The other half of things I found and loved over the course of this year. These are the tunes that stabbed me in the heart or colored the world in a different way. The songs/spaces distinction is obviously porous and often ambiguous, but in general, I think of stuff that hits this list as landscapes or sculptures, atmospheres, not as much telling a linear story. Frequently instrumental. But there’s probably 20% if you asked me in a week, I’d put it on the other list. Continue reading for my rambling notes.
For a year that vacillated wildly between jubilation at seeing people I hadn’t seen in contexts I hadn’t seen for over a year and utter despair that so much of the world is still a garbage fire, one of the consistent comforts came from the flood of music I loved.
Like last year, I loosely grouped these into “Songs” and “Spaces.” There are a number of items that could have fit on either list, this is definitely based on feel. In general, songs have lyrics and deal with a more direct emotion. Spaces should be posted tomorrow, Parting Gifts, a tribute to the (many) musicians who died this year who meant something or everything to me, will hopefully go out by the end of the weekend.
Aminah Robinson, Raggin’ On, Columbus Museum of Art
Interestingly – and don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate the efforts to shift to digital, distanced forms of presentation – the one medium of art I couldn’t really connect with online while we were locked down was visual art. Painting, sculpture, mixed-media all get the lion’s share of their impact on me from being in the room, breathing in the same space, seeing how much weight and density the work has, its presence.
So, the combination of not being as worried breathing in the same air as my fellow people – though I always took precautions – and the connected relief of being able to travel again, along with reconnecting with my town, meant I saw about 55 exhibits over six cities. These are the 20 that made my heart sing, my blood run cold, or both; that wouldn’t let me go. These are unranked and in chronological order.
Everything below is in Columbus and any photo is taken by me, unless otherwise noted.
Anila Quayyum Agha, Cincinnati Museum of Art
Various Artists, November (Beeler Gallery) – The Beeler is one of my favorite spaces in Columbus and too often gets left out of the conversation, with consistently provocative commissions and group shows that benefit from the thoughtful combustion of the various works in conversation with themselves, with the CCAD Institution, with Columbus, and the world. Curator Dean Taylor exemplified all these qualities, suffused with a dread and uncertainty created for 2020 and still reverberating into February where my visit, my grappling with these deep feelings, made a sheet of ice crack inside of me.
Anila Quayyum Agha, All The Flowers Are For Me (Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati) – Stil only partially vaccinated, we went to Cincinnati for my birthday, as much outdoor and distant fun as we could muster in late March. Even under some constraints, it felt good to be out of town, dining on patios, and going to a couple of my favorite museums. Of everything Anne and I saw, I mulled over Pakistani-American artist’s meditative, expansive work, a steel-cut cube created to slice light in shadows inspired by Islamic architecture and classical art.
Aminah Robinson, Raggin’ On (Columbus Museum of Art) – Sometimes it’s too easy to take the giants in our midst, the legends we grew up with, for granted. For too much of my youth I bristled at hearing about Aminah Robinson or James Thurber or George Bellows, though I loved their work, because I worried about how Columbus looked under a reductive lens. I’ve gotten over most of that but there are still some lingering “I know all there is to know” feelings. Within five minutes of walking into this gorgeous, immaculately curated (by Carole Genshaft and Deidre Hamlar) retrospective of one of our great artists, I was reminded I was a fucking idiot to even think that. This first retrospective since Robinson’s death hit her principal preoccupations, her recurring themes, and highlighted both the variations, the deep studies of character and place, the chimerical and literary qualities of her work, as well as the consistency of her work, in quality and thematically. I went to this three times and kicked myself for not going a dozen more. In a better world, this would have toured ten cities on three continents – as it is, it’s a stunning testament to the value of donating your estate to your local art museum.
Various Artists, Partially Buried: Land Art in Ohio 1970-Now (Columbus Museum of Art) – Another thing I chafed at through its Ohio ubiquity as a kid? “Indian mounds.” Which I lumped land art in alongside. It took my fine arts major roommate, who idolized Andy Goldsworthy, to not only shake me out of that but show me how lucky we were to have such a tradition of it in Ohio. Anne’s enthusiasm for it later fully unlocked my appreciation, and this synthesized the tradition in a way I came back to soak in more than once. Anna Talarico’s curation drew deep lines from Robert Smithson’s seminal work that gave the exhibit its name to contemporary work like my pal Brian Harnetty’s sound piece “Forest Listening Rooms.” This was a stunning slice of history reminding us of the Faulkner line “The past is never dead, it isn’t even past.”
Alun Be, CAM Raleigh
Alun Be, Perseverance, Pride, Power (CAM, Raleigh) – These enormous photos, in close up, of women by Senegalese photographer Alun Be, knocked the wind right out of my lungs. Taking up whole walls at Raleigh’s Contemporary Art Museum, the June sun filtered by clouds through the giant windows, gave a glimpse of a whole world, whole stories these women inhabit and embody. It made the museum glow like a holy temple and a reminder of how connected we are and how important it is to hold to that connection without falling into some namby-pamby “We’re all alike” bullshit. This was a crucial reminder to respect and understand other people’s differences, their different paths, their different dreams. And a reminder to try to start with love and with a desire to understand.
Kennedi Carter, Flexing/New Realm (CAM, Raleigh) – One of the other two exhibits at CAM, Carter’s work was new to me and hit me almost as hard. Sharing some commonalities with Kehinde Wiley’s paintings linking contemporary black culture with classical portraiture of European royalty, there’s a deeper psychological cant to her photographs I had a hard time looking away from.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Twisted (New Museum, NYC) – All three exhibits at the New Museum this trip made an impression on me, but Leeson’s mixed media pieces reminded me of all the promise of science fiction growing up, a truly speculative art that centers people. Enraptured by the promise of new discoveries and spectacular frontiers but with an eye toward the way the future can widen and exacerbate pain and inequality, and the entropic tendency of it to do just that if we let the same bastards hold the wheel.
Alice Neel, Metropolitan Museum
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (New York Botanical Garden, NYC) – I raved about Kusama a couple years ago in Cleveland, and many years back at the Whitney. She’s the kind of blockbuster, crowd-pleasing artist with so many layers and such a love of things that are messy, are complicated, that there’s always something to unpack. Pairing her work with the Bronx’s beautiful New York Botanical Garden was a perfect fit, the art and the nature vibrating together, feeding each other, giving enough surface for the selfies but enriching for the rest of us.
Alice Neel, People Come First (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC) – I don’t remember the first time I saw Alice Neel’s work, but my fandom bloomed with Hilton Als’ retrospective focusing on her time in upper Manhattan at David Zwirner a few years ago and hit overdrive when I read the terrific biography by Phoebe Hoban (or did those go in the other order?). This retrospective was exactly what I go to the Met for, the kind of expansive, deep dive I’ve loved since my first trip to this temple of art to see El Greco. Neel’s ability to center people in her art and her life, to make sure her subjects are seen without judgment, is a benchmark I sometimes fuck up but always try to shoot for. And the work is gorgeous beyond reckoning.
