Yesterday, it was announced that Live From Here was no longer. Chris Thile’s I-don’t-know-what-to-call-it radio show came to an end without warning and, to quote multiple people who texted or emailed me after the news broke, it was a “gut punch.” Precisely right. In this denial stage of grief, I decided to compile all the full reviews I wrote of the Live From Here tapings I attended in 2019. I saw the show 15 times in total and 8 of those were during 2019 when the show officially lived at the Town Hall in NYC. As a preface, I included my thoughts after seeing the show for the first time at the end of the December season in 2017. These are collected largely for my own benefit, they contain thoughts on what it was about the show that was so special, as well as I could put those thoughts into words at least, as well as plenty of specific highlights worth remembering in the LFH-less years to come. I hope you get something out of these writings as well… please enjoy and please, please support great music while it’s still here.
Town Hall, 16 December 2017
A couple weeks ago I finally hit a taping of what was previously called Prairie Home Companion, now called “Live From Here.” I had heard they were amazing, but I had no idea. We lucked out with the lineup — Jeff Tweedy! The Punch Brothers! The Staves! But probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. This was entertainment at its utmost — the music was spectacular (Punch Brothers backing Tweedy on “Poor Places” was one of the best things I’ve seen this year), but there was also plenty of laughs and moments of joy. I’m already looking forward to buying tickets for Thile’s return in April.
Carnegie Hall, 9 March 19
Let’s see where to begin…
Yesterday was a special edition of Chris Thile’s “Live From Here” series. A series that, as came into focus many times during the course of the performance last evening, is a celebration of music, a celebration of collaboration, of diversity in styles and personalities and backgrounds, a show with a format that works until it is necessary to be broken and is fascinating for the ways it sticks to the formula but even more so for the ways in which it creatively evolves. In so many ways, Live From Here can be viewed as a metaphor, if not for our world, this society we try to participate in and find our place in, then for the society we aspire to be. It’s all this with great music. The best music. The talent on stage is always so superior, so superlative that you actually forget about the talent on stage and become invested in what exactly all that genius is being put to work to do. Because when the people involved are that good, then absolutely anything is possible.
So, on many levels yesterday’s show was special. First of all, it was a standalone show at Carnegie Hall. Is Carnegie Hall the pinnacle of venues in the city? The world? Maybe or maybe not, but it’s in the conversation, so ingrained in the collective mindset that it’s the punchline to the joke about where musicians aspire to play one day. It was also special because it was the kick-off to a yearlong series called “Migrations,” basically about how immigration influences, creates, changes, etc. the art in this country. The Live From Here show last night specifically looking at the influences of Irish and Scottish migration on American music/art. And of course, it was special because every Live From Here show is special, it featured amazing guests and had so many sublime moments that it was almost too much good for one price-of-admission.
The show started on an almost solemn note, with vocalist Julie Fowlis singing a short bit, her voice echoing in that very large room. And yes, Carnegie Hall is a much, much larger room than the usual Town Hall and that was a part of the dynamic as well, a larger crowd, a larger presence, a larger energy, the silence of the crowd was much bigger, if that’s possible. So Fowlis is singing and already I’ve got the chills. It’s a funny thing about Live From Here that they have these guests every week and the people they have that I know always deliver, they get me excited for the show and they never disappoint. But, it’s the artists I don’t know that always knock my socks off. Which is to say, like a great festival curator, you trust in Chris Thile and the LFH team, they don’t fuck around. Every time Fowlis, a Scottish Gaelic folk singer, opened her mouth it was magic. It wasn’t just that her voice was “pretty” it was that it was perfect, perfectly matched to this folk music she was singing, perfectly matched to the show Thile put together, it was solemn, but also playful and kind of groovy. More like Julie WOWlis, am I right?
So the show opens with her singing a little bit and already you can tell that this is going to be a different Live From Here performance. The formula is already broken and it’s less than a minute into the show. It was a harbinger for a magical night of music that transcended the music. The poet Paul Muldoon read a piece that he wrote specifically for the show and it kind of dissolved into music, the words of the poem transitioning into lyrics, a sort of mystic fade that was breathtaking, his voice becoming a piece of original music by Thile. Spine-tinglingly good. The whole show was filled with moments like this, bits of perfection, the kinds of things you can do when you are so good it doesn’t matter, you think it up and you do it and that’s that. The guests were perfectly picked, the “duet partner” had to be Aoife O’Donovan, perhaps not as beloved by me as Sarah Jarosz or Gaby Moreno, but it absolutely had to be O’Donovan. Later in the show she sang my favorite song of hers, “The Magic Hour,” such a fucking great song, but yesterday was even more awe-inspiring for the way it fit into the show. And that’s the thing about this version of LFH, everything fit in its place. Not just every note, every amazing headspinning note from Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck and Chris Thile on the songs they did together (mindblowingly gorgeous), but every person who came onto stage, when they came and what they did, it was all just right. The fiddle player had to be Brittney Haas whose style lends itself to the Irish-folk side of bluegrass, a loose jog-dance of a fiddle, she was so on point all night.
