Tag: live music

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Best Of live music

Best of 2023 – Live Music

Small bar, two dark haired white men playing guitars, one singing, one light haired white man playing piano and singing, one light haired white man playing cowbell and dancing so hard he's blurry
The Little Rockers (from left, Phil Cogley (if I’m wrong there, someone please post), Quinn Fallon, Joe Peppercorn, Jason Winner)

This may sound like a joke to most people who know me, but this year, I really felt the strain of trying to juggle too much. Some of that stress resulted from differently demanding jobs – especially switching companies around Memorial Day. Some of that feeling was mental health, including the fact that a bout of COVID and a recurrence of gout both threw my gym habit, which I’d really enjoyed the last two years, off hard. I’ve got some strategies, and it’s all about iterative improvement/a feedback loop I’d been steadfastly ignoring; we’ll see if I can get to a more balanced place of being open to really enjoying everything I head out for and not being so goddam tired.

That whining out of the way; I’m so glad I have a habit of doing these every year because I saw an amazing array of stuff.  Narrowing this down to 20 was extremely hard – even with another 20 of the best sets I saw at a festival. I saw about 170 shows over 12 cities – though a few of those cities were only for festivals, like Knoxville for Big Ears or Memphis for Gonerfest. 

In no surprise, I was at Dick’s Den the most often, with 25 appearances, and I never saw any bullshit music there. It’s not only my clubhouse; it’s where our finest musicians feel comfortable stretching out, trying new things, and checking new players. Not only our jazz scene, but I feel safe saying Columbus’s entire cultural firmament would be poorer without the constantly rejuvenating energy of Dick’s.

Natalie’s Grandview was next up; I was there 11 times (with two more scheduled after this intro – hopefully after this post, but we’ll see how long this takes – but before the end of the year). Beyond the dazzling show that did make this list, it had the most sweated-over, where-does-this-go shows of any venue in town. In another year, the Robbie Fulks (first time with a full band in a few years), the Sadies (who killed me as a trio when I didn’t think I’d ever get used to them without Dallas Good), Sarah Borges/Eric Ambel (who brought my favorite set list they’ve ever done from two artists who’ve never made a bad record), and Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express (who sailed over what’s always a high bar when he’s in town) all would have made this list handily. 

And I want to take a second to shout out something Natalie’s does that I think is important: residencies. Beyond their legendary extension of Bobby Floyd’s Sundays (to which I’ve been an intermittent visitor since they were held at the Lobby on the east side), they’ve made space to give established and up-and-coming artists recurring weekly space on their more intimate Charlie’s Stage to bring guests, workshop new material, and remind us all just how deep the bench is of talent in this town. I saw stellar examples of this by Lydia Loveless, the duo of singer Sydney McSweeney and saxophone player Terrance Charles, Hammond B-3 players Jon Eshelman and Tony Monaco, and the trio version of alternate-universe harmony maestros The Randys, and easily missed half a dozen I wanted to make. My cultural life is richer through the efforts of Charlie and Natalie Jackson; every year, they double down on that.

Speaking of, I want to take a second to shout out fellow Grandview venue Woodlands Tavern: every time I made it out for Colin Gawel’s monthly residencies, I had a fantastic Sunday; more than once taking out-of-town pals, enjoying the guests he’d bring on, especially his rallying for both democracy in general and reproductive rights in specific with two Issue 2 shows before the two elections.

Cafe Bourbon Street either continues getting its groove back, or I continue getting my head out of my own ass and noticing. Every one of the six nights I spent there could have easily made this list; the one show that made the 20 not only still reverberates in my head but also was worth getting COVID again. Ace of Cups, I haven’t been to as often, but the subtle improvements in sound and the bar, while keeping some of the great staff and the overall ambiance, always make me feel good. I especially appreciate the carrying the torch for bigger community building or reinforcing events – the two-day 20th anniversary of Lost Weekend Records and the fundraiser for Arturo De Leon, headlined by the return of the New Bomb Turks; both made my heart swell.

Everything listed below is in Columbus unless otherwise stated; everything is in chronological order. All photographs are by me. When I list an opening act, it’s because that opener helped nudge the show onto this list.