Julie Mehretu, Whitney Museum
Julie Mehretu, Julie Mehretu (Whitney Museum, NYC) – I’d seen a couple pieces by Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu before, but this dazzling retrospective shone light on her unique style of abstraction and her way of viewing the world as a collection, a melange, maps that feel right but don’t draw a linear story. One of the most vital, vibrant abstract painters I’ve been turned onto in many years.
Dawoud Bey, An American Project (Whitney Museum. NYC) – Another vital eye on the current moment, Dawoud Bey’s work struck me as soon as I saw it. This retrospective showed his incisive, open-hearted approach from his ‘70s portraits in Harlem to the mysterious, speculative landscapes evoking underground railroad passages from 2018. Seeing this the day after Alice Neel and these artists decades apart, though they overlapped, finding ways to center humanity in their art, was awe-inspiring. Anne and I posted up at Radio Bar and talked about this for an hour after.
Various Artists, Ashcan School Prints and the American City: 1900-1994 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland) – I overloaded on the Ashcan school as a kid, partly because of Columbus native George Bellows’ prominence in it and partly because I was drawn to a level of social realism. Some time away from that let me see this terrific retrospective at the Cleveland Museum with fresh eyes and I was stunned by the breadth and intensity of that work and its uniquely American patina.
Axis Mundo, MOCA Cleveland
Various Artists, Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA (MOCA, Cleveland) – This MOCA exhibit made a series of puzzle pieces fall into place in my head. I knew how impactful the Latinx communities were on Los Angeles history and especially that punk scene I grew up idolizing. Until this, I hadn’t seen something that tied the various LA art scenes together so sharply (in the way I’ve seen a million books/exhibits/articles do for New York of the same time period) and emphasizing seeing these scenes through a Chicano lens, immaculately curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz. This set my hair on fire.
Danielle Deley and Allison Baker, Home (934 Gallery) – 934 Gallery is one of the Columbus gems and when I stopped at their 934 Fest I had the chance to check out a fantastic exhibit – Home – that placed Danielle Deley’s huge-canvas explorations of her Catholic background in dialogue with Allison Baker’s razor-edged investigations of what we think of as domesticity and women’s work in dialogue with each other and the space.
Danielle Deley, 934 Gallery
Wayne Thiebaud, Wayne Thiebaud at 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings (Dixon Gardens and Gallery, Memphis) – In all my trips to Memphis, including repeated visits to the botanical garden, Anne and I hadn’t yet made it to Dixon Gardens and Gallery. We corrected that this trip – it reminded me of a Southern Frick – with a stunning retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud. His looks at urban landscapes, the sensual pleasures of food, and the rapidly changing 20th century struck a particular pleasure center for me I’m not sure any other art did this year.
Mark Selinger, On Christopher Street: Transgender Portraits (Brooks Museum, Memphis) – The Brooks has become one of my favorite museums over repeated treks to Memphis and they’ve got a particularly good eye for photography exhibitions. This year, Selinger’s (whose work I knew from GQ) contemporary look at the storied cobblestones of Christopher Street and its transgender residents and visitors blew me away. A moving look at connection without trying to underplay their differences, another reminder at the powerful capacity for empathy visual art possesses.
Mark Selinger, Brooks Museum, Memphis
Nina Katchadourian, To Feel Something That Was Not Of Our World (Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art) – This fascinating exhibit delved into the survival memoir Survive the Savage Sea, with translations of the book, excerpts, life-size drawings of tortoises and whales, audio recordings, and printed messages exchanged between the artist and the family. It’s a beguiling look at what makes us survive, what keeps people from giving up, and family in the best sense, atomized and displayed in ways I didn’t expect.
Bruce Robinson, Flutterby (Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum Art) – The other exhibit in the Pizzuti Collection was longstanding CCAD professor Bruce Robinson’s work. Motion is at the center of all these pieces, some abstract, and this had an interesting resonance for me with the other people-centered exhibits I saw this year. There’s a special bravery and a special open-heartedness in including your friends, your community, in your work that has to encompass your feelings for them but also stand outside of your specific experience. This helped reinforce all the feelings I grasped for all year.
Bruce Robinson, Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art
Carol Stewart and Janice Lessman-Moss, Still Is Still Moving (Hammond Harkins Gallery) – I don’t stop at Hammond Harkins that often but the sunny Saturday afternoon I popped in wowed me. These two carefully chosen artists, both of whom have histories with the gallery and with Columbus, sparked against each other, leading me on a long, fascinating conversation with the gallery employee/attendant/manager who was there at the time. Lessman-Moss’s textile pieces used metallic thread for contrast in stunning geometric patterns. Stewart’s still lifes actually made the artifice in any still life concrete for me in a way I’m not sure I’ve ever seen – the deliberate placement of everything in the picture frame was done with intention and deliberation but – like Jeff Wall’s photographs – that artifice makes them more intriguing and more full of life, not stiffer. These two approaches, talking to each other across the room, under the banner of the Willie Nelson lyric the show is named for, left me chewing on them for weeks.
Jacqueline Humphries, jHΩ1: ) (Wexner Center) – I went to see this stunning Humphries retrospective four times and I’m still not sure I got it but I loved it. I said to a friend who saw it a different time, “I felt like I was drowning but not in an unpleasant way.” These expansive abstractions of the data and metaphor we’re all swimming in are as messy and as orderly, as intense, as my first impressions of Kusama or Rothko or Agnes Martin. It’s a knockout blow to end the year on.
As per the last couple years, my comments will be with more wide-ranging playlists going up in a week or so, this is a place holder because I do like to look back at a snapshot of what records spoke to me as I looked back on the year. Bandcamp links where available.
New Material
Allison Russell, Outside Child
Tyshawn Sorey and Alarm Will Sound, For George Lewis/Autoschediasms
John Paul Keith, The Rhythm of The City
Moor Mother, Black Encyclopedia of the Air
Genesis Owusu, Smiling With No Teeth
(Could not find Bandcamp)
Marisa Anderson and William Tyler, Lost Futures
Reigning Sound, A Little More Time With The Reigning Sound
Sons of Kemet, Black To The Future
Powers/Rolin Duo, Strange Fortune
William Parker, Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World
Adia Victoria, A Southern Gothic
Moviola, Broken Rainbows
Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince
Gentleman Jesse, Lose Everything
James Brandon Lewis’s Red Lily Quartet, Jesup Wagon
Yasmin Williams, Urban Driftwood
Jojra Smith, Be Right Back
(Couldn’t Find Bandcamp)
James McMurtry, The Horses and The Hounds
Elizabeth King, Living in the Last Days
Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson, Searching For the Disappeared Hour
Reissue and/or Archival
Various Artists, It’s a Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fania Records
(Couldn’t Find Bandcamp)
PJ Harvey, Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea – Demos
(Couldn’t Find Bandcamp)
Various Artists, The Daptone Super Soul Revue LIVE at the Apollo
The Long Blondes, Someone To Drive You Home: 15th Anniversary Edition
Seeing music in (usually small) rooms with like-minded people has – for my adult life and a few years before – been the art form I’ve thrown myself into with the most gusto, where I’ve met the largest groups of my dearest friends, and the most constant source of picking me up and putting me back together when I’ve been down.
