4Feb20 William Tyler & Steve Gunn & Friends @ Union Pool
When you livemusic in NYC, nothing happens in a vacuum and so often I find myself stringing different nights together, seeing the foreshadowing of past gigs in the rear view mirror clearly in the present day, those gigs quickly becoming past shows as well to feed it forward in a neverending, so very wonderful, loop. Confused yet? The point being, at last night’s stupendous Tyler/Gunn show, first of a 4-night run at Union Pool, I found several links and “clues” in past shows I’ve seen that kind of brought the excellent-on-its-own show to new levels, for me, at least.
First of all, the show started with Garcia People as a semi-surprise, semi-unbilled opener. To make a long story short or a long jam, long, they more or less played for 25 minutes, more or less straight, and shredded every single nanosecond of their time on stage. Pretty sure what they played was “One Step Behind” which appeared as a 32-minute studio track last year and sounded every bit as delicious live last night. The band continues to gig relentlessly, stretching their wings beyond the NYC area, making friends and working those stage-ready muscles and, as I say every time I see them, sounding better and better every time I see them. And, it should be added, sounding kind of like a different beast every time, too. They seem to be building up some fascinating breadth to their sound as well. Last night they played as a 4-piece. with ripping double guitar solos, even cooler double guitar delicate interplay, and a gnarly chug that crested multiple peaks, full-band landed in several surprising spots but with a powerful confidence that drew group-cheers from the crowd. Damn, that was an impressive set. For all the guitar derring-do, I was most absorbed in the bassist this time around, he seemed to be the quiet source of much of the band’s strength and fearlessness. At least he did to me. While I did think back on past GP shows I’ve seen, this one actually had me thinking to the not-too-distant future when they play the Freaks Ball and last night’s gig is but a past show that informs the future present. Looking forward to that. If you are not on the Garcia Peoples bandwagon, I’d say February 2020 is the perfect spot to hop on. Lose any preconceptions about what you think this band is all about and just check ’em out… in a week and a half would be great.
With a very short break, if any at all, William Tyler took the stage solo and played a couple intermezzo solo instrumentals. Tyler is one of those masters/students of the guitar and so many disparate slices of music history and present. He breathes this shit — jazz, folk, country, classical, rock — and he’s a fucking genius and it all comes out in his music, each finger possessed by a different spirit of western music history, the best of the best channeled through his finger-picked guitar. I have seen Tyler many times in different settings but last night I thought back to a few distinct times I saw him. Perhaps the first time was actually at Union Pool, a much-less-packed night several years back, a jaw-dropping performance that ended with WT playing a drop-dead-gorgeous version of the Grateful Dead’s “Attics of My Life.” That felt relevant last night. The next time I saw him, I believe, was an opening set at Bowery Ballroom, another fantastic performance, made even more otherworldly by the fact that that night I literally stood right in between Ira Kaplan and Steve Gunn who were both there, very much separately, to see Tyler’s genius up close and firsthand as fans and admirers. That felt relevant as well. Fast forward a couple years to more recently, Tyler played another show back at Union Pool, a strangely underattended affair which was capped by several friends coming out to play with Tyler, including none other than Steve Gunn. That, too, was in the air, all of these kind of building up to the show that was in the midst of unfolding.
Tyler called up Garcia Peoples en masse to join him and the next thing you know, there’s this 3-guitar jamming beast on stage. Tyler was gracious letting the GP guys take control, more like Tyler sitting in with them and not vice versa and, holyshit, they just killed it. I mean, if you like to see lots of guitars making lots of awesome jam, this was it. A very teeth-bared flesh-ripping song from Michael Rother (with whom I am not familiar otherwise) that went explorin’ in the vast improv forest, only to get lost out there… I was taken to Krantzian places the way the quintet wandered away from themes and back again. Very cool shit that eventually dissolved into a very Grateful-Dead-esque circa-68-ish feedback kind of psychedelia. I jokingly thought to myself that maybe it would coalesce around Dark Star when the clear rhythmic clip of The Other One emerged…. even better! There’s this sort of “just because they’re called ‘Garcia Peoples’ doesn’t mean they sound like the Dead” think going on with Garcia Peoples, but also, like, they can also jam the Dead if they want and… maaaaan, they fucking killed it, Tyler Peoples in full-throated jam-out raucous-Dead-style meltdown. That went on for a while, everyone taking their turn taking Cowboy Neal for a stroll and back. Good shit.