Writer/humorist Maeve Higgins read two passages, one from her book and the second maybe from her book, maybe something she wrote standalone. She spoke about her own immigrant experience, deciding to move to the US after living in Ireland and she linked it to the idea of immigration writ larger and it was funny but also so attuned to the present day it was awesome to listen to her speak, as powerful as any music played. Higgins brought a stamp of the larger world to the show, her words brought meaning to the music being made, she made the connection that was implicit a little more explicit. I thought maybe she might even get a standing ovation after her first reading, a masterful rebuke to any anti-immigrant stance of the present day.
Later a James Joyce reading from O’Donovan again melted into music. I’ve never appreciated Chris Thile’s genius quite like I did last night. A night that was conceived and executed as a whole in ways that the other Live From Here shows (as much as I love them all) have not. They did two of the comedy sketch breaks and they felt awkwardly out of place in a show that was otherwise so coherent, so tied together from one end to the other. A small quibble in a night that featured so many moments I couldn’t begin to recount or describe them all.
A show that was so good that every so often I would have an oh-yeah-Bela-and-Edgar-are-here realization, their pieces, stretching from music from Uncommon Ritual to Fleck originals to improvisation, were planted perfectly along the way, large trees of magnificence, musical oases providing shade and comfort and wonders-of-nature awe. Fowlis sang several songs throughout, from mournful dirges to uptempo smilers, not a word in English but the meaning coming through, her voice telling us all we needed to know. In a great move, Thile brought musicians from the 11th St Bar seisiun up to perform as well, bringing a little bit of the Ireland-by-way-of-East-Village to Carnegie Hall… and making me glad we had hit this weekly event at least once before they hit the “big time.” Because there were no “bands” on the guest bill, Thile was pretty much playing the entire time, performing with Fleck/Meyer, the house band backing Fowlis, etc. As such, it felt much less like the variety show it usually is (which I love), and more of a well-orchestrated singlet. The musical flow helped the narrative flow and so the message was clear from beginning to end.
The voices — Fowlis and Higgins and Muldoon and O’Donovan — speaking for Ireland and Scotland, for the past and the present, but for much, much more. I can’t imagine being moved by another show quite like I was last night, special in so many ways. So much talent and amazing music and yet, somehow, a show that was so much more than the music.
Town Hall, 20 April 19 (reviewed for The Bowery Presents)
“There was a lot of variety in that variety show!” host Chris Thile exclaimed to the audience at Town Hall Saturday evening after the airing of his latest Live From Here radio broadcast had concluded. Indeed, the preceding 2 hours had included comedy and poetry, a dramatic monologue, and, no surprise, lots and lots of music. Each episode of of Live From Here unfolds like a love letter to music from Thile to the world and Saturday’s was no different, with gospel, Broadway, folk, bluegrass, rock, jazz and more. Naturally, stringed instruments played a central role to the show with Stuart Duncan on violin and banjo, Chris Eldridge on guitar, Chris Morrissey on bass and, of course, a generous helping of mandolin mastery from Thile. Their version of Newgrass Revival’s “Metric Lips” was a dazzling instrumental highlight.
Even with so much expert playing, Saturday’s show seemed to feature the versatility and magic of the human voice itself. Starting with Thile channeling Thom Yorke’s falsetto during a warm-up solo rendition of “Morning Bell,” the possibilities of the voice provided the real variety to the show. Gaby Moreno stole the spotlight whenever she was on stage, her voice, singing in both Spanish and English — and even Latin for a moving show-opening requiem — sounded like something from another era, the kind of thing you hear only on old recordings. Gospel bluegrass harmonies from Moreno, Thile, Eldridge and Duncan showed the strength and beauty of voices working together. The show featured Rebecca Naomi Jones and Damon Daunno, members of the cast of the Oklahoma! revival, quintessential Broadway vocals projecting humor and storytelling into the theater. Guest Josh Ritter’s singing, accompanied by Josh Kaufman on guitar, was so intimately tied to his lyrics, layers of meaning held within each word and syllable on songs like “Thunderbolt’s Goodnight.” The spoken word had its moment as well, actor Jeff Daniels delivering a powerful monologue from the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch in the flesh. Then there was Cecile McLorin Salvant whose voice with its incredible range and elegant rhythmic phrasing was sublime. Every single emotion, happiness and sadness, anger and hope, love and longing, humor and heart, seemed to emit from her lips, her voice like a prism that splits the human condition into its rainbow of components. At the end of the show, the broadcast over, the audience got their chance to ring their voices out as well, singing along to a rousing version of “I’ll Fly Away.” Walking out of another stellar Live From Here performance, everyone had little choice but to use their voices one last time, if only to say “wow!”