So, the return to that energy, that joy, that magic – even in modified forms, with fewer artists back on the road – was a balm and a beachhead against so much despair this year. It’s unsurprising of the 75ish nights I found myself in a room soaking up some sounds, Dick’s Den saw me the most often at 13 times as of last night.
Dick’s is also where I found myself, against a wall, talking to old friend and drummer Pauly Abbott, about that surge of energy from people I was used to seeing at shows then didn’t see at all when things switched to live streaming. I am eternally grateful for the close friends I’d see on one of our lawns or a coffeeshop patio, but my extroverted nature craved those next concentric circles of people. Friends I have real love for and who add vital color to my life even if our friendships are more situational in nature. Thank you all, whether you read this or not.
Jerry Wolf, The Top Steakhouse
That’s also not to overlook the streams that kept giving me a little taste of music happening, music unwilling to be stopped. It was a little bittersweet when the regular streaming series of John Paul Keith and Jesse Malin came to an end, I’m glad ongoing series from Goner Records in Memphis and SFJAZZ in San Francisco persist, and I hope we’ll find a way to keep making these available for people who can’t get to a show as easily.
I don’t know what happens next, but I’m profoundly, jubilantly grateful for everything listed below, and far more shows than this best-of-the-best 20. Everything is in chronological order. In Columbus unless otherwise specified. All photographs taken (with varying degrees of ineptitude) by me.
The Veldt, Pour House, Raleigh
Jerry Wolf, The Top Steakhouse, 04/24/2021 (and other nights) – The first indoor dining Anne and I treated ourselves to was classic steakhouse and cocktail bar The Top. One of the signature pleasures of this gently-updated since the ‘50s room is the curved piano bar in the corner, where we always try to either start or end up with one of their perfect martinis or manhattans; three of those nights we were lucky enough to have Columbus jazz and cabaret legend Jerry Wolf rain down pure, icepick-in-the-heart beauty. An encyclopedic array of songs – I’d ask for “Try to Remember” for Anne or her mom and he’d expand it into a bouquet of songs from The Fantasticks; I’d mention Cole Porter and for the next ten minutes, he’d build intricate harmonic bridges from “Just One of Those Things” through “Don’t Fence Me In” onward to “Night and Day.” And he’d take requests from folks with less interest in standards than I have – one night we heard a surprisingly spry, sparkling “Hotel California” waft over the tables – but just getting to appreciate one of the masters of this art, of this love, of the middle 20th century American song, is something I treasured every minute of and anyone in Columbus should avail themselves of at least once.
Reigning Sound, Harbor Town Amphitheater, 06/05/2021, and Railgarten (Gonerfest), both Memphis, 09/24/2021 – We already had plans for a beach house recharge trip with dear friends the following week of June but the confluence of surprisingly cheap flights and the opportunity to make the last band we saw out of town – in Cleveland the same weekend the first cases of COVID were identified in Ohio – the first band we saw out of town, in their hometown of Memphis, for just one additional vacation day was too tempting to pass up. Still cautiously placed in an outdoor amphitheater we’d never visited on our trips to town, Anne and I were treated to a dazzling set from an expanded Reigning Sound – the classic four-piece lineup of Greg Cartwright on guitar and vocals, Jeremy Scott on bass and harmonies, Greg Roberson on drums and percussion, Alex Greene on organ and guitar, augmented by Graham Winchester on drums and percussion, John Whittemore on various guitars and pedal steel, cellist Elen Wroten, violinist Krista Wroten, and Cartwright’s Parting Gifts partner Coco Hames on additional vocals – hitting most of their joyous, sun-drenched 2021 release A Little More Time With Reigning Sound – and more classics than I had the right to expect, in interesting arrangements. When we saw them again three months later – with that same lineup, but with Marcella Simien in place of Hames – there was the added magic of Gonerfest sprinkled over everything, gorgeous weather, and a dancing crowd, but I still remember the sigh of relief on that rainy June afternoon.
The Veldt, Pour House, Raleigh, 06/12/2021 – We bookended that trip with an overnight in Raleigh. The best part of that stop was seeing old friend and mentor Rich Dansky on his home turf for the first time in years, but I also found time to be stunned by a set from reunited shoegaze-soul band The Veldt at the terrific venue/record store combo Pour House. A sticky afternoon and songs I didn’t know that hit everything I want in a band. Pure, rejuvenating magic.
Sylvia Cuenca Quintet, Smalls, NYC
Brett Burleson Quartet, Dick’s Den, 07/02/2021 – Brett’s not only a friend but a pillar of the jazz scene here in town I love so much. This was one of the first trips back to Dick’s, along with a Rhinestone Quartet show a couple weeks earlier Brett also played in, where everything felt right. A whirlwind of love: hugging old friends, watching no-bullshit jazz played so directly and passionately it moved crowds to press against the stage and throw each other around the dance floor. Around midnight, the throbbing rhythm section of Will Strickler on bass and Antoine Fatout on drums locked into Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning” and Brett’s guitar and Eddie Bayard’s tenor took us into the eye of a delirious hurricane. Every one of the other six or seven times I’ve seen these gentlemen on a stage has given me a few of those moments, and this reminder sank right into my bones.
Sylvia Cuenca Quintet, Smalls, NYC, 07/16/2021 – Much as I missed that feeling of jazz in a room with people who appreciate the magic of those moments being captured, the beauty of how fleeting it is, I have a special affection for it in New York City, the cradle of most of the jazz I’ve grown up loving. So, it’s no surprise not only would Anne and I make New York one of our first stops after being vaccinated, but jazz would be a key component of that return. This trip to Smalls, always a firecracker of a time, featured a riveting hard bop set from drummer Sylvia Cuenca leading a quintet of rhythm section partners Dave Kikoski on piano and Essiet Essiet on bass behind a smoldering frontline of Craig Handy and Freddie Hendrix.
