing my eyes, losing myself in Sam’s voice in the interplay between his banjo or acoustic guitar and the electric guitar that had a decidedly jazz tone to it. The real hypnosis was in the drums, a soft methodical percussion, the narcotic beat of horse’s hooves or the rhythmic jostle of a train from New York to Boston, taking you and your wandering mind all over the snowy world. There were moments where Sam let the music go loose, improvised outros or segues, the overlap of folk and jazz providing a creative slurry for the trio to cavort. At one point he did a little jokey riff on Thelonious Monk on his guitar, tacitly acknowledging the infusion of old jazz into his folk show. Amidon’s love for Jimi Hendrix was also acknowledged in some of his (always great) banter and later when he mimicked lighting his guitar on fire. They played all the “hits” from Sam’s recent releases as well as a few songs from his most recent release, an EP of songs from Harry Smith’s collection, including the title track “Fatal Flower Garden” and “Dry Bones,” and they encored with Sam’s cover of Arthur Russell’s “Lucky Cloud.” Somewhere in there he did 20+ legit pushups on stage for some reason, all part of the off-kilter charm of Sam Amidon, I suppose.
All in all, everything was pure magic. I was a little bummed when I thought I would be missing his NYC show (tonight! you should go!!), but was doubly psyched the other way when I realized I’d be able to see him in Boston. Sam Amidon = don’t miss.
Matthew Stubbs & the Antiguas @ The Sinclair Kitchen
I’ve been to Boston 3 or 4 times in the past couple years for work, trips that inevitably included a Monday night. In NYC, Mondays are made for residencies and, to a lesser extent, the same is true of Boston/Cambridge. I’ve caught Matthew Stubbs twice on Monday nights in this bar/restaurant space next to the full club The Sinclair a couple times. It’s a funny space for music, multiple pinball tables and signs for pinball tournaments, but it’s cozy just the same. As fate would have it, it is about as close to Club Passim as you can get, so it was a no-brainer to stop by after Amidon was done. The only problem was that the show at Passim ended at 9 and music at Sinclair didn’t start until after 10… and unfortunately too cold and wet to just walk around. Ah well, managed to kill the time and glad I did.
The name of the Matthew Stubbs and the Antiguas residency is “Downbeat Mondays” and there is a kind of mellow hang vibe to it. Still, the band absolutely cooks and if they were playing for a crowd on a Friday and Saturday, there’s no doubt everyone would be dancing. As it was, last night there were less than 10 people there, which is about average for the times I’ve been there. Mondays are tough, cold, snowy Mondays even more so. The band seemed impervious to the crowd size, laying a nice hour-plus first set of their psychedelic surf boogaloo down. Stubbs plays guitar, but the whole band — drums/bass/organ and a guest sax player — is fully in the mix. They have a sound that bounces around from Booker T to surf rock to more spaced out psych rock and more. One song went deep dub for a while. Some of the tunes were better than others, but Stubbs strength is in composing these worthy riffs and songs for the band to dig into, rocking out or funkin’ down or space-voyagin’. They have super trippy projections on the screen behind them and a great beer selection at the bar with a very friendly vibe from the people there. When I was walking out at setbreak (they do two sets and go pretty late in my experience), someone who was walking out at the same time asked if I’d been there before, I looked like a regular. Maybe. It’s never been not worth it, there’s a reason I hit it for the third time last night and would absolutely go back next time I’m in town on Monday, and if you are in the area I suggest you do the same.
3Dec19 Neighbor @ Thunder Road (Somerville)
{I just had an entire 3/4 of a perfectly good review disappear when the hotel WiFi lapsed (your hotel should have free WiFi, thank you) and I am not happy about it… will try again}
I come up to Boston for work once or twice a year the past couple years and always try to hit music and always solicit recommendations when I can. The last year I’ve had no fewer than 5 people enthusiastically tell me to check out the Tuesday night gig at Thunder Road, a band called Neighbor. It’s a side project of the Pink Talking Fish keyboardist Richard James. The bassist is from New Motif and I’m sure the other guys are in their own bands as well. I figured it was some sort of loose jam session: funky improv and cover songs. I figured I could do worse and headed there last night.