Town Hall 7 September 19
Chris Thile’s Live From Here returned for its fall season yesterday, kicking off in its now-permanent home at Town Hall, which means many, many opportunities to catch this magical, magical show, and if you’re waiting to go see one particular guest or another, you’re kind of doing it wrong, but you do you…
Each of the last couple seasons have seen some small tweaks to the format and yesterday was no different, most notably removing the comedy sketches that popped up here and there. In some ways, this was a welcome change, those were funny about 25% of the time and often seemed out of place in a show that often feels like it’s transported you to some faraway musical utopia where these little skits would be a jostling wake-up from your dream. On the other hand, the removal of these skits made the show feel like it was moving at a very fast pace to me, although it all came off without a hitch. With so many options to see LFH now, I don’t know that I could do every one and so overwhelmed, I’m not sure exactly which ones I will hit… I actually wasn’t sure I’d go yesterday until very cheap tickets came my way and so I somehow was thinking “well, maybe it won’t be that great….” Dear reader, let me just say that it was. It was that great. So absolutely phenomenally great. So great. It always is. Always.
Yesterday’s guests included Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend who played several VW songs, more or less utilizing Thile, Sarah Jarosz and the house band as an ad hoc version of Vampire Weekend, and, no surprise, they were awesome. The other guest was Natalia Lafourcade, a Mexican musician I had never heard of before and, in classic Live From Here fashion, was amazing as well. It’s rather remarkable how every single person I’ve ever seen on this show has been bowl-you-over good, not only despite me being unfamiliar with them, but often, strangely, because I don’t know them at all. There is often this string of religion threading through a Live From Here show, subtly, it came up multiple times yesterday as well — the show is decidedly not religious, but it’s somehow, accidentally, often there in the background. Anyway, religion is built on the concept of faith and in as much a religious sense of the concept of faith as I have, personally, it’s a faith in this show, in Thile and Mike Elizondo the musical director, faith in Live From Here to have nothing but fantastic music.
So, sure, the guests were great. Jake Gyllenhal also came out and did a fantastic monologue from the Broadway play he’s currently starring in… came out in between a matinee and a nighttime performance, which is awesomely nuts. And former cast member, one of the ones who did those skits, Holly Laurent, did a few humorous/touching essays which I’d seen her do in the past and is definitely one of her strengths. I’m all for more of dramatic readings and thoughtful essays vs. goofy skits. The guests were all great, yes, but the point I want to make is that it don’t fucking matter who they have on as guests, not because they’ll be great no matter what, and they will be, but because the strength of the show is in the core musicians. Chris Thile, yes, of course. He’s the star of the show. He deserves all your attention and accolades. He did a 14-minute Bach piece yesterday, in three parts throughout the show, beginning, middle and end (actually after the broadcast ended) and it was so off-the-charts good, so tear-duct-draining, goosebump-forming, holy-shit-saying, worth-the-price-of-admission awe-inspiring. Oooof. So good.
Thile is a marvel, through and through but yesterday the star that shined brightest to me was Sarah Jarosz who had so much room to throughout the show it almost felt like she was a top-billing co-star. From playing her original “My Muse” early on (beautiful) to trading mandolin chops with Thile on a couple different bluegrass breakdowns to singing backup/duets with Koenig, she was just remarkable. The highlight of the show was during the birthday section of the show, which is always a highlight, Thile and the band hopping genres like you wouldn’t believe, playing covers all over the spectrum from jazz (Elvin Jones) to bluegrass (Bill Monroe) to indie to country (Patsy Cline). They crush it all. The band is awesome. You’ve heard of some of these guys maybe (Eric Doob plays with Julian Lage, Alex Hargreaves was with Michael Daves a couple weeks back), probably you haven’t. But they kill it all. Anyway, the final song of this section yesterday was Fiona Apples “Extraordinary Machine” and hooooolly shit this was so good. I love that damn song/album and Jarosz nailed it and then some. DAMN. So good. So good.