Kim Richey, Natalie’s Grandview, 07/30/2021 – Natalie’s usually features heavily in this list and 2021 is no exception – with one of the roughest hands dealt a venue (not that it’s ever a competition), Natalie and Charlie Jackson had just opened their larger Grandview location and they were working out the kinks when everything shut down. Kim Richey was one of the many acts I hadn’t seen since Little Brothers closed, and this set commemorating the belated 20th anniversary of the record that turned me onto her and the first tour of hers I saw, Glimmer, summed up everything I keep going to singer-songwriter shows for. Accompanied by a lead guitarist – I wrote the name as “Sam” but didn’t catch the last name – she hit most of that record, along with stories about some of her co-writers like frequent Natalie’s visitor Chuck Prophet and some other stone-cold favorites of mine. Watching her lean into “Chase Wild Horses,” curling those lines like a beckoning, “I’m all done running from the way I was before. Things I’ve done that I ain’t proud of, I can’t even stand the sound of; I still hear them knocking at my door,” pinballed through my body as I walked down King Avenue into the night.
Tony Monaco Quartet, Woodlands Tavern
Huntertones, Natalie’s Grandview, 08/07/2021 – Columbus’s current most prominent local-kids-made-good story, jazz-jam band the Huntertones have been impressing me since they were college students here under the name the Dan White Sextet, and it’s a pleasure to not only see them setting New York and the wider jam scene on fire but also watch their music get more expansive and more in tune with who they are and who they want to be. This homecoming show – I caught the afternoon of their three gigs – was a delightful callback and a reminder of the joy of everyone being together, underlined by an impassioned speech from reeds player White between songs about the energy exchange between band and audience. The touching love everyone on stage had for everyone else lit that room up like a paper lantern, burning through my hangover and making my heart pump a little harder to tunes like “Burns” with its sun-dappled pop-funk textures mingling with second line crunch; a classic quiet storm number turning into a storm of robot bees with angular improvisation; and a gnarled, righteously boozy Chris Ott trombone solo with White and Jon Lampley throwing harmonies off it that sounded like a war cry for the party just around the corner.
The Three Speeds, Vanderelli Room/Paisha, Secret Studio; 08/14/2021 – Coming out of the last lockdown, a little shell-shocked, I was heartened to see venues springing up and working together. One of my favorite examples of that synchronicity was Franklinton art gallery pillar, Vanderelli Room, creating an outdoor stage for a fun, raucous concert series, and then coordinating it with neighbors, and more recent Franklinton residents, Secret Studio, so the two complimented each other instead of competing. That led to one of my favorite days of the summer. First, Columbus rock lifers The Three Speeds, fronted by guitarist/singer Matt Wyatt, with his brother Chris on second guitar and harmonies, and one of my favorite rock rhythm sections (as people and as players) Gene Brodeur and Eddie Blau, churned through a set of raw, catchy-nasty classic punk rock. Over at Secret Studio, Paisha Thomas, performing and recording as Paisha, had one of those sets where everything just clicked for me. She’s long been one of my favorite voices in Columbus, but I didn’t vibe with the songs as much as the voice and the charisma, this time everything fired at the same level. A tight sympathetic band of local legends – Stan Smith on guitar, Steve Perakis on bass, Danny Aguiar on drums – helped, but it was entirely Paisha’s show. When I see a singer do one of my all-time, 20th century favorite songs, Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love,” so well it at once becomes the benchmark I set that song against, and I’m still raving about their own songs later that night, it’s a special, special show.
Tony Monaco Quartet, Woodlands Tavern, 08/14/2021 and other dates – Tony Monaco’s one of the great ambassadors of the grooving Columbus B-3 tradition (with Bobby Floyd being the other). Through playing with nationally-renowned greats like Joey DeFrancesco, regular touring of Japan, and building bridges to younger bands and audiences through years of residencies at non-jazz venues. He was one of the first acts I saw after getting vaccinated, in a trio with drummer Tony McClung and saxophone maestro Eddie Bayard, and I saw him as recently as this past weekend, always delivering, reading the crowd and tweaking his approach to the audience without pandering and changing the core of who he is. The packed Saturday night dancefloor in one of our best sounding clubs, as pal John Turck (also a keyboardist and bandleader) said, “I knew he’d be funky, you couldn’t not here.” With longstanding foils Derek DiCenzo on guitar, Randy Mather on tenor, and Louis Tsamous on drums. Digging into the repertoire of B-3 classics like Jimmy Smith and mingling them with floor-shakers like an extended, shimmering read on Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and a griding, artfully chopped take on the Booker T and the MGs classic “Green Onions.” I barely stopped moving for two sets.
Algiers, Rumba Cafe
John Paul Keith, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, 08/27/2021 – One of my favorite songwriters I completely owe Anne for turning me onto. We’ve bemoaned for years Memphis staple John Paul Keith hadn’t played Ohio since we’ve been fans, so as soon as they announced he’d be playing the outdoor pavilion of the Rock Hall in one of our favorite cities, touring to promote his best album yet, Rhythm of the City, it felt like a no-brainer. Those songs with a tight four-piece band of bass, drums, and keys, sparkled in the summer night air.
Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys, Natalie’s Grandview, 09/08/2021 – One of my favorite voices of all time, seeing Big Sandy after a few years away (though his appearances on Stellar Shows’ livestreams, often introducing video clips, were a pandemic delight) was special. My day job friend and mentor, Cindy Jackson, was retiring and doing a Columbus victory lap; CJ’s an even bigger roots rock fiend than I am, so this show lining up with her appearance felt like serendipity. Anne and I took her out to this show, and she loved it as expected – that voice in duet with Ashley Kingman’s guitar (with thanks to longtime pal Jeff Passifume for the amps in the backline) and the bouncing, supple rhythm section of Kevin Stewart’s singing bass and sweet harmonies and Frankie Hernandez’s classic big beat, undiminished by some time away. Everything brought a heaping dose of fire and gratitude like watching a prize fighter bound off the mat again and again, through a series of swinging classics, leaving some space for the dark ballads he doesn’t get enough credit for, with a centerpiece of two Freddie Fender covers that had me crying. Throughout this list, always an exercise in memory and gratitude for me, I’m reminded again that the magic is being in a room with people, sharing all of this with people you love.
Algiers with Zen Mother, Rumba Café, 09/17/2021 – Another delayed show I was on the second it was rescheduled. The last time I saw Algiers, with a substitute bass player, at Big Ears, is still one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen and this trip to Rumba lived up to those nostalgic expectations. Songs like “There Is No Year” and “Walk Like a Panther” shifted and roared, textures sliced through the air, leaving a lingering impression before being subsumed in waves of pummeling sound. The magpie nature of all good rock and roll, focused like a laser beam. Attention also should be paid to Zen Mother, the power trio that merged the powerful crunch of doom metal with the delicate intimacy of the Cure; I walked in knowing nothing about the opener and walked out singing their praises to everyone.