I walked in towards the end of their first set and the band was mid-jam, deep into something cool. Guitarist Lyle Brewer had his best Jerry-mid-Estimated thing going on and was leading the band through some cool improv. I don’t do a lot of jambands, but I could see the appeal of the music and the band definitely had the play every week thing going on with their chemistry and skill. I am a fan of residencies for so many reasons, but the comfort and chemistry that comes along with a band playing weekly together is irreplaceable. How do you think Phish and WSP got so good from the get go? Even more than the music, I could tell that I had happened upon a scene. Like everyone seemed to know everyone else and the reason they knew each other was because they came to Thunder Road in Somerville more Tuesdays than not. This initial observation grew to full admiration for a community that has sprung up around this residency, venue and band. The whole idea of communities with their own internal culture and rituals evolving around bands or venues is a fascinating one. We know about our Deadheads and Phish scenes, but there are many more of them out there and little did I know when I headed to this show last night that I would be doing a little amateur scenester anthropology. It turns out I knew more than one person there. One of them handed me a koozie that had the band’s name on one side and “C U Next Thursday” cheekily written acrostically on the other side. I had been quickly accepted into the tribe and I got the feeling that that’s most likely the case for people attending their first, second or twentieth Neighbor show on a Tuesday night.
So, like, I was expected jam session, loose themes, cover songs, etc. The initial jam I walked in on felt like more than that, the band bouncing from one set point to another, quite admirably, I might add, and when they ended on a dot, all four of ’em, I was definitely intrigued. Was that an original? The next song was definitely a song, James singing quite nicely, the band working through a definite original piece that had a nice little instrumental bridge. What had I happened upon here? The set ended and more or less the entire audience went outside for what is apparently a group photograph. I was in the tribe now, I was in the photograph. There were disco balls and plenty of goofy camaraderie. Fun. Looks like I’d stick around for a while.
Even though it was my first ever Neighbor show, the second set was all killer no filler. Yes, this band was writing their own material and had plenty of it. Brewer is a legit guitarist in the Anastasio mold. I think guitarist sounds like Trey is something that was invented somewhere not too far from Thunder Road sometime in the early 90’s and when I compare Brewer’s playing to T’s, I do not mean to be reductionist or pigeonholing. He’s definitely taken Trey’s modes and sound and bent them into his own style. Regardless, he’s good and he took plenty of really great solos. He’s not a shredder, in a good way, his solos were thoughtful and artistic, they had a purpose and pulled the right emotional strings. Not easy to do in a jamband-y setting (which is why so many jambands sound the same to me and why it’s rare you’ll find me at one of their shows). After a rather soaring guitarjam near the start of the second set, a random guy leaned over to me… “that one’s called ‘Apple Tree.’” This was the first of several people in the audience telling me the names of songs during/after they were played. This was incredibly endearing and was probably my favorite part of the night: everyone so enthusiastic about their music and their thing and wanting so badly to share it with anyone who happened to find themselves there for whatever reason. “‘that was ‘Magma Zero’” (I’m probably forgetting these song names). Whether it was called Magma Zero or something else, it was a serious psychedelic meltdown, like “Welcome to the Machine” on (even more) acid, a far-flung synth thing from James that got there gave way to an even more through-the-monolith jam from Brewer, darkjams of the best kind. That was good. “Pine Tree” was clearly marked as the band’s anthem when it started (“this is ‘Pine Tree’” he said with a look that said “oh, yeah!”) and didn’t disappoint, a well-composed song with great singing from James and multiple sections that led naturally from one to the other, a few well-earned payoffs along the way and at least one is this the same song? moment. Somewhere in there Brewer did this quite-lovely solo thing that I’m going to just say was a Bach piece, but my ability to recognize Bach pieces is limited by my not-knowing-a-fucking-thing-about-Bach. Regardless, it was a very cool, almost Thile-esque interlude. They ended up reprising Pine Tree to start an encore that may have been more like a third set even when it seemed possible they weren’t going to come back at all. Very few people left early, the crowd still going strong for the extended encore, which included a none-too-shabby cover of “Spanish Moon,” to the end.
Good times, thanks for the recs internet, you didn’t steer me wrong, and thanks Neighbor gang for welcoming me into the fold. I know where I’ll be next time work takes me to Boston.
4Dec19
Lucy Dacus @ Royale
I have to say, I’ve struggled to find shows in Boston before, but 4th show in 3 nights with some leigit options to choose from, particularly last night… pretty good. Final night in town was a chance to catch Lucy Dacus at a new-to-me room, Royale. The venue kind of reminded me of a much nicer Webster Hall, maybe a little smaller, more ornate and funky in its decor, but same kind of layout… with one oddity. The main floor area is elevated several inches so that between where you enter and the mast majority (but not entire) space in front of the stage is a step up. If you are not on that elevated area, you are, by definition, down lower an it creates a very weird dynamic… like if you don’t make the cut, you’re better off a little ways back, otherwise you can’s see… so there is this naturally-forming moat in the dead zone. Really weird, but… we all have our quirks!!
