Continuing my quest to review every show I see…
Let’s do it!
2Jan20
Kenny Wolleson & Will Shore @ Montauk Salt Cave (early show)
There are many ways to start. You can start with a BANG!, you can ease into things. you can start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, I hear). There’s a piece of equipment I use regularly at work and, without getting technical, every time you use it, you basically erase all the information from the hardware, demagnify, and start from zero every time. If you do that, the thing is incredibly consistent and reliable. I like the idea of starting from zero, erasing the memory and, maybe, finding things more consistent and reliable. Of course, that’s more or less impossible, but somehow I managed the musical equivalent to start off the new year and the new decade in the form of this show at the Salt Cave last night.
The more I think about it, actually, the less I think I can even consider this a “show.” It took place in this Salt Cave which is more or less a type of spa where people go for wellness and the happening there last night was definitely more like a wellness treatment than a concert. This was my second time there and, once again, one of the more soul-refreshing hours of my life. Sitting in a recliner, leaned all the way back, in a “salt cave” with maybe 15–20 other people, lights dimmed down, faux stars blinking in the ceiling. “VIBE” doesn’t even begin to cover the energy in that space, even with the slightly manufactured new-ageyness of the setting. And “VIBES” doesn’t even really cover the music that we got to hear, coming from two vibraphones at the end of the room, played by Kenny Wolleson and Will Shore.
The two also play in a two-vibes band called Uzupis with a drummer which is pretty great, but this was a much, much different thing. They basically played one long piece of music. Compared to the other time I saw a show there, with Dave Harrington and Spencer Zahn (which was incredible, one of the great livemusic experiences ever), Wolleson and Shore seemed to take as their assignment to make the most beautifully soporific music they could. Not to fast forward too much, but at the end, Kenny said something that he heard which was more or less “making people fall asleep with your music is the biggest compliment.” I smiled big when I heard him say that, it’s something I’ve been saying for quite a while, that “made me fall asleep” is taken as an insult, when it’s actually quite the opposite, a philosophy I came about listening to Bill Frisell play live the first time. Wolleson being a longtime Frisell sideman, I can only hope Bill was the actual person who fed him that line, because that would be too perfect.
Anyway, back to the set… they started off with some sort of eerie ease-in sounds, Shore doing some long bowing of the vibraphone slats, finding cool resonances in the enclosed space, Kenny dropping little chords, barely anything, quiet, quiet, quiet. As they eased into it, the sounds they were getting out of their vibes were exactly what it must sound like when Mr Sandman brings you a dream, dropping that sleepy dust on your fluttering eyes. So light, delicate, purely beautiful, it was music out of a waking dream, except, as it crept up on my consciousness, it was barely waking anymore. The music really pushed my mind to a strange and wonderful place between sleep and wakefulness, weird dreamlike images were appearing on the back of my closed eyelids, dancing to this fanciful music, but I was still, I think, awake. What an incredibly blissful experience. The Harrington/Zahn set had a more physical effect on me, like I could feel all the tension leaving all its hiding places in my body. The Wolleson/Shore version was very mental, a purely psychological reboot, full erasure, my mind was empty for a moment and then what came back in to fill those empty spaces, soundtracked by faerielike improvisation from these two vibraphones, was weird and psychedelic and pretty fucking cool.
At one point about halfway through the music seemed to go beyond the two instruments that were being played. I mean, it didn’t sound like two vibes anymore, it sounded like something completely new. I opened my eyes for a minute to see Wolleson tapping his instrument with his fingers — I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone do that before — getting a gloriously alien tone of it while Shore lightly hit his, fiddling with knobs to further maximize the vibiness of the vibes. So cool. Somewhere between then and the end I think I fell asleep while being totally awake. It’s a crazy feeling. When they finally stopped, it felt like only second had gone by since I had checked the time when my eyes were opened, but it had been a full 25 minutes. My mind was so sedated with the music, I was fully awake, or at least aware, but couldn’t open my eyes for a full minute. Who needs drugs when you’ve got Wolleson & Shore in a Salt Cave. What a fucking trip! What a start!