Black and white photo, dark skin woman singing, light skinned woman sitting and playing violin
Rhiannon Giddens, standing, and Katherine McLin, playing violin, from the Promusica Chamber Orchestra
  • Meshell Ndegeocello (Blue Note, NYC, 01/12/2023) – I’ve been a fan of Ndegeocello since hearing Plantation Lullabies in High School, but I’d never seen her live, so a week at the Blue Note when I was in town for the constellation of APAP side events was a no-brainer. She augmented the already tight usual band with guitarist Jeff Parker and keyboardist Julius Rodriguez. She opened by saying, “It’s rainy outside; we’re going for a mood,” and held me in the palm of her hand as the band slid from silky looseness to snapping wire-tight at precisely the right moments, all hovering around her voice and guitar or keys. They previewed songs from the at-the-time-upcoming The Omnichord Real Book, dipped into the catalog, and sprinkled the 70-80 minute set with a handful of beautiful covers, including a smoky, slow-jam take on the ‘80s George Clinton classic Atomic Dog. Not the first show of the year I saw, but this definitely set a bar for everything that came after.
  • Promusica Chamber Orchestra with Rhiannon Giddens (Southern Theater, 01/19/2023) – One of my favorite contemporary singers since first hearing Carolina Chocolate Drops, my fandom of Rhiannon Giddens exploded after seeing her solo at one of my first couple of Big Ears festivals in the Bijou Theater. She captured the spectrum of American music in Columbus’s intimate historic theater, working alongside our Promusica Chamber Orchestra at Promusica’s annual fundraiser alongside her musical foil, Francesco Turrisi and upright bassist Jason Sypher. With soaring, nuanced string arrangements from Gabe Witcher (often a visitor to the Southern as a member of the Punch Brothers), she tore into classics like Nina Simone’s “Tomorrow is My Turn” and Gillian Welch’s “Factory Girl” along with originals like “At the Purchaser’s Option” with aplomb and that crystalline tone. Just breathtaking.
  • Teeth Marks/Cardiel/Garbage Greek (Rumba Cafe, 02/11/2023) – It’s no surprise Garbage Greek is the only band to make this list twice. They are my people and have been my favorite straight-up rock band since stripping down and woodshedding during COVID. They always bring it whether they’re coming as a three- or four-piece (Adam Scoppa’s percussion and backing vocals add fascinating textures when he’s available). They’ve brought a strain of harder rock to Rumba Cafe. They’re bringing bands that probably wouldn’t play here otherwise. This example turned me onto beautifully unhinged Mexico City two-piece Cardiel – who fused furious garage rock with acid-tinged improv and even the depth and richness of dub reggae – and local band Teeth Marks, who had an appealingly raw vibe that immediately added me to their list.
  • Columbus Jazz Orchestra with Maria Schneider (Southern Theater, 02/12/2023) – I love our Jazz Orchestra, but sometimes the rep isn’t right up my alley. Obviously, there were no such questions with Maria Schneider, who’s been at the forefront of modernizing the big band language for decades. Watching her conduct a set of her deathless compositions was my favorite example of seeing how the muscles of this band can flex, be delicate, and powerful in the same breath.  
Dark skin woman sitting, playing acoustic guitar
Yasmin Williams
  • Yo La Tengo (Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, 03/22/2023) – Speaking of delicate and powerful, alternating and at the same time, Yo La Tengo might be the touring band I’ve seen most often over the years, but I’ve never seen a better two sets than they brought to one of my favorite venues in March. Highlights for me included an opening “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,” a breathtaking “Center of Gravity,” a dazzling “Sugarcube,” and an encore starting with a cover from underground Ohio heroes Electric Eels.
  • Yasmin Williams with Tarta Relena (Wexner Center, 03/28/2023) – I’d waited a long while for Yasmin Williams. Canceled at least twice due to COVID, another cancelation and a year wait after I’d interviewed her and written a preview. But this makeup date affirmed everything I love about her records, gave me my first taste of my current favorite acoustic guitarist live, and introduced me to the astonishing Spanish singing duo Tarta Relena. Hymns not bound to a specific tradition, resonating notes tearing rips into universes. Once again, an astonishing show from the Wexner Center that served as a palate cleanser/amuse bouche for the glorious buffet of Big Ears.
  • Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Amythyst Kiah (Andrew J. Brady Center, Cincinnati, 04/29/2023) – Maybe the last leg of Isbell’s touring with longtime bass foil Jimbo Hart in a new big room in Cincinnati I wasn’t familiar with before heading down, he and his crack band hit every stage of his career, from the song that introduced most of us to him as a writer, DBT’s “Outfit” through a solid helping of Southeastern songs in the year of its 10th anniversary, and every record since Southeastern rehabilitated his image, including an encore that paired the devastating “Cast Iron Skillet” off not-yet-released Weathervanes with early DBTs standout “Decoration Day.” And Amythyst Kiah and band killed a tight nine-song set heavy on her terrific record Wary and Strange but also sprinkled with hard-edged takes on classics like her set-closing bring-the-house-down take on Vera Hall’s “Trouble So Hard,” which she also appeared alongside Gregory Porter on Moby’s recent revisiting of his “Natural Blues” that introduced many of us to that through a sample.
  • Promusica Chamber Orchestra with Caroline Shaw (Southern Theater, 05/14/2023) – Promusica has been one of our cultural treasures for (barely) longer than I’ve been alive, and their 2022-23 season closer brought Caroline Shaw, one of my favorite contemporary composers, to town finally after originally being booked in 2020. Three pieces gave a taste of the scope of Shaw’s work as a writer and writer-performer – Blueprint for a String Quartet, Is a Rose, and Entr’acte for String Orchestra – and they paired this section with a gorgeous version of the first Brahms symphony which Shaw sat in on in the back of the violin section. It was a rapturous night. I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to see it.
  • Jerry Powell Experience (Lalibela, 06/14/2023) – I was intrigued when, over lunch at a favorite Ethiopian spot in town, Lalibela, I saw a table card advertising that Jerry Powell III, one of our finest jazz drummers whom I hadn’t seen in a while, had a Wednesday residency in the restaurant’s bar. A stripped-down version of his band, accompanied only by a great keyboard player, took us on a journey in two sets: some standards, some more traditional “dinner music,” and some surging extended afrobeat jams. A reminder to be open to what’s in every corner of your town; I end up in the same venues a lot, and it’s not a bad thing; they’re places that are easy for me to get to from my home and from other venues, and that book a large number of shows that align with my tastes. But it’s always good to be reminded how much terrific shit is happening off that well-trod path.
  • Joe Peppercorn/Little Rockers/X-Rated Cowboys/Garbage Greek (Little Rock Bar, 06/21/2023) – Quinn Fallon’s Little Rock Bar has been a locus for multiple groups of my friends; I’ve made friendships there, and I’ve strengthened friendships. I’ve had some of the best nights of the last ten years at its bar or on its patio. Their annual celebration is right before Comfest, so getting some returning out-of-towners is always a delight, but this year was special. Everybody playing, all current or former employees of the bar, brought it. A beautiful solo Joe Peppercorn set. Pickup band Little Rockers’s blazing set included both a gorgeous take on the ‘Mats “Swinging Party” sung by Peppercorn and a killing “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” sung by Patrick Koch. Koch’s own band, Garbage Greek, continued their streak of burning down everything in sight. And Fallon’s own X-Rated Cowboys, with a great record out this year, continued their evolution into a leaner, meaner, more colorful band than the one I started seeing over 20 years ago. A tribute to one of the shapes community takes and much of what I love about this town.
Light skinned man in dark blazer and cowboy hat playing guitar, light skinned woman playing drums
Dave Alvin and Lisa Pankratz