Dacus is one of my early-subscriber artists, someone I discovered as an opening act and have followed as she’s somewhat (and deservedly quickly) made her way from unknown to playing Newport/headlining rooms like Royale/everyone’s singing along status. Definitely happy for her. The rise has definitely resulted in some well-earned confidence on stage which now runs a bit counter to her music which is a whirlwind of emotions of the type that you typically keep inside. When she was the opening act or putting out records few people were hearing, this emotional bareness was seeped in vulnerability. The songs still have that openness, and I’m sure Lucy feels the emotions genuinely, but it does conflict with the onstage persona of someone who is having her songs sung back to her for an entire set by an loving crowd… singalongs encouraged by Dacus throughout.
She opened with “Fools Gold” saying they’d never played it before, but a quick check of setlists on the tour show that she’s opened all their shows with it, so it’s kind of weird to say something like that. She knows we can look that up, right? As I said, her music is a real torrent of real emotion. There’s two ways that goes: there is the sudden burst of feeling — anger fueling a quick temper flare, sadness evoking a sudden surge of tears — and the more developed evolution of emotion as one negotiates what they’re feeling with more thought and a lifetime of lived and learned experiences. Dacus does both. Several songs, especially at the beginning, were flare-ups, quick punk-rock rage or a heavy dollop of sonic pathos. Her music really bounds on the line between depressing and angry and does it quite well, more appealing in its heart-on-sleeveness than I can say. The blasts of sad or mad are part of it, but she is much more powerful showing the way those emotions develop and evolve, starting in one place and ending in another and those songs dominated the set, in a good way. Part of Dacus’ new recognition and confidence have manifested a yearlong project where she regularly put out new songs (nearly monthly), many of which were (very cool) covers. We got a bunch of those new songs last night including two of the covers: La Vie En Rose which showed flashes of rare-for-her joy and Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” which she plays more fiery and pissed than the original. Still, it’s her originals, the ones where you can feel real-life feelings, whether they are autobiographical or not, they feel it. “I Don’t Want to Be Funny Anymore” and “Mother & I” are two great examples, you can feel the childhood angst in each word, feelings that originated in serious anger or fear or sadness, feelings that have barely dulled over however many years. The set ended up only going an hour so and it was all pretty great. I am not complaining that it was short (my least favorite complaint about livemusic), but I have to say she has so many great songs that I love that I didn’t get to hear that I would have gladly listened for another 30 minutes just to hear a few of them. The set ended with one of her best songs of her last full-length. “Night Shift” is a great example of her songwriting, her ability to start in one place and end up somewhere else, the way real anger is something that builds over time and the way she can use the dynamics of the electric guitar and voice and drums to go from a poetic kind of vulnerable place and end up in a loud, fuzzed out pissed off space in the matter of a few minutes that maybe really spans years or a lifetime. It’s all in there. “Night Shift” is a song so perfect, it’s like 2 amazing songs in one, paired together in experiences we can only imagine as the listener. That’s some powerful stuff.
As she did when she played Newport, she encored with a new song that hasn’t been released yet. It’s called “I Would Kill Him,” and it’s one of the rawest-emotion songs I’ve ever heard, abandonment, sadness and so much anger, equally spectacular whether it’s autobiographical or not, a song that shifts point of view and feeling with such ease it’s a songwriting masterpiece. On second thought, maybe any more Lucy Dacus in one night would have been too much.
6Dec18
Bedouine (Sam Cohen opens) @ Le Poisson Rouge
You’re walking through the woods. The wind through the trees, that’s the guitar, a light, airy sound; the notes from the bass are pebbles skipping across a pond, a liquidy plonk; the drums the scurrying of the small forest animals, the light rhythmic scratch of squirrel and chipmunk paws on the ground. And then you reach a clearing, like something out of a fairy tale, and there’s a billowing tent and flowers wrapped around a microphone stand and in classic fairy tale fashion, there’s what may as well be a princess standing there in a flowing dress, like she’s been trapped here by some witch’s spell. But in this fairy tale, instead of saving her from whatever curse has befallen her, she starts two sing and everyone there with you falls under the same spell and there are colored lights that seem to pass right through, like some magic spirit and the whole thing is quite fantastical.