Gyan Riley’s Elixir @ Barbes
Only a complete asshole would leave that “show” in such a blissful state and think that the best thing to do now was see more music. So, naturally, I navigated a carful across the bridge to Park Slope and got to Barbes as the band was setting up. It’s rare to see chairs being set up for the late set and not the opposite, but that’s what we walked into. Still, the band started pretty promptly a little after 10. The billing was “Gyan Riley,” but the actual performance was Riley’s new(ish) Elixir group, whom I had seen once last year.
This show was pretty similar to that one. It opened with Riley on ukulele. He would play, I think, 3 songs on uke during the set and these were, by far, the best pieces of the night. He plays the instrument like you’ve never heard it, stunning finger-picked melodies with a tone unlike anything you’ve heard before. Like some sort of Bela Fleck of the ukulele. The melody he opened the set with was a perfect bridge from the salt cave, meditative, inventive, not too loud, not too soft. By this time my mind had returned to normal, no idea if it is more reliable or stable or consistent after the double-vibe reset, but I was feeling good and this opening song was a perfect comedown from the buzz. To be more succinct, the song they opened with was totally kickass. The band includes Riley on guitar (and uke!), a second guitarist plus bass and drums. From there the set bounced around styles, somewhat wildly. The next song was like an Arabian blues, both exotic and familiar, Riley getting some light growl out of his guitar. Other songs got more Zornlike hairy or introspective and pretty or rockfunky. The show really centered on Gyan’s compositions, the band was following along on sheet music and the songs took a lot of interesting turns with plenty of thoughtful interplay between the different members of the band. I was especially taken with the chemistry between Riley and the bassist, the music really brought out some interesting echoes between them. The ukulele tracks brought a sort of centered, wow factor at just the right moments to the set. It sounds gimmicky, but these songs really were stunners and hearing that instrument picked that way by a master of Riley’s talent is something to behold. Part of me wishes the whole set was like that, part of me wonders if its magic would wear off. Regardless, those three songs alone were worth the schlep, but the whole show was pretty great. I’m betting this group will be recording this music for an album if they haven’t already. It’s a great set of music Gyan has written and the band is full of watch-out-for-em younger players. Good stuff.
Wayne Krantz, James Genus, Josh Dion @ 55 Bar (late set)
BOOM! Part of me feels like new year, I should start over extolling the virtues of the utterly mindblowing magic of Wayne Krantz on Thursday nights at 55 Bar. The other part of me thinks I wrote about it from every angle possible 30+ times in 2019 and I’m not sure how many more synonyms for “they splattered my grey matter on the floor of 55 Christopher again” I can come up with. Well, for brevity sake, they splattered my grey matter on the floor of 55 Christopher… AGAIN!
James Genus is a fucking monster. His playing last night was as good as you’ll find in the Krantz milieu, charging ahead with some gargantuan leads, pushing Wayne to be his force-lightning-from-his-fingers best, mindmelding with the equally-awesome Josh Dion to bounce brains around the room like numbered ping pong balls in a lottery hopper, the dude was ridiculous last night. And the other two rose to the occasion. And when the balls came up the tube, we all won the fucking lottery.
I still amaze at how Wayne can do this weekly and still make it sound so fresh. It’s like he goes to pure erasure, completely wipes the slate clean, demagnifies every single time and, thus, is more consistent and reliable. Every show for Wayne is like the first night of a new decade, the memories of what’s been already played are gone to the ether. What makes it all the more remarkable is that he does this with the same freakin songs each week. Last night a jam built from almost zero, a rare quiet stretch, built, built, built and then finally arrived at “Another One Bites the Dust.” Were they playing that song the whole time or just decided at the end to finish that way? Ridiculous. “Heavy Metal Riff Song” (I need a better name for this) is Wayne’s Tweezer, a slate clean and pure of spirit, a canvas emptied of thought, ready for improvisation of the highest order. Last night this was the highlight again. No words to describe the torrent of three-man jamming that led up to that riff, that fucking riff, once, twice, infinite.