Mark Lomax Trio, Short North Stage
John Luther Adams’ “Inuksuit”, VIVO Music Festival, Schiller Park, 09/18/2021 – Over the last few years, a couple organizations have done crucial work to fill in one of the few genre gaps I groused about in Columbus for a while: new music/contemporary classical. One is the Johnstone Fund, who show up right after, and the other is the VIVO festival. I was only able to hit one VIVO offering this year, but it summed up so much of what I love about Columbus. Adams’ “Inuksuit” composition, played throughout Schiller Park, around the stage where Actors’ Theatre stages their plays, the pond, wandering through areas close and far, with good friends I’d barely seen since the lockdown started, on a sunny day, and soaking in these harmonies and revealed textures I missed my first trip through this expansive composition at IJAMS as part of Big Ears.
Mark Lomax Trio with Scott Woods, Short North Stage, 09/21/2021 – One of my favorite composers, Mark Lomax II, had touring cut short on his magnum opus The 400 (which I’ve raved about repeatedly here) but never one to be dormant for long, he reintroduced one of my favorite series, The Johnstone Fund For New Music at Short North Stage, with a brand new composition played by his longstanding trio of Dean Hulett on bass and Eddie Bayard on tenor and words from longtime collaborator Scott Woods. “In Search of a City” was exactly the kind of no-easy-answers reckoning we need, especially in a city that too-often prizes growth at the expense of people.
Drive By Truckers, Newport Music Hall
Drive By Truckers, Newport, 10/14/2021 – For over 20 years, DBT have exemplified that sense of communal, going-to-church catharsis I’ve always been drawn to in a rock show. When Anne and I first met and were comparing shows we’ve both been at, they were one of the first names to arise. While my attention drifted for a few years, they won me back in full effect with their records since American Band. This 27-song, sweat-drenched classic rock and soul revue hit every era of their career, and reaffirmed the joy of being back with other people, of shouting along even when the songs are confronting an ugly truth. Patterson Hood, arms outstretched, introducing “Let There Be Rock” as “This is a song about how rock and roll saved my life, and every word of it is true,” always feels like a call to prayer and I really, really needed it this time.
Arooj Aftab and the Vulture Prince Ensemble, Wexner Center, 10/16/2021 – I raved about Arooj Aftab’s new record Vulture Prince here a couple times, and in a preview of this show I wrote for Pencilstorm, and it’s still a piece of surprising, intoxicating beauty and mystery that’s still revealing secrets months after my first hearing. I confess I was a little disappointed when I saw the band in question was just Aftab and the great Gyan Riley on guitar, but within a few minutes any qualms or worries I’d think something was missing. This was an hour of hypnotic rapture I’m already hungry to see again (at Big Ears unless something goes wrong).
Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, Natalie’s Grandview
Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, Natalie’s Grandview, 10/21/2021 – My and Anne’s last trip to Natalie’s Grandview before lockdown was a solo Chuck Prophet show where he debuted a handful of songs from his then-forthcoming The Land That Time Forgot and teased a full-band return in the Spring. That show got delayed a few times, but he finally made good in October to a crowd that was more than ready for it. That sense of gratitude I mention a few times over the course of this list is always present in Prophet’s work, especially live, and it was overflowing this time. The band stretching some of the songs into extended guitar and keys showcases with barely a hint of wanking; at other times, stripping it down to the simplest of melodies that would break your heart and turns of phrase that could remind you how beautiful and fucked up life is. A masterclass in how much there still is in the form of a five-piece band turned up and tuned in.
Hayes Carll, Skully’s, 11/11/2021 – One of my favorite songwriters since seeing at Twangfest 13 or 14 years ago but Anne and I hadn’t caught Carll since 2011 in Cleveland (I kind of got off the bus with Lovers and Leavers but I’ve come back around). All of that charm and empathy, and diamond-hard and pretty hooks, were in abundance at this Skully’s show where everything good about the venue (the sightlines, the sound) was in fine fetter and everything not so good (the bar service, the tendency to sell the entire capacity of the building instead of just the room with the stage) was ameliorated or kept at bay. Carll’s new songs, including “Nice Things” and “You Get It All” stood up well against classics like “KMAG YOYO” and “Drunken Poet’s Dream.” That conversational sway and disarming smile left me grinning like an idiot and talking about it with Anne and others hours, even days later.
Marc Ribot, Wexner Center, 11/14/2021 – My favorite guitar player, and the subject of not only one of my favorite interviews but one people kept coming up and talking to me about, did not disappoint in a magical solo show at the Wexner’s Mershon Auditorium. Digging deep into standards – “Someone to Watch Over Me”, “Stella by Starlight” – and originals like “Maple Leaf Rage,” stitched together into one continuum of song.
The Randys, Dick’s Den, 12/11/2021 and other dates – If you can’t find some joy in the Randys, I question your capacity to find it anywhere. With a handful of originals sprinkled in, their perfectly chosen mix of classic pop, honky-tonk, and R&B covers, sung beautifully and played with the gleeful abandon of spinning tops and the dazzling precision of vintage clockwork by original four members Brian Jones, Jon Beard, Canaan Faulkner, and David Vaubel, gained a little chaos-theory looseness when they added Derek Dicenzo without sacrificing an ounce of the beauty that keeps us all coming. One of the first shows Anne and I caught was two sets of them playing outdoors to benefit my neighborhood nonprofit the Clintonville Resource Center, one of the last shows I saw before writing this was their annual Christmas show, and they’ve never let me down, never played a gig I fail to see at least one old friend I was overjoyed to dance with.
God, it felt good to be back in a room with people sharing the vibration of other humans on a stage, the feedback loop of energy and – dangerous as it sometimes felt – sharing breath. Starting literally two weeks after my second shot, I was lucky to see 30 shows and miracle of miracles, none of them were bad.
Every company that’s returned, making work, is bringing it right now – playing to their core strengths and stretching their muscles. Beyond what made this list? I saw crisp, vibrant shows from Evolution and Gallery. Otterbein and Short North Stage’s sister/adjunct company Columbus Immersive crafted productions that fully turned me around on shows I actively didn’t like previously. All four of the Actors’ shows and all four Red Herring productions left me talking about them into the night if not for weeks. MadLab and CATCO revealed the fruits of the energy and enthusiasm of new artistic directors (in the latter case after a year’s preview of fascinating streaming work). Imagine returned with a brand new, original musical with 19 cast members.
This town rang with the echoes of gauntlets dropping and examples of exactly what keeps me going out night after night. I enjoyed every minute of that energy and enthusiasm being back, even when the finished piece didn’t work for me. But the 10 here would have blown me away in any circumstances and it was a hard call whittling down to them.
Back to NYC for Under the Radar and sundry in January, great stuff on the books for the Wexner Center in Spring, fingers crossed we get closer to “back” with every month.