I only slightly exaggerate, but that was more or less the energy at LPR last night for Azniv Korkejian who performs as Bedouine. Captivating voice, a guitar/bass/drum backing band that really was light and organic enough to feel like the natural background and a set of songs that were utterly spellbinding. She played mostly off her newest record, Bird Songs of a Killjoy, which is one of my favorites of the year. Her folk is a poetic thing, fairy-tale-princess delicate, but with a personal fierceness (several songs about her unique immigrant experience) and a band that almost borders on jazzy. A couple of my more favored tracks on the album early in the set, like “Sunshine Sometimes,” a song that could easily have been a Joni Mitchell B-side, and “Matters of the Heart,” the kind of love song so pure, you’re surprised no one has written it yet. For the first half of the show, she kind of maintained this mystical stage presence, barely saying a word, a spell only broken by the fact that she was wearing running shoes under her dress, which stood out like a coffee cup left on the set of a period drama. She later joked how she felt very comfortable on stage and it was because she had forgotten to change her shoes. From that point on, she was much more open and joking around and perhaps coincidentally, the music opened up a bit as well. She did a couple songs just her and the bass that maybe weren’t better than the full band, but stood out in a way that really brought the full focus onto her voice and her songwriting. So very good. Still, the full band really found some nice room to work and she let them go a bit, joking after one song that maybe an outro went on too long. Pretty much everyone in the audience was absolutely thinking not too long at all, because that outro was a rather glorious almost-jam, the guitarist and bassist artfully sculpting a rather beautiful understated sound that fit the vibe perfectly.
Anyway, I totally loved this set so much. The room felt so perfect for it, too, the LPR lights framing the music in flower-garden colors, the sound exquisite and the crowd about 2/3 full at most, everyone just rapt in the spell. Talking between sets I once again had to remark about how great a room LPR is, one of those venues that not only is perfect as a club, a physical room in the city, a room that has great sound, great lights, a pretty easy open space with few bad spots (especially in SRO format)… I don’t have much to complain about the space that is le Poisson Rouge. But more than that, there can’t be another place in the world that books like they do. They literally book every single genre there is and book very, very well, it’s rather remarkable to think about. Classical to hard core to jazz to folk to rock to jam to world music… and when LPR isn’t the right room, they book stuff in other spots around town. Happy to be a supportive member there.
The opener was the incomparable Sam Cohen. Traffic got us there later than we’d have liked, but we caught the last 3 or 4 songs and he and his band were fantastic. He played “Dead Rider” and “Let the Mountain Come to You” and a couple others when we were there, a few quick-but-effective killer guitar solos and a great band that includes Kinsey on drums and one of those whatshisname’s on bass that I’ve seen a bunch of times, as well as a guy on keys doing some nice organ fills. I can’t decide if Cohen is having a moment or is just the same old appreciated/underrated Sam Cohen, but that’s a guy that has not disappointed me too many times in the many years I’ve been seeing him. I spent some time going through my favorite albums of the 2010’s (my favorite albums of the decade playlist is here for your listening pleasure), and I was deciding which of the amazing Yellowbirds albums was my favorite and then seeing Sam last night made me a bit sad that I may never hear any of those songs played live again. Because those were some great fucking songs and there’s like no reason why they are on the heap of forgotten songs. I’d love to see Sam play some of them with his band and also I’d like to see more Sam Cohen, period, regardless of what he plays.
Jam Just Happened @ Nublu 151
We left LPR a little early in the hopes of catching a chunk of the jam session happening at Nublu. Between the crosstown traffic and the ridiculously tight East Village parking situation (#fakejambands), I ended up catching maybe the last 20+ minutes of this thing. What I caught was great, including the final “tune” which including some impromptu singalong and then some rather triumphant spine-tingling guitar work from Scott Metzger of the worth the schlep variety. Not qualified to say too much more about that one, but glad I caught what I did on both ends.
7Dec19
A most excellent Saturday…
Live From Here @ Town Hall
You don’t mind if I start at the end, do you? Chris Thile and the ridiculously good house band (perhaps the best house band I’ve seen yet?(!)) and not 2 but 3 great guest acts (holy crap, both Crooked Still and Black Pumas blew me away, big time!) had just finished another top notch broadcast (so very top notch) with a “weather” theme that ended with a great cover of “Mr Blue Sky” complete with audience participation. So Thile invites the Crooked Still gang back out for the encore, looking to play some bluegrass and, as he does, asks for suggestions from the audience. I’ve given up my “calling out for songs” generally, and shouting from the balcony is typically not a good idea, but when Thile asks for suggestions it’s fair game. It immediately came to me, the perfect recommendation and when a lull in the shout-outs from down below appeared, I went for it, shouting “Cold Rain and Snow.” A nice way to make your Saturday a good one is to get some public props from Chris Thile himself who immediately realized that, yes, it was the perfect recommendation, corralled the band to go over it quickly and off they went. I was expecting a nice quick-paced bluegrassy version, I mean he had asked for bluegrass and the versions I know all are pretty uptempo and straightforward. What ensued, though, was something much more complex, a version that weaved through bluegrass, yes, but also blues and jazz (!), a low-and-slow version of the song, like a brisket that’s sat on the smoker overnight and just melts in your mouth with flavor, taking full meat-seasoning advantage of all the talent on his stage, the entire house band (did I mention how good this band was, especially Marcus Gilmore on drums, easily the best drummer I’ve seen on LFH), the full complement of Crooked Still (extra fiddle and a banjo and have I mentioned Aoife O’Donovan yet?) the audience prompted to sing along at just the right moment, some fabulous interplay between the musicians, Thile playing the mandolin but also the part of maestro, conducting this typically throw-away encore that happens after the radio show goes silent, into perhaps, for me at least, the highlight of the show. I mean, it’s cool if I start with that, right?