I may get the rest of the night mixed up, but then I think there was a duet of Tyler with local pedal steel maestro Dan Iead and I was thinking back to the time I saw Dan do his “Adult Party” thing at Union Pool last year. Iead was just gorgeous on everything he played last night, dazzling pedal steel that seemed prefab perfect fit for Union Pool, something about that room and that sound seem to match up Goldilocks style. Couple songs of that (starting to wish I had taken notes). Then it was Steve Gunn’s turn, as he came out and played a couple songs solo (I think?). I love me some William Tyler, seen him a bunch of times and think he’s a frickin’ genius, but Steve Gunn is on the list if you know what I mean, a talent that transcends his instrument, band, genre, a guy who’s songwriting imbues that talent in such a naturally symbiotic way, whose material shows new secrets every time you hear it. Gunn did two songs solo and they were just gobsmackingly good. It seems weird to think that a guy like Gunn who I’ve seen like a dozen or more times, who plays without any particular flash at all, that he can make an acoustic guitar sound like no acoustic guitar you’ve ever heard. He did some very cool stuff with the feedback from his amp last night, creating this welling up of sound, like a cistern filling with water and then overflowing the sound came out as if multiplied from within. Super cool. He played a couple off his newest album, finding a crevice or two in each, new hiding spaces for some extracurricular spelunking. Man, he sounded good. Gunn brought his band out, except his band usually includes Jim Elkington, but instead he brought out Dan Iead to play pedal steel. There were two things going on there, one was that without the second guitarist, Gunn was left to take all the solos (love me, love me some Elkington, but that was fine with me) and also there was some sweeeet pedal steel in the mix. I was brought back to the version of “Way Out Weather” that Gunn played at Industy City this summer, Elkington joining on an ethereal, good-lord lap steel that made it one of the best versions I’ve ever heard (and Gunn has played this probably quite literally at every show I’ve seen of his). Last night’s version, Iead bedazzling it with sharp refractory many-faceted croons from his pedal steel, may have topped even that one. Oof, that thing was gorgeous.
At some point shortly thereafter I believe William Tyler came back out and then, you know, they took a short break with Ira & Georgia from goddamn Yo La Tengo came out to jam a mini set of The Clean songs that were a ripsnorting good time, plenty of back-bending Ira Kaplan guitar mushroom clouds and Georgia awesomeness and William Tyler playing the freaking bass and lots and lots and lots of smiles, especially from Tyler who may or may not have been aware that Gunn & Kaplan had been standing on either side of me checking him out at the Bowery all those years back. They were rocking the fuck out to the Clean, but the name of that band was definitely The Mutual Admiration Society. The encore felt like it could have been a transplanted YLT Hanukkah encore, pure fun, off-the-charts guests and make-sure-your-earplugs-are-in rocking out of the highest order.
I am sure I screwed up some details or missed some of the best shit of the night, but rest assured, it was like 2.5 hours, almost straight, and pretty much every single moment was of the highlight-reel variety. Way past any expectations I had for the night and making me kick myself for not grabbing a ticket for Friday’s show. ISO! I do hope you’ll have a chance to check one of these shows out and we can only hope they become some sort of tradition.
Subtonics @ LetLove Inn (late set)
Yes, this is my new obsession and Costas & Co have yet to let me down. If two weeks ago was a zone-out psychedelic lose-yourself set and last week’s was more of a jazzrockfusion masterpiece, last night’s was, relatively speaking, a rather funky affair. This was made so largely by the addition of two percussionists who sat on either side of the stage on the floor. The rest of the band is what I’d called the “standard’ Subtonics, with keys, saxophone and drums joining Costas. When we got there the band was in a pretty funky groove, showing one more thing they excel at, the keys dude doing a lot of low-endy synthbass kind of stuff to glue all the rest of ’em together. Good shit. Sax dude (someday I’ll know all their names) used his effects really well to lay down some serious spaceboogie shit. But, of course, this was no straight funk band and the music grew knottier as the set went on. A long passage had Costas doing some cyclic afrobeat kind of guitar chickachicka as the rest of the band rattled a far-flung subdued funk jam. And here’s where you appreciate this unassuming, underappreciated guitar player, because he somehow took this little afrobeat lick and slowly transformed it into a flying carpet Arabian sounding theme, almost like creating a weird lenticular effect, tilting the music at just the right angle so that the image went from one thing to another, sleight of hand, pure magic. That was cool. As is the case at the Letlove on Tuesdays, the mind starts to wander and the evolving improv seemed to will itself to multiple places at once, remaining funked for those who wanted to shake their butt in their seats or stool, drifting through the mind’s eye of the listener, it could just as equally put you to sleep as keep you awake, pull you back from the brink or send you off on a serious mindwander. At some point I snapped to from whatever midnight daze I was in, just in time to fully realize the mid-climb peak Costas had ventured out on, higher and higher, he seems to always find a way to find a high point and let the room, those who are paying attention at least (which can vary from 10–50%, sadly/funnily), a ridiculous vantage of the world below, the real world down there, with normies fast asleep already mentally moved on to their Wednesdays, no idea what they’re missing. Until next week.