That NYC trip in January includes the reopened revival of Company we originally had tickets to for my 40th birthday in 2020 – there will be more in my year end music playlists, but I can’t imagine my cultural life without the shining influence of Stephen Sondheim who passed away the day before I started assembling this. I grew up steeped in musicals – the heavy influence of my mom and my grandmother – including some of his, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story and Gypsy. But when I discovered his mature work – starting with my massive love of Sweeney Todd and Assassins, it felt like I found musical theater pitched directly at me – this also gives me a chance to acknowledge and publicly express gratitude for the friends who opened that door: Doug Smith, Sean Klein (who we also lost this year, barely a week after we texted about getting the old gang together), Matt Porreca, and Robin Seabaugh; nothing would have fallen into place without each of you.
That said, I want to acknowledge the stellar online work that helped get me through the months beforehand, that gave me a taste, a little hint of the electricity that kept me going. Everything here is in chronological order and everything in person is in Columbus (except otherwise noted doesn’t apply this time, but I’m thirsty for when it does).
Online
Alicia Hall Moran, from her website
Online
Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran by Javaad Alipoor (The Javaad Alipoor Company, presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar)
The Motown Project by Alicia Hall Moran (Presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar)
Fragments, Lists, and Lacunae by Alexandra Chasin and Zishan Ugurlu (Presented by New York Live Arts)
Blue Ridge by Abby Rosebrock (Presented by Play Per View)
Revenge Porn by Carla Ching (Presented by Play Per View)
Hymn by Lolita Chakrabati (Presented by Almeida Theatre)
A Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terrence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons (Met LiveinHD)
In Person
Don Giovanni, photo by Terry Gilliam
Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte (Opera Columbus), directed by Eve Summer – I’m not sure I could have picked a better return to live theater than this super-charged, intense reading of one of the very first operas I loved by a revitalized Opera Columbus. The safety measures had a fascinating thematic thrust and the performances, especially Jorell Williams in the title role and Amber Monroe’s Donna Elvira, singed my eyebrows off. I said “They amplify the deep loneliness of the libertine and his victims and the teeth-gnashing frustration of attempts at revenge and forgiveness… Having been 14 months since I’d been inside a theater, the longest stretch since I was 16, it was probably not unlikely I’d cry anyway. But it’s hard for me to imagine a better return to live performance than this dazzling Don Giovanni,” in my review for Columbus Underground.
Carrie, book by Lawrence D. Cohen, music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, after the novel by Stephen King, directed by Edward Carignan (Columbus Immersive Theater/Short North Stage) – Growing up in awe of Stephen King’s debut novel, setting the tone for his character-focused horror novels to come, and simultaneously steeped in the lore of this musical adaptation, this came with the deck stacked against it. But Carignan and company not only hit every mark, they crushed those expectations. I took my mom as my plus-one, the reason I read Stephen King in the first place, and she was as dazzled as I was. In my Columbus Underground review, I said, “Carignan, Williams, and the cast never lose sight of the deep sadness at the heart of Carrie and the lesson that we can all be monsters with less of a nudge than we want to admit. And they make that uncomfortable identification into a riotous, quick-witted, wild carnival ride of an entertainment. It’s an alternately sticky-hot and brilliantly cold look at humanity perfect for the depths of summer.”
Various Artists, Columbus Black Theater Festival (Mine4God Productions, presented by Abbey Theatre of Dublin) – One of my favorite events of the Columbus calendar returned in a slightly streamlined version, and resulted in one of my favorite conversations, with artistic director Julie Whitney Scott (I didn’t capture it as well as I would have liked in the article, a reminder to keep trying harder). After writing a preview, I paid to see this on my own dime. And while I didn’t see it all – I didn’t quite allow myself enough time for the rich marathon – the two hours I was in the Abbey sent me back into the night reeling and bending the ear of Anne and whoever else would listen.
Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Beth Josephsen (Actors Theatre of Columbus) – The classic Orpheus and Eurydice story was heavy in the zeitgeist this year and Sarah Ruhl has long been one of my favorite playwrights (her memoir Smile is on the bedstand as I write this). In the strongest Actors’ Theatre season in recent memory – I was also blown away by a Much Ado About Nothing, The African Company Presents Richard III, and a childhood favorite of mine The Secret Garden – this lovely, incisive meditation on memory kept rippling in my mind for weeks. For Columbus Underground, I commented, “The modifications to the climax land with the thud of inevitability and surprised the audience enough at the performance I attended I heard gasps spring up around me. Josephsen and her cast balance the abstract and accessible elements of this modern take on one of the western world’s classic tragic love stories in a way that feels fresh, exciting, and powerful.”
The Children, photo by Jerri Shafer
The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, directed by Michael Herring (Red Herring) – This locked-room drama, balancing intimate, personal apocalypses with a shadow growing over the world, featured blistering performances by Harold Yarborough, Nancy Skaggs, and Josie Merkel, and stood out in a season where I didn’t see anything weak from Red Herring. I said, “At every level, the characters face snowballing consequences of thoughtless choices, wounds never disinfected, from the contaminated water flowing in the power plant to old slights among each other, and have to deal with what they owe the next generation up to and including their use as sacrificial lambs,” for Columbus Underground.
Let’s Hope You Feel Better by Samantha Oty (MadLab), directed by Sarah Vargo – MadLab came out on fire this year, taking some interesting chances. And this bitterly funny, whiplash-inducing sex farce was one of the best things I saw all year. Boasting killer – *rimshot* – performances by McLane Nagy and Tom Murdock at the center of a stellar cast, this crackled with reminders of the crucial energy MadLab brings to our theater scene. I commented in Columbus Underground: “The serious themes here – does a person have a right to die with dignity, what are the limits on the Hippocratic Oath’s “do no harm,” what do we owe the people in our lives – get a strong, thoughtful workout in Let’s Hope You Feel Better but nothing gets in the way of the play as a sharp, molten-hot, and sub-zero cold, often at the same time, entertainment.”
Life Alert by Chris Sherman, directed by Michelle Batt (eMBer Womens Theater) – eMBer Womens Theater returned with a lovely series of shorts, Muses, and then this dazzling, delayed world premiere boasting a stellar cast with particularly strong performances by Melissa Bair and Josie Merkel. I said in Columbus Underground, “Sherman’s play is deeply concerned with who society considers disposable, whose work matters and whose doesn’t, and how demoralizing that gets. How deeply baked into so many of our consciouses those biases are, how they feel like pollution in the air we breathe and how a woman saying ‘Am I expected to sacrifice my life’ for others’ needs, putting it in the world out loud, is still a radical and necessary act. The ending gets a little more obvious and underlined than anything else but it’s a minor blip after two hours – with one intermission – that rang so true.”