I’ve sung the praises of the house band week after week with this show, but the guest bands may have pushed Saturday’s over the top. Pixies were fine, a lo-fi thing that was just a slight poke above flat, good enough to fill some time, but not to carry the show. Black Pumas, on the other hand… ooooof! So good. “Colors” was a revelation live, the entire band like a rock-ready soul revue, playing up on all the familiar tropes of the genre and somehow making them feel brand new in the combination offered. The album is great, but damn, I gotta catch me a full Black Pumas show. And the interview portion with the frontman was as good as any I’ve seen on LFH, made me love the band even more. Crooked Still were equally enchanting on the other end of the spectrum: a haunting, beautiful bluegrassy thing, that wasn’t quite bluegrass at all. O’Donovan and fiddler Brittney Haas with cello, bass, banjo as well. That pushed the show over the top.
Add in not one, not two, but three different “songs of the week” (one during warm-ups, another one thrown in there and then the actual song of this week), giving you a full feel for the breadth of Thile’s songwriting prowess. The new one was especially good, a full prog-folk thing with layered themes, both musically and lyrically. How does one write a song like that? How does one write a song like that in a week on deadline and then teach it to a band and just fucking do it like it’s nothing. There are so many amazing things about Live From Here, but that’s up there, one of those things he does every week so it seems like no big deal, but JFC, what a big deal it is. Besides the birthday section was which was even more obscure than usual, there were very few covers during the show when it was all said and done. Really just a Weather Report song that made me realize that it’s been a long while since I’ve heard Weather Report and although they did a rather remarkable job sounding like Weather Report, I don’t feel the need to brush up on Weather Report. Weather Report.
That one ranks up there with the LFH’s I’ve seen for sure, encore included.
Karl Denson’s Eat a Bunch of Peaches @ Webster Hall
Made it down to Webster Hall without too much trouble, I think we missed only 2 or 3 songs probably for Karl Denson. Man, I haven’t seen KDTU in a while. At first, I thought the last time I saw him was at House of Blues in NOLA for Jazzfest in 2003. I walked out of that show, a very rare occurrence for me, because that shit literally was putting me to sleep I hated it so much. But, actually, the last time I saw Karl was also at Webster Hall when he was touring with Anders Osborne playing Sticky Fingers a few years ago. That was… OK. And I used to love Karl Denson so much, too. So, I was a little curious about this one for sure and the main reason I was going was because they were playing Allman Brothers tunes. I know they’d done this before, but didn’t have any clue what the show was going to be like. I think I’m pretty hungry to hear Allmans songs played well. That’s why I was so keen to hear JRAD play Liz Reed. ABB is no longer and even when they were around playing the Beacon, it was really too rich for my blood, but I do love them so. I realized sometime Saturday that the first concert I went to with the Big Squeeze was the Allmans in September of 1990, weren’t even dating yet! I sometimes feel like there’s a market for a “JRAD of the Allmans” waiting to be formed out there in potental-band-land. This version of KDTU, with two guitars, two drums, keys, bass and two horns wasn’t quite that, but it did exceed my expectations, vastly, and scratched that itch pretty damn good.