6Feb20 Bonny Light Horseman @ Rough Trade
My 3rd time catching these guys and already looking forward to a fourth, whenever that may be, if at all. I am very much used to seeing a bunch of musicians I love get together and somehow be better than I could ever have hoped. Such is the case with Bonny Light Horseman. Something special. My full review is here.
7Feb20 Richard Thompson @ Symphony Space
I do not consider myself to be a wine drinker. Oh, I’ll have a glass if you’re pouring one and maybe a second, sure a third, no problem, but I couldn’t tell you the difference between a cabernet or a pinot noir. I do admire people who are wine people, though, and am happy to enjoy the warmth of their reflected admiration. Many years ago I was visiting a work friend in Santa Barbara, a real wine nut, and he took me to a favorite winery, he was good friends with the owner, for what amounted to a private day of tastings and eating and hanging and drinking and drinking, we tasted some of his “greatest hits” and some of those rarer dusty-bottle treats and some weird stuff and some stuff that wasn’t even technically from that winery… it was one of the more fun days I’ve had, certainly on a work trip, made all the more better when the owner dude starting unexpectedly blasting Dead tunes through the place at the end of the day. A great, great day.
That was sort of the feeling I got at the Richard Thompson show last night. I had no intention of going, I am not a Richard Thomspon drinker, although I admire him from afar, mostly through the admiration of people I admire, people who cover his songs or pick up on his styles or just the superfans who speak of his canon with the passion of true believers. But, I got kindly invited to the show at Symphony Hall last night and figured I’d be happy to have a tour of the RT winery, hang with the connoisseurs, taste a few and maybe catch a little buzz in the process. The cool thing about this show was that it was an “all-request” gig, every single song Thompson played was requested by someone before the show, written on a piece of paper, literally pulled out of a basket, like lottery numbers where everyone is a winner. So, in a way, to carry the metaphor on, the winery owner pulling the bottles off the shelf or out of cold storage, pulling out the corks and letting the potables breathe, was not Thompson at all, but the entire audience. They were the ones who got to choose which vintages we’d get to taste, which best-sellers and which dusty old forgotten bottles or weird shit we’d get to hear. That was pretty cool.
Thompson came out with just an acoustic guitar and kind of explained the show format (don’t shout out requests!), filled his opening “monologue” with wonderful Brit-wit self-deprecating humor and asked the crowd for a “generosity of spirit,” anticipating some struggles along the way. I loved the appeal to “generosity of spirit,” a wonderful way to describe the energy in the room, a room filled with the biggest fans and their hero implicitly acknowledging his status as such, humbly, and then giving everyone exactly what they wanted and showing, along the way, exactly why he was the hero. Who wouldn’t want to see their favorite band or musician pick random songs out of a hat and play whatever the audience requested, his songs or otherwise, open the bottles that had been sitting in the cellar the longest and giving the entire room a glassful. As far as livemusic experience, it was an incredibly rewarding one.
Of course, the music was also fantastic. It wasn’t quite completely random, he picked a few at a time and then sorted them into a more reasonable set, which he was quite good at. Part of the fun was watching his reaction as he pulled each song out, some surprises, some not so much. We got “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” out of the way early and it set the tone, the balance and gave him a chance to confidently strut his stuff. The setlist can be seen here. Being a not-even-an-amateur, the song choices meant little to me, so I sort of was able to listen to each without any preconceptions beyond the audience’s reactions or the running commentary of my host. The fourth song was Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love,” the first of four (I think) covers through the night, somehow picked, by fate, a perfect points through the set. Still, the highlights were from his own vast catalog, pouring from different parts of his career, each showing off his songwriting and/or his guitar playing and/or a snapshot of his life at the time. In between each his stories and intros and jokes were all perfectly placed. Occasionally he didn’t know a song or lyrics (mostly for covers, but some of the obscure originals as well) and he’d summon an assistant who would take the slip and run off to print out music or lyrics for him to cheat from. The guitar playing was so phenomenal, his oft-imitated/never-reproduced style found its way to create some level of awe in each song. I was particularly taken with his playing during “Sunset Song,” amongst others, his fingers seemed to each have their own figures, so much sound, so many different sounds, simultaneously, coming out of a single guitar, a symphony in six-strings.