Mr. Burns, photo by Terry Gilliam
Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn with music by Michael Friedman, directed by Leda Hoffmann (CATCO) – More than anything else this year, this was the experience I missed so badly. A play I’ve wanted to see since the Off-Broadway run but never made happen, and the first in-person taste of new CATCO artistic director Hoffmann’s work, this slapped me around in all the best ways. Crystallizing thoughts I’d had about storytelling, the strange era of the 20th century where we build art upon allusion on top of allusion, exploding the metaphor at the heart of all history and language. A tribute to the community of our actors, with standout performances by Scott Douglas Wilson, Jonathan Putnam, Acacia Duncan, and Shauna Davis leading a terrific cast. The production’s also – using the three spaces effectively – a reminder of the symbiosis of audience and performers. Anne and I spent the next two hours, right up until an excellent Chuck Prophet show you’ll be hearing about on my live music list, going over this in delighted detail. For Columbus Underground, I commented: “Like the best Simpsons episodes, Mr. Burns bulges with references and easter eggs but in the best sense: I felt a frisson of delight whenever I caught one – as I write this, the example jumping to my mind is Wilson delivering the play’s Sweeney Todd nod “Life has been kind to you” – but it didn’t bog me down looking for them. More, nothing felt tacked on or inessential. Everything adds to a piece I wish I could find the time to see again.”
The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse, directed by Mark Mann (Red Herring) – Red Herring closed 2021 with a wild, ribald farce that reminded my how good their ear is for plays that have achieved some acclaim but might never have made it to Columbus otherwise. Fasthorse’s play made me laugh until my sides hurt, with a cast full of wild energy, especially Todd Covert and Elizabeth Harelik Falter. As I said in Columbus Underground, “Fasthorse’s play finds the perfect tenor for it, without getting too meta or cerebral, grounding the comedy in the ambitions and insecurities of a classic group of misfits, and it’s hard to imagine this getting a better production than Mann and Red Herring provide.”
Hadestown by Anais Mitchell, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Broadway in Columbus) – I’ve been a fan of Anais Mitchell for many years, her song “Cosmic American” lighting the fire, and I loved the original Hadestown concept album when it came out. I hadn’t managed to catch this expansion on Broadway but my return to Broadway in Columbus with the touring production – featuring Audrey Ochoa who you’ll see on my playlists – reminded me how great, and how specific, that kind of big stage theater can be. How marvelous it is to see something in a packed house. So beautiful Anne and I had conversations about it with different people in different bars for the next two weeks, the only other play I kept wanting to dig into to that extent was Mr. Burns. For Columbus Underground: “Chavkin’s expansion of Mitchell’s song cycle takes one of the quintessential stories of both the transformative power of art and its limitations, its ability to change – and not change – the world and the hearts of both audience and creator, and imbues what could be a heavy slog, with all the fun of a carnival ride or a night at a wild party. As Marable sings while leading the cast in the curtain call, ‘We raise our cups to them.’”
Hadestown, photo by T Charles Erickson
As always, thank you – to everyone who helped make these shows happen, who joined me for them, who talked with me about them after, and who reads this. Thank you so much.
It feels like Fall, my favorite season, in more than one sense. And this marks a full year since I’ve been doing these – they helped keep me tethered to some sense of loving music and art and wanting to share that with people even as other outlets dried up in the depths of last year, and I’m grateful for anyone who pressed play, who said something kind or told me they found a song or an artist they didn’t hear before, or who read any of these notes. Thanks, as always.
Stumbled hard a few times this month but righted the ship. Still struggling with some levels of burnout but I see the light, and I’ve started some habits that are showing some positive signs. And had some remarkable feelings of normality, in all the best ways – the first weekend I had to review three shows. First writing for a new outlet run by good friends.
Seeing other friends for the first time in person since before the pandemic and good lord, it’s amazing how much energy I’ve missed from those people it never would have occurred to see every week or anything but who bring something ineffable to my life. First Pink Elephant in 18 months, coupled with returning from Gonerfest and a full week of theater reviews led to this being a little more delayed than I’d like; back to the first week of the month next month.
And this, the year anniversary of these playlists which give me more joy than I expected when I started and I’ve gotten remarkably positive feedback about. Thanks for listening. Thanks for letting me know what you think. Thanks for being here. I love you.
Any valuable experience with art – at least any art I’ve ever loved – makes you feel simultaneously more connected to the world and vibrates some string deep inside you.
Deep into a humid Memphis night, the second of Gonerfest 18, Reigning Sound – the key quartet of friends who formed in 2001 in Memphis for the first three classic records, and equally classic singles and compilation Home For Orphans, singer-songwriter Greg Cartwright, Bassist-singer Jeremy Scott, drummer-singer Greg Roberson, and organist-guitarist-singer Alex Greene, augmented by drummer-percussionist Graham Winchester, John Whittemore on acoustic and electric guitars and pedal steel, cellist Elen Wroten and violinist Krista Wroten, and Marcella Simien on washboard – opened a headlining set with the apropos lead-off track from their reunion album, A Little More Time With the Reigning Sound, “Do It Again.”
Carwright’s finely sharpened and sweetened growl poured over a crowd hungry to be with each other again and hearing Simien and Scott’s voices rise and converge with Carwright’s on the chorus’s “I really miss ya,” was almost enough to knock me down to my knees.
It’s easy to get so deep into survival mode that you wall off the pain of missing people, your people, until something knocks a brick loose and all those feelings come flooding out. For the next hour, the Reigning Sound did that for me and everyone I knew there, dancing and shouting along, and forgetting how to act but in all the best ways. Watching Greene and Whittemore shoot grins between them, the Wrotens dancing on the side of stage, Roberson and Winchester melting into one monstrous, jubilant rhythm, everything lined up and nothing let me down.
Reigning Sound
Last year was a lesson in – all credit to Anne – finding ways to mark things we couldn’t be together for, or at least not together to the extent we normally would/should have been. It was a valuable lesson in learning how do that even as I feel guilty framing any part of the pandemic in the light of my own personal self-improvement or benefit.
One of my favorite public examples of that marking was Gonerfest’s translation to streaming. Organizers Eric Friedl and Zac Ives and their crack team recreated so much of what’s kept me coming back to Memphis for ten years: I still found bands I’d never heard before; I still felt a little of that community when I checked into the zoom or in the local discord rooms I set up. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t feel great to be back in Memphis dancing with other people.
First night crowd
Other returning Gonerfest champions Quintron and Miss Pussycat closed Thursday night with an expansive, spiritual set at a right angle from what even we big fans had seen before. Since 1990, Quintron and Miss Pussycat carry a torch that illuminates a way to live on one’s own terms, to keep magic in the foreground of someone’s worldview.