  • Dave Alvin and the Guilty Ones (Natalie’s Grandview, 06/29/2023) – I got into Dave Alvin buying King of California when I was in High School. My fandom went into overdrive with the one-two punch of Hightone’s 1997 reissue of The Blasters’ debut album American Music and Alvin’s Blackjack David the next year (still one of my favorite singer-songwriter records of all time, and still a record I go to often, especially in the wee hours of the morning). I remember talking to Alec Wightman on the phone from my dorm room, getting tickets for the first time I saw Alvin at the Columbus Music Hall promoting Public Domain in 2000 – starting me down the road of following Zeppelin Productions, who I don’t think have had a year they didn’t make this list at least once since I started keeping track in college. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen Alvin over the years, at least 15, but – and I had a little trepidation given what I’d heard about his cancer battle recently – I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sing better, the richness of his voice almost knocked the drink out of my hand, and his guitar playing had a razor-cut crispness that more than made up for any minor losses in speed. Plus, he’s always had great bands. Still, this four-piece Guilty Ones was just perfection: Lisa Pankratz’s band-leading behind the drums as she elegantly worked every mood of the set, as good on a smoldering ballad like “King of California” as the gutbucket raunch of Big Bill Broonzy’s “You’ve Changed” and the soaring wistfulness of “Abilene.” Flexible and driving bass from Brad Fordham. And Alvin’s longtime guitar foil Chris Miller with harmonies and jousting, never too showy. Watching this, I was reminded of the purpose of a writer as a conduit for remembrance, for honoring moments that might not come back. In the American popular – whatever that means – music world, Alvin’s given us more shining examples of that mood, that form, than anyone else. He doled out many of my favorites in this show, reminding us that memory doesn’t have to be somber: the rave-up “Haley’s Comet,” the sexy-as-its-subject R&B of “Johnny Ace is Dead,” the Sam Cooke homage “Border Radio,” and the double-barreled reflections on youth and California “Dry River” and “Ashgrove.” A perfect night and a prime example of how good two guitars, bass and drums still sound. Anne and I decompressed, dissecting this in a bar a few blocks away, for hours.
  • Fred Moten/Brandon Lopez/Gerald Cleaver with Ingrid Laubrock/Cecilia Lopez (FourOneOne, NYC, 07/10/2023) and Big Joanie with Frida Kills (Baby’s All Right, NYC, 07/10/2023) – Once in a while, there’s a night that reminds me what enraptured me about Brooklyn in the first place. I was lucky enough to have a few of those nights this year. Maybe my favorite all-around started with a drink with Anne right off the Metropolitan Avenue L stop (following a long remote work day), dinner at still my favorite New York steak house St Anselm, jukeboxes and bar hopping down the street to a space I hadn’t made it to yet, FourOneOne for a set from one of my favorite saxophone players, Ingrid Laubrock, who Anne and I saw on one of our very first trips to the city together, in a mesmerizing duo with Cecilia Lopez on electronics, followed by one of my favorite writers and thinkers about music, Fred Moten, leading a burning rhythm section of Brandon Lopez and Gerald Cleaver. Then, with a debriefing drink on the walk back up the hill, saw righteous Brooklyn band Frida Kills open for UK powerhouse Big Joanie, who made one of my favorite rock records in a long time last year, turning out a packed house.
Punk rock trio - three dark skinned women - with a cheering crowd in the foreground
Big Joanie
  • Soul Glo with MSPAINT (Ace of Cups, 07/20/2023) – Another band who made one of my favorite rock records from 2022, Philly’s Soul Glo, paired with one of my favorite Gonerfest discoveries from the last decade, Hattiesburg’s MSPAINT – I’m not sure there’s a lyric Anne quotes more often than “Destroy all the flags and the symbols of man!” – was obviously a can’t-miss pairing. So much better than I hoped. Hardcore’s always been a genre I admired more than loved, with some exceptions, but I generally love when a band uses those colors as a foundation and color with the rest of rock history. MSPAINT’s gnarled organ-trio crunch has taken on additional flexibility and suppleness, featuring more dynamics than the epic piledriver we first fell for but with the same wit and fury. And Soul Glo was every single thing I wanted in a rock and roll band: a rhythm section that knows when to swing and when to pummel, a slashing colorist of a guitarist, and a frontman I couldn’t stop watching—a magical combination and a show perfectly sized and pitched for Ace.
  • Oneida with DANA (Cafe Bourbon Street, 8/16/2023) – Pal Fred Pfening getting back into booking in 2023 was a phenomenal delight and the barn burning avalanche of Oneida was a show for the ages, dipping into some of their longer dance forms – their krautrock tendencies even blossoming into flowers blooming in disco trenches – with an opening set from DANA who get looser and more vibrant while holding their crown of best rock band in town.
  • Waco Brothers with Jon Langford and the Bright Shiners (Big Room Bar, 09/22/2023) – The last few times we’d been lucky enough to see Jon Langford, one of the iconic songwriters and singers going back to helping invent British post-punk with the Mekons, were at the fantastic Hogan House venue. We still had the pleasure of seeing PJ and Abbie, proprietors/bookers of Hogan House, and doing as much for music that wouldn’t come to this town otherwise as anybody I can think of, but it was a pleasure to see the Bright Shiners in a bar and the Wacos in a room where we could dance. Their own crackling songs like “The Man That God Forgot” and “This Town” holding their own with covers from the real rock and roll canon like “Teenage Kicks” and “All or Nothing” – the best rocking dance party of the year. 
  • Johnathan Blake Quintet (Village Vanguard, NYC, 10/12/2023) – On the heels of a phenomenal record (you’ll see some evidence on this year’s playlists), drummer and composer Johnathan Blake brought the power of a volcanic quintet – Dezron Douglas on bass, Dayna Stephens on sax, Fabian Almazan on piano, and Jalen Baker on vibes – for a perfect set that went from Horace Silver (maybe the best “Peace” I’ve ever heard) to his own new tunes to classics from his father Ralph Peterson, Jr. A night that reminded me why the Village Vanguard stays one of the best listening rooms in the world.
Three dark skinned men singing, two light skinned men playing horns, one light skinned man singing and playing guitar, one light skinned man playing guitar
Harlem Gospel Travelers, Eli “Paperboy” Reed, and band
  • Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the Harlem Gospel Travelers (Union Pool, NYC, 10/14/2023) – I don’t always love a repertory show, but this was exactly how you do it. Eli “Paperboy” Reed used his 40th birthday to pack out the Union Pool room and tear into one of my favorite records of all time, Sam Cooke’s Live at the Harlem Square Club 1963, and for the encore, instead of dipping into his own catalog, brought up the Harlem Gospel Travelers and did songs Cooke was doing in concert contemporaneously. He didn’t even dip into earlier, better-known Sam Cooke songs like “You Send Me.” It was a tribute to scholarship but also to sensual delight – the looseness and good time everyone had on stage and in the audience lit me up from the inside on a day that also included the production of Merrily We Roll Along that made my theater list and a return to century-old Brooklyn classic restaurant Bamonte’s, plus always killer DJing from legends like Mr. Finewine as a nightcap.
  • Lady Wray and 79.5 (Brooklyn Made, NYC, 10/15/2023) – I’ve been a fan of Lady Wray since “Make It Hot” and her co-writes/guest spots on Missy Elliot classics. And I’ve seen a few R&B hitmakers who transitioned to classic soul sounds over the years. But I’ve never seen one do it with the kind of grace and wit Wray did here, honoring her earlier life with a scorching “Make It Hot” about a third of the way through the set and devoting just as much energy and enthusiasm to the newer work. Finally, seeing the reigning Brooklyn disco band 79.5 was as much a selling point as the headliner. They didn’t disappoint – sweated so much from dancing that my blazer stuck to me from sweat when we finally tumbled into the chilly Brooklyn night.
Dark skinned woman playing keyboards and singing, dark skinned woman singing, light skinned man playing bass, light skinned man playing guitar
Lady Wray and band
  • Los Rumberos (Cafe Marula, Barcelona, 11/11/2023) – First trip to Spain, especially Barcelona, was more focused on food and art than music, but after a fantastic dinner, Anne found at Restaurante Informal – some of the best sea bass I’ve ever had – where we didn’t have a plan except not feeling like heading home immediately after, we stumbled into Mexican band Los Rumberos, not just playing rumbas but son, cumbia, vintage disco, reggae, in a ball of sweaty, kinetic energy. Blew me back against the bar.
  • Mulatu Astatke (Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa, Madrid, 11/17/2023) – I loved those Ethiopiques compilations, and my favorite was the volume dedicated to percussionist Mulatu Astatke that came out when I was 18. So, seeing he was playing the first night we were in Madrid was a no-brainer. And at 79 years old, fronting a septet of much younger players, he astonished me. Slipping between marimba, timbales, congas, and electric piano, he guided the band like a wizard redirecting a river.
Two light skinned men playing horns, light skinned man playing piano, dark skinned man playing marimba, light skinned man playing cello
Mulatu Astatke and Band