Having gone so many times over the past couple years, the other fascinating thing is how, yes, there are some familiar faces in there, a couple, I mean, a couple that came with me back across the river. Even so, almost every week the memory is erased and the room is filled with new people, new minds to be blown. It was so fun being in the room last night, with a large number of clearly-Wayne-noobs, clearly getting blown away. The table next to me filled with a group from Boston, asking who’s that drummer!!!?!? after the show, listening intently as I tried my best to describe how what they had just seen was just one snapshot, a screen capture of a long-running film of never-ending possibilities. A film that gets wiped clean, somehow, each and every week.
Wayne plays this week with Genus and Hoenig and then off for a while. Highly recommended you get your 55 Bar in before he hits the road on tour (!). Or, if you’re reading this from out of town, check your local listings, he’s hitting several major metropoli. Regardless, don’t miss it, you won’t find a better way to spend 45 minutes of your Thursday night or the $15 to get in.
4Jan20 David Berman tribute @ Union Pool (afternoon show)
Every once in a while you go to a show where the music is secondary to the event itself. Yesterday afternoon we hit the David Berman birthday show at Union Pool and, yes, there was plenty of music, it started shortly after 2pm and it was still going strong when we left around 4:45 or so. Still, it seems beside the point to review the music itself. Berman took his own life last year, shortly after the release of Purple Mountains, one of the best albums of the year, in my opinion. The show was a celebration of the person, several bands cycled over the stage, all of them playing Berman’s music, some off Purple Mountains, plenty of Silver Jews songs and more. These were “covers” in the strictest sense, there was little interpretation or exploration of the material, but they came out more as a retelling, a tribute to a life cut short way, way too soon. The music, played almost entirely by David’s friends, former bandmates, and collaborators was punctuated by stories, mostly funny ones, and jokes and taken together, it was a touching, fitting tribute in the truest sense, an attempt to capture a human being at his best.
I was not a huge Silver Jews fan, I discovered Berman’s music at a time when I was consuming so much new-to-me music, in the days when someone would send hundreds of illegally agglomerated mp3’s and I’d struggled to get through them all, let alone follow the yes-this-is-good leads to their natural ends. I knew enough to say that I dug those albums, those songs, but not enough to speak intelligently about any of it. The Purple Mountains record, though, hit me like a whack, songwriting that felt so personal and yet so universal, unlike anything I’d heard before. What a strange sensation to absorb such moving music and having it click almost immediately before the artist leaves the world by his own hand, to go back and find all the sadness hidden in plain sight, or not hidden at all. That was the sort of energy hanging over the room yesterday, not quite joyous, but loving and appreciative and sad. I think a large number of perhaps the most, for better word, depressing of Berman’s songs were avoided, but it was impossible not to find melancholy in everything that was performed. It would feel weird to delve any further, to recount who played what and how, that’s not what this was about. There were maybe 4 or 5 different groups, either bands (one was Hallelujah the Hills), or just-this-gig ensembles of friends, with some special guests coming and going, including Cassandra Jenkins (who sang on Purple Mountains) or the lead guy from Titus Andronicus (who was, it must be said, pretty great). The show moved at a nice clip and pretty much everything was good, one way or the other. I will just recount one specific moment, perhaps the real “inventive” moment of the day, that came for, in my opinion, the best song on the Purple Mountains album, perhaps the best song that came out all last year, if you’re asking me. Yonatan Gat came out and sang “Snow is Falling In Manhattan,” but he sang it in Hebrew and it never really felt like everyone was playing/singing in the same key and yet, it was one of the most moving, awesome things of the afternoon, I don’t know why. Perhaps because it was so surprising, perhaps because it was imperfect in such a touching way, perhaps the Hebrew made it feel almost religious, perhaps it just showed how great songwriting transcends everything: band, language, time, space… if you write a good song, it’s forever and ever and ever and that song belongs to everyone. That’s the way I feel about that song, a song I want middle school choruses to be singing for their holiday concerts, a song I want to hear translated into a hundred languages, a song that, as I’ve said time and time again, belongs in the pantheon of great New York City songs, up there with “New York, New York” and any other you can think of. Perhaps this version of that song was the first step towards that immortality and that’s why it was so great. Maybe. RIP David Berman.