I wasn’t sure what the balance would be between originals and ABB material and how they’d treat it, but I couldn’t have asked for it any better. The show felt a lot like an Allmans cover band with horns and a couple originals rather than the other way around. I think we walked in during “Trouble No More” and I could tell this was going to be good. The backdrop was projecting a very new-styled version of the kinds of old-school liquid lights the Allmans had for all the years I saw them, which was perfect. They bounced into “Dreams” and that’s definitely top 3 Allmans tunes for me. They nailed it, long, drawn out, psychedelic jamming, two guitars and heavy rhythms. The horns added a little extra and a dose of funkiness, but really the band was true to the energy of the material. That was a great fucking version of Dreams. Other highlights included “One Way Out” which may have taken the most liberties of all the ABB songs, in a good way. The intro was long and only hinted at what they were playing, much slower and funkier, an awesome slowfunk instrumental take on the One Way Out riff and then it built and built and they sped it up and it finally morphed into the song straight up, really well done. “Liz Reed” was a no-brainer and also great. Karl playing flute on “Melissa” which also took some twists and turns while holding true to the main theme, was another very nice moment. The originals that popped up in between were mostly off their newest album and felt like they fit in nicely, reminding people that the show was improbably both an Allmans set and a dance party.
There’s this album out recently which is “big band versions of Allmans tunes.” It’s pretty good, but it also feels unnecessary and flat to me. Like, somehow it’s a “big band” but it feels wimpy. The Allmans already were a big fucking band with a big honking sound, one of the biggest sounds there ever was. You can’t half-ass that. You got to rise up to it. I am happy to report that Karl Denson and his not-so-tiny band rose up to it. A surprisingly great show.
Aberdeen/Ghost Funk Orchestra @ Rockwood 2
There may or may not have been a stop at Katz’s after Webster Hall. (ed. note: there was).
We got in about halfway through the short set from Ghost Funk Orchestra. I’ve been digging their album which more or less is well described by the name of the band. Somehow live they felt a little more generic, but still a fun late night dance thing. Maybe it was just getting there late and not getting a full dose. I’d see them again, but I get the idea. Big band, multiple horns, 3 singers on the front line, rhythm section. Plenty of grooves, no surprises.
Aberdeen on the other hand, whom I knew nothing about, were full of surprises. They were a “Noah’s Ark band” — i.e. they had two of everything: two guitars, two drums, two of each horn (except sax, of which there were three). Only one bassist who had to play enough for two, I guess. Even though they were set up like a big groove band, they were actually a bit more than that. Yes, they were groovy, but as the between-song banter indicated, they’ve traveled the world and have dipped their toes in with several cultures, “stealing” some folk music from around the world and arranging it for their ensemble. The result was some very unique sounds, songs from Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan and more. Everything they played had a very unique feel to it as a result and the band’s energy was tough not to love. Had to jet out a little early to catch a train, but Aberdeen is definitely one to keep an eye out for.
8Dec19
A most excellent Sunday. Only in NYC, can I get an amen!??
Andy Statman @ Charles Street Synagogue
I love me a residency. Even so, there are some that I have just not been able to make for one reason or another or another. Andy Statman’s Thursday night shows at Charles Street Synagogue is one of these. Despite my best intentions, I’ve never made it there. And he’s been doing it for twenty freakin’ years! so it’s definitely all on me for having missed it. Yesterday afternoon, Statman was celebrating those 20 years with a special matinee weekend show and, goshdarnit! I was going! Well, not so fast… navigated Sunday-in-December traffic, circled thrice for a parking spot, walked up to the doors to the shul and, lo!, there’s a sign that says “sold out, sorry” taped to the door, through which I could hear, quite distinctly, a clarinet leading a trio. Damnit! Walked back to my car contemplating my options when I got a text from a friend inside who informed me that he was inside and that it was packed, yes, but he just ignored the sign and was standing in the back. Ignore the sign! Why didn’t I think of that?? Quickly walked back to Charles Street, ignored that sign and walked right in. So glad I did!!
A synagogue (as church’s are) is a mutlifunctional space. It’s a house of worship, sure, but also a community center, a meeting space, an place to learn and, occasionally, a performance space, as this one was yesterday and every Thursday. In a way, it’s perfect for a player like Andy Statman who, like the room he was playing in, contains multitudes. His music is jazz, it’s klezmer, it’s bluegrass, it’s bizarro combinations of all of these, it’s clarinet music and it’s mandolin music, and, played weekly, becomes different things for different people. I walked in during the last of the clarinet portion of the show that feels more religious in some ways, because it is so based in klezmer, although still unshackled by genre. He picked up the mandolin after that and the show was now a more roots/Americana/bluegrass thing. A bit weird to see that kind of music in a space like that, this was upstairs in the sanctuary, pews stuffed with people, people in folding chairs all the way back to the entrance, everyone sitting all the while the trio is playing this dance-ready bluegrass-centered music. I reviewed a Statman trio show recently, so I won’t go into all the greatness of the trio, their comfort level, the way a residency makes magic, but it was all great. The real meat of the show, though, the Sabbath chicken if you will, was when he invited his “guests” to come up. Those guests, appearing en masse from the back corner behind the stage (how did I not notice them before?) included banjo master Tony Trischka, the father of the NYC bluegrass scene, Michael Daves, appears-regularly-on-Live-From-Here fiddler Alex Hargreaves as well as another banjo player I do not know and an accordion player. Took a few minutes for this unruly they-rule! group to get situated, but once they did, we had ourselves a Sunday-afternoon hootenanny right there at temple. They did some instrumentals and some singing and everyone got to take plenty of solos and man, am I glad I ignored that sign!!
