Music: Bethany Thomas album release show, The Hideout
The Hideout is another of those clubs I mentioned in an earlier column trying to convert itself to a subscription model for subsistence in these keep-away times. And while I’m rooting for every single place (and person) I love, I might be rooting the hardest for the Hideout.
It’s not the first club I went to in Chicago (that would be Schuba’s or The Empty Bottle) but it’s the place I’ve had the best batting average of life-altering shows, happy hours, and the place that most feels like Chicago to me. It’s not really a trip if I don’t darken that dance floor at least once.
That feeling flooded my bones with this week’s release party for Bethany Thomas’s triumphant rock record BT / She / Her. I learned about Thomas with Jon Langford’s Four Lost Souls project. Once I picked my jaw off the floor, I dug deeper and found she’s representative of so much I love about the intertwining, us-against-the-world, everyone-together scene in Chicago. She’s worked with so many people I’m a massive fan of including JC Brooks and Robbie Fulks and set their world-class theater scene on fire in classics like Into the Woods and A Moon for the Misbegotten.
This first taste of her work as a songwriter and bandleader cracked my rib cage open. With a tight five-piece band that could go anywhere she led them, spread out on the floor for appropriate distancing, she unfurled what would be hit after hit in a just world. The snarling, volcanic Cramps riffs underpinned the righteous declarations of “I’m Not Sorry and I’m Not Scared.” “De-Escalator” took a slow-burning, taunting waltz dripping in drama worthy of classic Marc Almond, “You can’t walk this line forever” burned right onto the back of my skull.
“70th Long Song” dragged a castanets-keyed Spector-style stomp by its collar into the here and now. “Walls + Ceilings” builds from haunting Led Zeppelin/Fairport Convention-style rolling acoustic guitar into a crashing tidal wave. She plays with classic Thin Lizzy/Aerosmith guitar dueling and drum triplets on the infectious “Smoke” and haunting soul cries the expansive, cinematic “The Waves.”
There wasn’t a weak tune here, maybe my favorite new artist of the year.
Music: Thelonious Monk Birthday Celebration – Helen Sung, Kris Davis, and Joanne Brackeen at SFJAZZ.
SFJAZZ pulls another astonishing set out of the archive for their Fridays at Five series. This, the night before Monk’s birthday, from one of their recurring Thelonious Monk tributes a few birthdays ago, linked three exemplars of contemporary jazz piano for a night of deep fireworks: Helen Sung, Kris Davis, and Joanne Brackeen.
The direct collaborations – two pianos were on stage at all times – dazzled me most. Sung and Davis teamed up on an expansive, rich, and twisting “Blue Monk.” That tune was the first taste that got me hooked, the song where I knew I was listening to Monk, this was what everyone was talking about, and I fucking love it present tense. So I have high expectations. Similarly, high expectations played into this because Davis might be my favorite my-age-or-younger piano player, she’s blown me away for a lot of years in a lot of rooms as anyone who’s read a best-of of mine can attest. This soared right through the membrane of those hopes, as maybe my favorite version of the tune burst before my eyes.
The finale on “Straight No Chaser” with Brackeen at one piano and Sung and Davis four-handing the other, took that chestnut into the wild flights of invention that only happen when a great artist grapples with material they love on the same level.
That love also bubbled out of a brilliant mosaic version of “52nd Street Theme” by Davis. For a heart-stopping “Rhythm-a-ning” by Brackeen, she reminded us of her first-hand experience with this history, “Did anyone ever see Thelonious Monk? He danced on the bandstand,” and, grinning, reminded the room of her playing the tune with Freddie Hubbard in the early ‘80s, “I thought I should play the melody this time,” instead of leaving it to a horn.
A phenomenal set of some of the finest compositions of the 20th century played as well as we’re likely to ever be lucky to hear. And a reminder to do what we can – and agitate the powers that be – to make sure temples to culture like this survive these times along with us.
Screen of Distance 