The whole show, every aspect of it, was just incredibly entertaining. Perhaps the most impressive thing was how the pick-from-a-hat-in-real-time selections formed such a coherent show, a show that had a distinct beginning/middle/end/encores feel to it, originals mixing with well-placed covers, upbeat mixing with what he called “wrist slashers,” impressive guitar playing coming at just the right moment in between the more storytelling songs. I am often acutely aware and always impressed by an artist who understands how to create the proper flow in a show through the use of setlist writing. To watch Thompson do the same on the fly without the show feeling clunky in the least was super impressive. I guess when the wine is that good, it’s easy.
Lots of fun, certainly left the theater tipsy. I’ll keep ordering whiskey or beer or tequila, but if someone hands me a glass of wine, I won’t complain.
8Feb20
Live From Here @ Town Hall
The first LFH of 2020 and if this is the pace-setter for the year, well… look out! The first set of this one was easily one of my all-time favorite Live From Here sets (I just figured out, I think last night was my 15th LFH taping attended) and the whole show was just magic, pretty much a perfect incarnation of the form. I mean, there were so many things to love about this, starting with the guests — Bedouine (loooove her) and Andrew Bird (looooooove him) — who were both magnificent. Of course, this show transcends the guests and more than any other LFH I’ve seen there seemed to be a strong IDGAF vibe to this one, like the show was daring you to love it, almost always slanting towards the strange and “challenging,” rarely serving up “easy wins.” There were so many quiet moments last night. I mean really quiet, the room just dead silent for some truly delicate, subtle moments. I don’t know if it was where we were sitting — we were in row T, center left, which is the 2nd to last row — but the sound was as good as I’ve heard it there for one of these and the silences seemed extra profound. This was totally apparent during Bedouine’s two mini-sets… I’d seen her twice before, both times with a full band, both times loved, loved, loved, especially her LPR show last year, the band being an integral part of her sets. Last night she was in stripped-down mode, just her and her bassist who also sang excellent harmonies. I wouldn’t say it was better than the full band version, especially for a full show, but just for a 4-song sampler of her talent and songwriting, it was pristine. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff, the bass accompaniment so soft and perfect, taking full advantage of the room’s hush. Wow! Both Bedouine and Andrew Bird had albums in my tops-o’-the-tops list of 2019, so the guests felt perfectly suited for me. That carried over into some of the song choices by the band. They pronounced “Let’s Move to Cleveland” to be the first Zappa cover on Live From Here and then crushed it for their instrumental selection, the house band, led particularly there by Jeremy Kittel (on fiddle) and Brett Williams (on piano/keys, quickly becoming one of my favorite house band members) crushing it absolutely. Wow! Sarah Jarosz had multiple blow-you-over vocal performances last night, including one piece she did on a tribute album assembled by John Zorn!? I had no idea this was a thing, but Sarah Jarosz invoking Zorn’s name, as someone who asked her to do a song, was a mindblowing world’s-colliding moment that felt like it was speaking to me personally.
But yeah, I got this wonderful feeling of Thile and the band seeking out weird spaces. Not necessarily trying to be inaccessible, but making some more interesting choices. Multiple times the band went to these quiet, exploratory ambient spaces, little improvisations that, again, seemed to relish in the room’s quiet, delicate little mastery. What was even more surprising is that the show was largely devoid of Thile mandolin craziness. There were very few mando solos at all, very few wow, he’s amazing! moments during the show, and it was totally fine… in fact I didn’t really notice it until I did. Andrew Bird seemed to get the memo, eschewing the typical pimp-the-album route and picking some cool rarities. His first song was “Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left,” a relatively deep cut that was the song I always wanted to hear the first few times I saw him, but I think I’ve only seen him do it maybe once or twice and not for a long, long while. What a pleasant surprise to hear him “bust it out” in perhaps the least likely place for a bustout. This was not a “safe” show for anyone. The birthday section selections seemed equally out there, the typical crowd pleasers replaced with avant neo-classical and a Magnetic Fields song that may have been the highlight of the night, the band fully exploring this gorgeous piece. I’m sure I’m forgetting a half a dozen other highlights, there were a ton of them. Later in the show, Andrew and Chris did a single-mic duet that was rather amazing, Thile matching Bird’s whistling and then Bird doing his plucked-guitar thing to round it all out. That was awesome. Tom Papa was fantastic, Jia Tollentino was great, if not a little depressing, alas… but definitely worth mentioning the warm-up and encore. They opened with Sarah Jarosz singing Gillian Welch’s “Miss Ohio” with some chilling backing by Thile and it was in best-ever category, definite goosebumps. Then the encore had Bird leading the band in a rousing version of “Capsized,” the 5th Andrew Bird song of the night, each one its own self-contained masterpiece, a perfect guest for a perfect season-opening Live From Here.