3 Card Trick: Marco Cappelli, Brandon Seabrook, Stomu Takeishi @ Barbes
Jetted after about an hour of Statman to get over to Brooklyn because I am occasionally restless when there’s livemusic afoot. Marco Cappelli is a guitarist playing a Sundays-in-December residency at Barbes. After the music I saw yesterday, I highly recommend checking out one of these. 5pm, done by 6, you won’t find better music on a Sunday at 5pm.
I’d like to pause here and just appreciate this freakin city. New York City. It’s the livemusic mecca, there is no doubt. Yes, it’s a great concert town because every band comes through here. You don’t have to go anywhere to see pretty much anyone, with very few exceptions. But that’s not the magic of this city. The magic is in something deeper than that and it struck me several times over the weekend very strongly, but most strong at this show at Barbes. This city is great because of three highly interconnected things, three things that are in fact the same thing. They are 1) that there are musicians that want to take risks, to do things that have never been done, never been dreamed of and to do it with musicians that feel the same way; 2) that there are rooms of all shapes and sizes willing to let musicians take the risks they want to take, that they need to take; and 3) that there are people that want to come to those rooms and watch those musicians take those crazy risks, knowing it might be challenging, but knowing the rewards outweigh the risks. I had no idea what to expect at this show at Barbes yesterday. There were at most 12 other people there, including 2 small children, and they also probably had no idea what to expect. What was remarkable to me is not that it was happening, but that before the show Cappelli looked out at the crowd, mind you there are like 10 people there, and smiled, remarking at how “full” the room was for the music, completely genuine, very much a real smile. What a remarkable moment and so I must remark on it.
So, what the hell did it sound like? Marco plays guitar, he was playing a nylon string guitar with unique high-strung extra strings underneath the 6 strings that added both resonance and twinkling but also provided a harp-like set of strings he could hit in the middle of his playing. Cool. Seabrook played guitar as well, an electric. Takeishi played a beautiful, large acoustic bass — not an upright, but a bass that looked like an acoustic guitar, but also was just beautiful to look at and beautiful to hear. Apparently this is a band sort of “under construction” with material and maybe some touring dates and an album to come. Still, it felt like a rehearsal/jam session that we were watching. They played maybe 5 songs over the hour or so. These varied in type, he introduced one as being based on a tune from the Italian Renassiance of unknown authorship, basically a 500+ year piece of music; another was an Italian love song (“the first song I learned to play on guitar”), another was, as he explained in his musical Italian accent, was an original based on a song made popular via a Sunday morning children’s television program in Italy from his youth. These songs had nothing in common really, except one thing: they were quite lovely in one way or the other. These songs were beautiful songs and the trio played them quite beautifully… until they didn’t. Yes, each of those songs started in a very agreeable, incredibly agreeable place and all of them got run roughshod over, turning into something weird or ugly or noisy. But they always came back, actually went back and forth many times in very extended improvisation of the lose-track-of-time variety. The flipping between pretty and “ugly” (ugly in a good way) was like the musicians were sitting in that “wintry mix” portion of the weather map and clear skies would turn to some sort of rain/sleet/sludge thing then to beautiful white snowflakes and then back again. Cappelli was a revelation on guitar, a true feel for making his guitar sing with luster and clarity, I really enjoyed his playing and tone and thoughtfulness on the material. Seabrook was sort of the supporting role… he took a couple of his sharp-angled solos and was more than ready when things got weird, but mostly he was adding flavor to Marco’s work. The bass was such a great mediator, such a lush, puffed-cloud tone and sound. The way the music moved from one phase to another was done with such skill and smoothness it was almost imperceptible, one minute it’s sunny and clear and the next it’s covered in slush and your shoes are wet and where’s my umbrella? I loved this set, almost indescribable. I really hope to make one of the other Sunday sets. Only in New York.