Impossible to highlight every moment from the show, but it was another special one, they all are. It’s uncannily consistent, but somehow the reason(s) it’s so awesome and special are different every single week, which is even more impressive. Who knows what will drop the jaws next Saturday, but I guarantee they will be dropping, No doubt. So good.
Town Hall, 26 October 2019 (reviewed for the Bowery Presents)
In any superhero movie, there’s always that scene when he or she gets injured badly and then the wound mysteriously heals as if nothing had happened at all and that’s how the audience knows that the character isn’t a mere mortal. The audience at Town Hall Saturday evening saw their protagonist take a licking when the scheduled main guest for this week’s Live From Here taping had to cancel due to illness. The fact that the guest was Paul Simon would lead you to believe the blow would be a fatal one. But as regulars now, when it comes to a night of entertainment, Chris Thile’s program is no mere mortal and by the end of the show, a delight of music and more, genre hopping of the nth degree and a supporting cast of A-list talent, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
The show was anchored by the more-than-adequate guests, particularly the legendary Mavis Staples who inspired the crowd with her gruff gravitas, singing a pair of songs from her newest album, We Get By, in both the first and second sets, getting a rousing ovation from the audience as well as a giddy Thile after each one. Rachael and Vilray brought a dose of old time radio with their updated vocal pop-of-yore sound, at one point Vilray whistling a melody while a siren outside the theater “joined” in, New York City almost literally singing along, the kind of magic you might find at a Live From Here performance. Beyond the guests, the house band all seemed to find their moments to shine, from bassist/musical director Mike Elizondo doing his best Bootsy Collins during the weekly birthday segment to drummer Joey Waronker leading the band through a highlight cover of Atoms for Peace’s “Stuck Together” to Gabriel Kahane’s interludes of songs he wrote to various tweets to a host of fiddle solos from Jeremy Kittel. The second set of the evening had the entire ensemble showing off their superpowers, Rachael Price elevating a cover of “White Rabbit,” Staples delighting the room with her take on “Slippery People,” and Thile hypnotizing with some that’s-not-human! mandolin playing. Another tall building leaped in a single bound for Thile and his Live From Here crew who saved the day once again, no red cape necessary.
Town Hall, 16 November 2019 (reviewed for the Bowery Presents)
Around this time of year, for a certain population, Sunday afternoon means just one thing: football. For another population, a smaller group, but no less dedicated, Saturday afternoons mean just one thing: Live From Here. This week’s installment at the Town Hall found Chris Thile and his ever-shifting teammates in mid-season form, executing the playbook like the pros they are through four quarters of high-flying entertainment.
The first quarter of the night was anchored by Thile’s excellent new “Song of the Week” (yes, he writes and performs a brand new original each week), a Paul-Simon-esque Americana called “It’s a Long Way Across the Wire,” that expertly featured various members of this week’s house band, particularly Armand Hirsch on guitar, Gabriel Kahane on piano, Eric Doob on drums. The second quarter was, in my opinion, the strongest. A transition from a lovely duet with Thile and Aoife O’Donovan on the folk tune “Katy Cruel” to a revelatory two-song performance by indie rockers Big Thief, highlighted by “Not,” was like the difference between handing the ball to a running back and lofting it down the field to a wide receiver. Both effective at getting the ball down the field as fundamentally different as they are. The half concluded with the weekly birthday segment, O’Donovan shining singing the French song “En Priere” and taking on “Hyper-Ballad,” the band stunning in their Bjork cover.
The third quarter was highlighted by another remarkable juxtaposition, the band’s take on the opera number “Peter Grimes” was a well-executed play that broke the ensemble free for a long drive down the field. Their cover of Deerhunter’s “Vox Humana” was equally impressive, the slow-motion crunch of an emotional pile-on tackle. The final section was a running-up-the-score affair with two more songs from Big Thief and They Might Be Giants kicking the long field goal with their fourth song of the night, an everyone-on-their-feet version of their classic “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” Unlike the result on Sunday afternoons, on any given Saturday, everyone’s a winner.
Town Hall, 23 November 2019
In some ways this was a big kahuna version of Live From Here. I mean… Paul freakin’ Simon was the musical guest. On the other hand, it was just another Live From Here broadcast from Town Hall. I say it week in and week out, but it really doesn’t matter who the guests on the show are. It’s always average-great or average-amazing. In fact, it doesn’t even really matter what songs they play. Last evening, more than any LFH I’ve seen, I didn’t really know almost any of the songs played. Even the songs Paul Simon played, were, for the most part, not the “big hits” (save for a crowd-pleasing Kodachrome that include Simon doing a youthful shimmy). Yesterday’s show had me thinking the whole time about why it’s always good, always worth it no matter what.