Festival Sets:

Dark skinned woman singing, dark skinned man playing trumpet, light skinned man playing saxophone, dark skinned man playing upright bass, cheering crowd in foreground
Irreversible Entanglements
  • Winter Jazz Fest (NYC, Various Venues, January 2023)
    • New Standards Songbook
    • Irreversible Entanglements
Light skinned woman playing bass and singing, light skinned woman playing guitar and singing, crowd in foreground
Scrawl
  • Lost Weekend Records Anniversary (Ace of Cups, February 2023)
    • Scrawl
Light skinned man, filming, light skinned man playing guitar, three backing singers - two dark skinned women flanking a dark skinned man, dark skinned man singing, keyboard player and horn section in the background, crowd in foreground
Lonnie Holley with Mourning [A] BLKStar
  • Big Ears (Knoxville, Various Venues, March 2023)
    • Lonnie Holley with Mourning [A] BLKStar
    • Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band
    • James Brandon Lewis
    • Trio Imagination
    • Staples Jr. Singers
    • The Jazz Bins
    • Rica Chicha
    • Peter One
Light skinned woman playing upright bass, crowd in foreground
Amy Lavere
  • Twangfest (St Louis, Off Broadway/Tower Grove, June 2023)
    • Amy Lavere and Will Sexton (Tower Grove Farmer’s Market)
    • Paranoid Style
  • Summer Solstice (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, June 2023)
    • Barzuto All Stars
Light skinned woman singing, flanked by two light skinned men playing guitars
King Louie Memorial Family Band
  • Gonerfest (Memphis, Railgarten, September 2023)
    • Alien Nosejob
    • Virvon Varvon
    • COFFIN
    • Civic
    • King Louie Memorial Family Band
    • The Courettes
Light skinned woman singing and playing percussion, light skinned man playing drums, light skinned man playing banjo
Rica Chicha
Categories
Best Of live music