Hailu Mergia @ Pioneer Works
Another thing I’ve been wanting to hit is the “Second Sundays” open house at Pioneer Works, which is occasionally a music venue, but has the day job of being a sort of artist community with studios and workspaces for different types of artists. These Second Sundays are like the open house where you can look around and see what the workspace is like, check out some cutting edge art and, at the end of the afternoon/evening, see some music. I won’t go deep into the space itself, but everything I saw was cool as hell and I’m glad I had a while to explore a bit before the set.
The show was Hailu Mergia, an Ethiopian musician who has spent much of the last couple decades driving a cab, wtf? He plays keys and accordion (second accordion of the day!) and leads a keys/bass/drums trio. I’ve been wanting to catch him since hearing his revelatory Lala Balu album last year. The set was great, sounding somewhere between an organ trio and a reggae band, totally upbeat, positive-energy vibes in a deceptively simple package. Nice sized crowd, love the space, cool band that had just the right dose of groove for an early Sunday evening. Not much else to say about this one.
Landlady Holiday Spectacular @ Bell House
I have a lot to say about this one, but maybe not enough time to get into all of it. This was the 5th holiday show, and my 3rd. I kind of stumbled upon Landlady years ago and then stumbled upon their holiday show when it was at the Mercury Lounge. I had never seen anyone create a second stage at the Merc before, still don’t know how it was done (close your eyes and imagine that space and try to figure out where Adam Schatz squeezed in a second performance space). The move to Bell House was a natural one and this was the second one there. The crowd was a bit light, but it didn’t matter… it was very much a the right people are here situation.
The show is more like a minifestival with two stages and alternating short sets. Most of the sets were 10 minutes long, so it bounced back and forth at a good pace, amazing mostly on time. When I walked in Brandon Seabrook was playing solo guitar in the back of the room and I just kind of laughed at how I had just seen him a couple hours ago not too far from here and how that’s also seeing music in New York. Seabrook can get wildly weird, left to his own devices, especially and he was definitely in that mode here. From there, things just kind of went at a steady clip. I’ve discovered many artists through Landlady, both as opening acts and as participants in these holiday shows. Adam Schatz is one of those guys that works with so many musicians, knows even more and spreads what little capital and musical wealth he has with as many as possible. He has a unique taste that spans genre, style, size like few others. As such, these shows are all over the place in the best way possible. He even remarked on it at one point. So things went from avant garde to Latin dance party (Los Cumpleanos were so good, they are a Barbes band) to out-there electronica to indie folk to guitar/drum improv to gospel (!) and so forth. Ten minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it was actually a great dose, 2 or 3 songs or one good-sized improvisation, like speed dating. Did I mention there were free homemade cookies? There were. They were good. I’d love to recap each set, but that would be ridiculous. They were all good in different ways and Schatz’s energy and love for it (even though he claimed he “hated” the event and putting it together) were the ragged pieces of duct tape that held it all together.
The night ended with Landlady, of course. Except, it wasn’t really Landlady. Two of the members couldn’t make it and so Schatz instead put together a large ensemble version, employing guest guitarists for each song. Actually almost everyone that had appeared previously in the night ended up appearing in one other place and most of them ended up participating in the show-closing set. There was a massive horn section and one regular drummer and two doing a sort of percussion/standing-kit double team. This was big band Landlady and, Adam Schatz being a pretty damn good arranger for big band shit, created some space for some pretty wild versions of Landlady songs. They did about 30 minutes of original material, “Hold My Breath” was introduced as a new song, but I’ve seen him/them enough times in the past couple years to know most of the lyrics… it came off as a triumph of horns and sound in its extended middle/end. Damn, that was good. “California” is kind of one of Schatz’s goofier songs, but in this setting, was treated to the extended ecstatic version, the horns and guitars getting tangled and loose. For a band that doesn’t “jam,” I find that Landlady has some of the most explorative shit out there. Every time is something different and cool. The second half of the set was a Dr John tribute that felt both awesome and out of place in a very good way, especially as they went with some non-obvious song choices. There were guest vocalists and that big ass band. Eli Paperboy Reed came out and sang one quite well. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that was thinking “there’s no way this doesn’t end with Guilded Splinters” and they didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t until it was all over, after they went deeeeep with their version, giving it the voodoo weirdness it deserved, fully jamming the thing out, horns a-blazin’, full tribal drum breakdown, spooky-as-fuck to the end, wasn’t until after all that that I realized how absolutely inappropriate it was as the ending to a goshdarn holiday show! I mean, “see my enemies at the end of a rope” is not quite the Christmas spirit, is it? But that’s Adam Schatz, for you.
Go see Landlady! This music needs to be heard and supported by more people. Especially go see them if they do a holiday show next year. Free cookies!