And the answer is quite obvious. No, it’s not Chris Thile, although his talent and dorky, hammy charisma certainly don’t hurt. No, it’s the house band & the guest vocalist that make the show what it is. The guest stars, they’re the icing on the cake. They make the dessert look good, make it appetizing and maybe beautiful or cool or colorful. But when you put your fork into that piece of cake, you want that spongy, moist, flavorful cake in your mouth. You want substance. That’s what the band brings to the show. I mean, we’re talking about a band that not only admirably backed Paul Simon, played a Joplin rag, played a brand new song (rather awesome) that was just written last week, covered Amy Grant fercrissakes, played an obscure old time folk tune, and then, guided by Chris Thile, made up a song on the spot, an improvised operatic thing. I mean… what band can do all that with such ease, aired live into thousands of earholes week after week. Not only that, but the band isn’t even a band, it’s a bunch of guys who have maybe played together in some form, but not with this exact configuration before. I mean, the longer I sat there in Town Hall and contemplated it — the “musical director” Mike Elizondo wasn’t even THERE this week, he was replaced by NYC underrated all-star Chris Morrissey — the more I sat in total amazement. Like WOW!
I loved Anais Mitchell in the vocalist role. She’s got such a fun energy on stage, like the vibe of someone who has no confidence whatsoever, who is making it up as they go along, who is as surprised as anyone to be on stage. I’ve seen her play her own sets and she has that same kind of thing going on, but she always absolutely nails it, taking that fragile energy and funneling it into the music. She played a brand new song that was just wonderful and pretty much everything she touched, like the other duet partners on the show, was golden. I hope she becomes a regular in that slot. Has she done it before? I don’t think anything else really stuck out to me as above-and-beyond, it was all just run-of-the-mill awesome. Vagabon was the other music guest and she and her band kind of grew on me with each song they played. In her little banter with Chris Thile, she revealed that she was in school for engineering and didn’t start playing music until she was in graduate school and that little story made me like her even more. There’s something about seeing a band on Live From Here that feels very perfect. Most guests play two songs in the first half and two songs in the second half. It’s like the perfect dose: whether you love it or are kind of meh on a guest, 4 songs split into 2 and 2 across 2 hours is like a perfect dose. If you want more, you can always do a deep dive in the future, and if not, well, before you know it, the band will have moved on to some other dazzling display of unnatural talent.
Town Hall, 7 December 2019
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.
Town Hall, 14 December 2019 (reviewed for the Bowery Presents)
Saturday evening was the finale of both the fall season and all of 2019 for the Live From Here program, the end of the first season with New York City and Town Hall serving as the official home for Chris Thile and his rotating cast of musicians, comedians and actors. Over the course of the fall, Thile and his production crew became more and more comfortable cramming more and more entertainment into the two hour program, what often felt like an impossible amount of songs and comedy routines and Broadway snippets. Saturday’s sold out show was no different. As all of Live From Here’s season-ending shows do, this was centered around Christmas and during Thile’s opening monologue, he described how the holiday embraces both the “high and low,” juxtaposing an Alvin and the Chipmunk’s version of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” with Handel’s Messiah to drive home the contrast between the spiritual ideal and the crass commercialism associated with the season.
High and low is something also captured weekly at Live From Here, like Alex Hargreaves switching from lofty violin to giddy fiddle from one song to the next. Saturday’s show featured plenty from both ends of the spectrum, the sublime version of “Winter Song” sung by guest Sara Bareilles, joined by the house band, Sarah Jarosz with the church-worthy harmonies appeared in the same set as Maria Bamford’s wonderfully absurdist comedy routine, the birthday section featuring both a pristine Bartok and guitarist Chris Eldridge doing Keith Richards as the band played “Gimme Shelter.” Everyone was in the Christmas spirit in one way or the other, from Los Lobos singing “Donda Esta Santa Claus” to Dave Hill’s hilarious explanation of the “Twelve Days of the Christmas.” Perhaps the show’s centerpiece was Thile’s arrangement of the seasonal favorite “Greensleeves,” a version that transformed from an ancient folk, Jarosz evoking centuries of the familiar melody, into a Coltrane homage, Hargreaves’s violin subbing for the saxophone, matched by Brett Williams’ thrilling McCoy Tyner and then finally into a modern day art-pop version, drummer Eric Doob’s complex rhythms sounding Radiohhead-esque with Thile’s mandolin. Past Christmas shows have ended with an audience singalong on “All Through The Night,” and this year Thile expertly wrote his Song of the Week around the traditional, nothing but the highest highs to end the season.