Best of 2022: Live Music

A Weirdo From Memphis, Railgarten, Memphis

This was the year of irrational exuberance. In a better light, this year was full of excellent examples of not skipping shows. I saw about 160 shows across 11 cities in two countries at around 70 venues. Next year I’m looking to travel more carefully and pay some of this exuberance off instead of racking it up, get back down to my usual ~100 range; a little too often, I found myself burned out and exhausted, not quite enjoying every thing as much as usual.

But that exuberance did pay off more often than not. I saw some amazing shit this year, of all genres. Big touring acts I didn’t think I’d ever see, acts I had tickets for in early 2020 who finally go to play, and joyous, joyous crowds everywhere. And this year, I had a couple festival sets that might have been the best shows I saw all year – Compulsive Gamblers at Gonerfest, Scrunchies at Dirtnap – so I added blurbs on my favorite sets, grouped by festival. The sets on here, every damn one of them, made the hassle of being there as close to worth it as possible. Most of the time, they made it worth slogging through rain and snow, two airports, surly bartenders, bullshit security theater, and salved whatever slight wounds with an hour or more of transcendence, but the kind of transcendence that makes me closer with the other people there. That makes me love the world a little more.

Honk Wail and Moan at Dick’s Den

Similarly to my theatre recap, these highlights are only a small chunk of the story. I’m overjoyed to see most of the venues I love made it through to the other side of 2020-2021 emboldened and still swinging. While Dick’s Den only appears once on the list, it’s where I saw the most music – by my count, 29 shows – and had the best time overall. It takes its place in the firmament of Columbus culture, not just music, seriously but not too seriously. It’s still where you’re likely to see new projects get formed and old friendships renewed and hear some of the best music in the world.