tl; dr I loved this fucking show.
Michael Kiwanuka @ Terminal 5
I had not been to T5 in over 2 and a half years and I had not been in the gen-pop part of T5 in probably 2.5 years before that, I can’t even remember when, to tell you the truth. And we got there right as it started because parking is a bitch over there and yeah, we were kind of far back and didn’t have the best view of the stage, but, you know what? It was fine. The sound was quite awesome, I have to say, and Michael Kiwanuka is so fucking good, it doesn’t even matter if you can’t see him. Seriously, this guy is a talent and irresistibly soulful and groovy and rocking and psychedelic. He’s something special. If he doesn’t play Radio City Music Hall in the next 12 months, there’s a problem somewhere in the livemusicgods chain of command. You can check out my full review here.
tl; dr I loved this fucking show.
9Feb20 Elkhorn @ Montauk Salt Cave
These shows at the Salt Cave feel like they are becoming integral oases in my livemusic travels. This one came perfectly at the end of one spectacular week of music (and too much going on at work) and at the start of another highly-anticipated week of music and fun (and still too much going on at work).
Last night I made the early set for Elkhorn, a guitar duo that plays some lovely, elegiac, instrumental music, one guy on a 12-string acoustic and the other on an electric guitar. I don’t want to “rate” the Salt Cave shows, the three I have seen have all been some of the most blissful hours I’ve seen seeing music, transcending the idea of “concert” or “show.” It’s interesting how this came after a stretch of very atypical shows for me, including the Richard Thompson all-request gig that felt like part concert, part comedy improv, part game show and the wonderful Live From Here which is part concert, part variety show, part history lesson, part I-don’t-know-what. Anyway, I don’t want to say this one was the “best” or not, but there were some interesting notable features to last night show that made it different. One was that the band treated it more like a regular concert than the other two I’ve seen there — they stopped in between “songs” and the audience clapped, and they broke the magic spell of the music-meets-room vibe by speaking in between these pieces (the other acts more or less played straight through, their music feeling like an ambient, disembodied entity). I can’t say this was good or bad, just different. In some ways, it’s nice when the music just floated for 45 minutes straight, allowing the mind to truly disentangle from its earthly bearings, on the other hand, the pause in between gave some maybe-much-needed reality dose to the dreaminess.
The other thing that stuck out to me was the acoustic guitar. I think this was the first acoustic in that room and it sounded goooood. Like I knew it was and have been anticipating hearing the sound of a those acoustic guitar strings to reverberate in that “cave” and the reality did not disappoint. So, Elkhorn played 3 long pieces, Jesse Sheppard on the 12-string, setting a drone foundation, chords and notes pumped into the room, filling it completely, like hot steam in a steamroom, suffocating in a good way, relaxing every muscle in the mind. Drew Gardner on the electric waiting for this acoustic steam to permeate everyone’s body/soul/spirit and then he’s spinning these tales of crisp, lovely electric guitar on top, a little Jerry-esque, a jazz-folk meandering that grabbed your relaxed mind and pulled it over the border. I was distinctly aware of the sort of yin-yang effect of the music and the situation, the acoustic/electric, awake/asleep, inside/outside, light/dark, sound/silence, body/soul, bliss/despair dualities seemed to come alive through the set, no distinct boundaries and yet, nothing but distinct boundaries. Inside that room, the music is everything and also completely unimportant.
Elkhorn was a perfect fit, transcendent vibes of pure relaxation. I’ve seen them a few times, standing in a club, but lying down, under a blanket, eyes closed, thoughts fully adrift, surrounded by likewise sedated people, friends and strangers, part of a group and yet totally alone to your own mind’s whims… that’s the way to listen to this music. A fantastic set, I’m dozing off just thinking about it. Looking forward to the next salt cave experience. Cheers to Thunder Shout for conceiving and executing a quite idyllic livemusic happening.