Despite a long list of collaborations and communal activities – Quintron’s live reprise with the Oblivians on their raw gospel record Sing Nine Songs with Mr. Quintron at Gonerfest a few years ago was one of the most exciting rock and roll sets I’ve ever seen; appearances enlivened records and shows with fellow New Orleans travelers Galactic and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys; their Spellcaster Lounge down in Nola – but the work under their own name has been very much a self-contained unit for years.
Their last record, Goblin Alert, produced by Greg Cartwright (underlining the sense of friendship and collaboration and community that ripples through everything Gonerfest), had a fuller band feeling with Sam Yoger on a full drumkit, Danny Clifton on electric guitar, and Benni’ on vocoder and other synths. They convened the same cast, augmented by an additional woman on percussion and vocals, for a gorgeous, filthy tent revival. They expanded forms we knew and loved into cascading waves of sound, part trashy euro disco and part classic spiritual fire music as lines collaged and built, ratcheting up the intensity while wriggling away from literal meaning. It was a set that left me drenched and babbling.
Quintron and Miss Pussycat
The new venue sacrificed some of the “bouncing all over Memphis” quality I love so much, though the afterparties did what they could to pick up that slack – the couple we walked past but decided we were too exhausted to brave the crowds were clearly hopping – and for trying the create a safe space we could all be both distanced and self-contained Railgarten was perfect. Also, the two bartenders I mostly dealt with were fantastic, overjoyed to see the festival here, made a point of remembering my name, like they were as happy as the goers were to be around people. While I’d still like different day shows, it was nice to have headliners everyone could see from almost anywhere in the venue.
And what we missed in racing from venue to venue, the zoomed-in focus on Memphis and surrounding area bands paid off with some acts I’ve been hungry to see since the streamed version and some I might never have seen otherwise.
Optic Sink – Natalie Hoffmann from NOTS’ synth and vocal collaboration with Ben Bauermeister (A55 Conducta) on beats was every bit the cold, jagged but funky and hooky blast of fresh air as last year’s debut album. Nick Allison and the Players Lounge, favorites of mine from the stream, brought tumbling melodies wrapped in barrelhouse piano and chiming, spacious guitars for some perfect pre-sunset swaying and letting the rest of last night’s sin sweat out of your skin music.
Optic Sink
And the biggest thing I go to Gonerfest for: bands I hadn’t even heard of before who blew me away, again, with more of a local bent this year for obvious reasons. Ibex Clone intrigued me with their chiming, abstracted twang and Cure-ish atmospherics swirled through grinding Gang of Four grooves. Snooper won the day for super young kids with a wire tight band, interesting grooves and shout-along hooks and righteous energy.
MS Paint, from Hattiesburg, put a classic wild-man singer spitting rhymes in a classic slam poetry cadence over gnarled, molten hardcore played by organ, bass, and drums behind him – my favorite discovery and left Anne and I quote-shouting “Destroy all flags and the symbols of man!” all the way home.
MS Paint
None of which is to discount bands I already loved or had an inkling would be good, none of those disappointed me.
Kings of the Fucking Sea united two of my favorite musicians, Sara Nelson from Little Killers – I still play their two records regularly, fifteen years later – and Poni Silver from the Ettes, as my favorite new rhythm section, behind singer and guitarist Chet Wiese. That trio also backed the great writer Sheree Renee Thomas – also recently named editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – on a moving spoken word tribute to Memphis.
NOTS
NOTS played their complex, thorny songs like they were fist-pumping anthems and turned the gravel lot and open-air venue into a claustrophobic warehouse party in all the best ways. Still one of the best bands working and increasingly comfortable in their power trio mode, I no longer even miss the quartet arrangements.
Jack O – and I’ve been a huge fan through all his solo guises, especially the Tennessee Tearjerkers lineup featuring John Paul Keith – proved again that with The Sheiks he’s got a band equally comfortable with every era of his career and every genre he wants to dance through. A snarling version of one of my favorite songs from the earlier period of his solo career, “’Til The Money Runs Out” flowed into a bouncing take on the Billy Swan/Clyde McPhatter classic “Lover Please” which sat comfortably with a few gnarled Oblivians classics and a pulsing run through Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” introduced with “Next year: Gonerfest goes to college!” and featuring Abe Smith from True Sons of Thunder on lead vocals and Jack’s occasional bandmate Greg Cartwright on backing vocals.
Aquarian Blood
Aquarian Blood not only completed their metamorphosis into a roughed-up, abstracted folk band that’s just as exciting as those first couple rock sides they put out but played an explosive version of that very first single with a seven-piece version that made standing in the burning sun, whiskey spilled on my suit jacket, feel like a baptism instead of a punishment.
The baptism hit in full force with the Wilkins Sisters. Reverend John Wilkins closed the Murphy’s day show at my first Gonerfest, a decade ago, and is still my favorite set I’ve ever seen. I still chuckle thinking about this man, who’d seen some things, introducing his song “Trouble” with, “Who here has seen some trouble?” then, laughing a little, “I want to remind you all that the night is young.”
Goner put out Wilkins’ second record, Trouble, last year and it was one of my records of the year. Unfortunately, the Reverend passed away from COVID complications late in 2020 so it was fitting his family – if I heard correctly, two daughters, one granddaughter, and one goddaughter – took the stage to pay tribute. Songs of his – including kicking off with a fiery version of “Trouble” – favorite songs of his like “Wade in the Water” and brought the house down on a version of Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands” that reduced me to a blubbering mass and a “I Been Through the Storm and Rain” that almost levitated me out of my skin.
Wilkins Sisters
Everything else here was damn near perfect – if occasionally loud – sipping drinks to DJs playing things from Columbus heroes Great Plains’ “Exercise” to the Hot 8 Brass Band’s “Ghost Town” (RIP Bennie Pete) to Spanky Wilson’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” crowds dancing to Tina Harvey’s bubblegum cover of “Waiting for The Man,” this was a trip that my soul needed more than I could have put into words.
Had a hard time getting going, a hard time connecting for the first half of this month: to music, to relationships, to writing. Some of that was the lingering fallout from my COVID breakthrough case, part was in response to the overwhelming, oppressive heat beyond what Ohio’s used to in August, and some was just ennui, the wall I hit after rushing too hard to get things close to a normal we might not see again without making the proper allowances for stamina and change.
But I made it through, some interactions with old and new friends, a couple astonishing shows, some mind-blowing theatre as local troupes come back, and a handful of those moments where I was playing a new record while I’m on the treadmill at the gym or walking to the bus to work and a song felt like a lightning bolt going up and down my spine. They all reminded me why I do this and what I want to be. Thanks for listening and checking in. I hope you find something to enjoy here.
As usual, keep reading below for notes on the songs.
Screen of Distance 