Natalie’s consolidation to Grandview makes an amazing amount of sense; I’ll miss that little listening room that’s marginally closer to my house, but I think optimizing the two areas of the venue for different listening experiences is great, and they cast the widest net of booking in town, with Charlie Jackson’s legendary ear supplemented by bookers like Alec Wightman’s Zeppelin Productions and Bruce Nutt’s Crazy Mama’s booking – as I write these very words, I’m thinking about having dinner to the dulcet tones of the Colin Lazarski organ trio tonight, already have tickets to a Zeppelin booking in 2023, and am fondly remembering talking about Bruce Nutt and Natalie’s with a bass player in Memphis a few years ago.

From left, Matt Benz, Pete English, and Bob Starker of the Sovines, Natalie’s Grandview

The Ace of Cups reinvention is still tweaking the balance of dance parties and various genres of music, but the bones of the venue – most of the great bartenders are still involved, the sound has improved slightly, the patio’s been refurbished in subtle but very good ways – and it feels (from the outside) healthier than it’s been in a while. A side effect of the new ownership and promoters is a few touring bands who often played Ace out of loyalty to Aleks or Marcy are now in rooms that are a little better sized for their actual Columbus draw, the Sweet Knives show at Bourbon Street and Jon Spencer and the Hitmakers at Rumba were more exciting in mostly full rooms than the last (also great) half-full crowds they played to at Ace. More exciting shows for bands with slightly smaller draws and freeing Ace up for the 300ish people shows it does better than anywhere else in town.

Rumba, in general, upped its quotient of rock and roll while still making time for the Americana and singer-songwriters it has always served better than any other standing room in town. Bourbon Street is finding its own equilibrium, and I had more great, leaving-later-than-I-planned nights there than in the last five years, which makes my heart sing about the bar that used to be my second living room. These are in chronological order and in Columbus unless otherwise stated. All photographs have only me to blame.

Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, and Denny deBorja from the 400 Unit, Palace Theater
  • Rebirth Brass Band with Largemouth Brass Band (Rumba Cafe) – This steaming hot show on a bitter January night also marked my return to social life after my second bout with COVID. Largemouth Brass Band continues to impress me with every outing, playing songs off their very fine 2021 record with wit and charm. And Rebirth Brass Band reminded all of us why they’re one of the finest American institutions, cross-cutting Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” with James Brown’s “Talkin’ Loud and Saying Nothing,” Fats Domino with Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now,” in a righteous dance party that’s hard to rival.
  • Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Adia Victoria (Palace Theater) – Delayed a few weeks because of the Omicron surge; this has a special place in my heart because it was the last show Anne and I saw in town with our dear friends Heather and Adam before they moved to New York. But beyond that, the music was stunning – Adia Victoria turned the stunning, sparse, blues-soaked narratives from her A Southern Gothic record into smoldering live incantations, spinning them like a prism to the light of the audience. And I finally got to see Isbell do songs from Reunions, maybe his best record yet (I’m going to get tired of saying that eventually), and his covers record paying tribute to the state he spent so much time in, Georgia Blue, and continued to show his powers as a bandleader, and the stunning power and subtlety of the 400 Unit, as good a band as is working today. From the opener, “What Have I Done To Help,” those songs served as a balm and a reminder to be less hermetic, to engage, and to try. A favorite moment: doing one of my favorite songs from Reunions, “Only Children,” an elegy to a similarly talented friend who never quite broke through, with a nuanced delivery, conversational, weaving guitars providing texture underneath and then, after he delivers that heartbreaking bridge “‘Heaven’s wasted on the dead,’ that’s what your Mama said, as the hearse was idling in the parking lot. She said you thought the world of me, and you were glad to see they finally let me be an astronaut,” and a rocket launch of a guitar solo opens up the world of the song and underscores that pain of a dream denied and the beauty of that time you have with those people. And there were probably a dozen of those moments in this front-to-back stellar concert.
  • Bettye Lavette (Thirty One West) – One of the quintessential American voices, R&B royalty, taking us all to church and the juke-joint at the same time in a fantastic old ballroom. More than worth the 45 minutes out to Newark. With a crack band, Lavette traversed a set heavy on her great tribute to other songs made famous by women, Blackbirds (my favorite being an audacious, perfect “Drinking Again”), her gorgeously raunchy mission statement “Take Me As I Am,” a slow, acid pour of John Prine’s “Souvenirs,” and so much more.
Chad Taylor and Jaimie Branch of Fly or Die, Wexner Center
  • Lilly Hiatt (Rumba Cafe) – I’d been waiting for this since it was originally on the books in March of 2020, so I was ecstatic when this third reschedule finally happened – and in the meantime, Hiatt had put out two excellent records. She and her four-piece band hit my favorite moments off the new ones: a tribute to her sister, “Rae,” with a loose-limbed propulsive swing, the hard-won anthem “Walking Proof,” and the mournful chime of “Candy Lunch,” making the songs shine and live and emphasizing what a stellar bandleader she’s grown into since she came on my radar. A crash course in the power and necessity of songs.
  • Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die (Wexner Center for the Arts) – One of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done and an artist I’ve spoken about rapturously, drawn in by the first few notes of the first Fly or Die record, turned to a full-on drooling fan with the first time I saw her live at Nublu during Winter Jazzfest, and mind was blown, all expectations exceeded bt this fiery show. This rose into the ranks of the best things I’ve ever seen at the Wexner Center – the venue that turned me onto so much of the music I love so much. And what a person we lost, following up that conversation with a big, sweaty hug after the set and a boisterous “What’s up, Rick?” when I saw her a little later.
  • Garbage Greek with The Harlequins and Shark (Rumba Cafe) – I liked Garbage Greek since I first heard them, but they didn’t move out of the shadow of Lee Mason and Patrick Koch’s earlier band Comrade Question until the first time Anne and I saw the three-piece – with powerful drummer Jason Winner’s pummeling swing highlighted – as shows started to resume last year and they’ve grown into my favorite new band. This record release show for their breakthrough record Quality Garbage not only knocked me against a wall, but it also turned me onto two of my favorite new bands, doom-surf-garage three-piece Shark and the infectious hooks and sharp edges of Cincinnati’s Harlequins.
  • Johnny Rebel Memorial Show (Natalie’s Grandview) – It depresses me that I can’t include any Th’ Flyin’ Saucers on my parting gifts playlists because they’re not on the streaming service I use – and a reminder of the peril of streaming in general, especially as it makes us think the plethora of options available is all that’s available. Because of that band, and singer-guitarist Johnny Rebel (Sean Groves), a fellow West Sider, always with a kind word and some great conversation, and one of the most ferocious bandleaders I was ever lucky enough to see. This tribute show, put together by his (and my) friends Jeff Eaton and Jeff Passifume, brought together his friends, inspirations, and those influenced by him in the scene, including my pals The Sovines (playing these songs together for the first time since Twangfest six or so years ago), local blues legend Terry Davidson, an ad hoc band with a bunch of old Flyin’ Saucers and Passifume that blew my hair back, and a lot of hugs and great stories. A reminder of the beauty of community in this town and that the best memorial always turns into a dance party.
Junius Paul and Makaya McCraven, Mershon Auditorium, Wexner Center for the Arts
  • Makaya McCraven (Wexner Center for the Arts) – McCraven’s records taking the time-honored postmodern practice of cutting up improvisations to form compositions have a sense of repetition that recalls modern composition and hip-hop/dance club music, but my favorite aspects come with the love he has for the improvisation as improvisation and the way the final version of the piece – often created in the studio – continues to evolve live with other players. This titanic performance, laying the groundwork in my mind for In These Times, with powerful playing by Greg Ward’s alto, especially everyone working as one mind, transported me.
  • Anais Mitchell (Brooklyn Made, NYC) – One of my favorite songwriters for years – a set of hers at Rumba Cafe about a decade ago wasn’t the first time I saw her, but still stands out in blazing memory. And I love Hadestown as much as anyone – look at my theatre list from last year and I think my records list from 2010 – but I’ve been a fan since hearing “Cosmic American” from an MP3 blog and immediately saying, “I need to hear more of this voice.” Promoting her stellar eponymous record – I think “Felix Song (On Your Way)” is my most played song of the year, with “Bright Star” and “Brooklyn Bridge” right behind – with a tight four-piece band, back in her old stomping grounds since relocating to her home town in Vermont, this was a reminder of everything I love about a songwriter, that shifting sense of character and setting that’s so finely chiseled and crafted out of hearts and memory, with that voice like hearing the stars sing. Direct communication but not simple.
  • Kris Davis Quintet (Village Vanguard, NYC) – Among my favorite piano players, and a core part of how much I loved the last Winter Jazzfest with her stellar closing set of Diatom Ribbons, so it felt appropriate seeing her at my first trip back to the Vanguard. She assembled a killer band, with a crunching, subtle rhythm section of Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and Trevor Dunn on bass, Val Jeanty on turntables and electronics, and Julian Lage on guitar, and – appropriate to the hallowed room – grappled with the history of the music, with mesmerizing takes on Eric Dolphy’s tribute to Monk, “Hat and Beard,” Roland Shannon Jackson’s “Alice in the Congo,” and a dazzling read of Geri Allen’s “A Dancer” along with her own stellar compositions.
  • James McMurtry (Skully’s, NYC) – A case study of someone who gets better and better, McMurtry came through touring his magical last record, Horses and the Hounds, for the first show I’d been lucky enough to link up with in about 10 years, and the mix of storytelling and dancehall joy was just right. A tight four-piece band adding color and muscle, highlighting his weathered voice on classics and newer material like the beauty-of-remembering, tumbling narrative “Canola Fields” and the potent anthem of acceptance in the face of a world you know too well, “If It Don’t Bleed,” to an audience that felt brought together by those stories.
Don Was All-Star Revue, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
  • Roland Johnson (Whiskey Ring, St Louis) – There was scarcely a moment I didn’t love about my return to St Louis, culminating in John Wendland’s wedding to Jenny Heim. For the bachelor party, organized and ring-led by Wendland’s best friend and fellow DJ and music writer Roy Kasten, Kasten outdid himself by bringing one of the last of the great St Louis soul singers, Roland Johnson, to the back patio of one of my favorite bars of all time, the Whiskey Ring. A combination of beautiful originals and classic covers like “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “Take Me to the River,” Johnson’s supple voice took us to church and to the stars. The after-party at the Royale with DJ Landy Dandy was also spectacular – see her if she’s spinning when you’re in the STL – but that first brush was hard to beat.
  • Don Was All-Star Revue with Alejandro Escovedo (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit) – I feel confident that if the Bikini Kill concert we were in Detroit for the weekend of Anne’s birthday hadn’t been postponed again, I feel confident it would have made this list. As it stands, I was extra glad I made the case for going out a day early for DIA’s Festival of Colors. Finally getting to see one of Detroit native Don Was’s all-star groups paying tribute to Michigan rock and roll innovator Iggy Pop, with members of Was (Not Was), Detroit Cobras, Dirtbombs, and so many others, was the best kind of this sort of tribute show. Alejandro Escovedo’s warm opening act – and appearance at the finale of the tribute trading verses on “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with Mick Collins – was the icing on the cake.
  • Death Valley Girls with LA Witch (Natalie’s Grandview) – Natalie’s has long had some rough and rowdy rock and roll as part of their musical diet, but it became a little more prominent in 2022, and my favorite example was this stellar double bill with two bands I’ve liked playing at the top of their games. The organ-drenched swing of Death Valley Girls complimented and contrasted the barbed-wire shoegaze power trio of LA Witch in a room that made both of them sound exactly as good as I’ve always thought they could.
Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble, Lincoln Theater
  • Reckless Ops (Vanderelli Room)/Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Scioto Mile)/Sweet Knives (Cafe Bourbon Street)/Honk Wail and Moan (Dick’s Den) – These “a night in the life of” entries used to be a staple of these year-end lists but I think I’ve gotten away from them. This year granted me such a prime example I couldn’t not talk about it. As Anne was out for her usual girls’ weekend, and the couple of compatriots I’d roped in for part of this had to bail, I found myself with no one else’s schedule to account for and a determination to make as much of the plethora of good options as I possibly good. Starting with Franklinton Friday, what’s become one of my favorite traditions in town – and take advantage of it soon because it’ll go the way of Gallery Hop before we know it – I caught my pal Billy Heingartner’s new band, where he plays drums with longtime collaborator, and one of my favorite songwriters in town, Bill Wagner, Reckless Ops. Duane Hart’s thick, hardcore-tinged bass lines and Heingartner’s drums gave a crunch and a stoner-rock menace to some of Wagner’s finest and most delicate songs (I think a few were older Bygones songs, some were new, but I wouldn’t swear to it). From there, I walked across the bridge to see another installment in the best Rhythm on the River lineup in recent memory (though it felt strangled by the lack of a beer vendor, limited food trucks), a rousing set by American institution Dirty Dozen Brass Band. I headed to my old stomping grounds, Cafe Bourbon Street, for a few great songs by the D-Rays who have evolved into a more nuanced rock band over the years, and then a delightful reunion of old friends to watch the best Sweet Knives set I’ve ever seen, from a band I’ve never seen be less than great. The addition of a keyboard player and backing singer added additional weight and texture to some of Alicja Trout’s finest songs without blunting their spiky impact. I wanted to see my favorite Columbus band, Dana, but I had a limited amount of energy and wanted to get to Dick’s for Honk Wail and Moan. HWM is one of my favorite institutions; a band I saw (I think at the Jazz and Rib Fest, but it could’ve been something else outside) around the same time I first saw Scrawl, Haynes Boys, and TJSA, but so together and so different from what I was expecting I didn’t think they were local at first. I was lucky to catch the second of three sets, going through a series of great Brian Casey (RIP) compositions, with discursive and enlightening introductions by Steve Perakis and a series of guest stars, including singer Michelle Ishida. It was a beautiful tribute to one of our great composers and a tribute to the friendships that feed the soil of the music I love so much here.
  • Damon Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble (Wexner Center/CAPA) – Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble ties together dance, hard funk, free jazz, and contemporary gospel harmonies into a magical tribute to being alive, even when it’s complicated; to trying, even when it’s fucked up. A powerful band that takes on today with all its challenges, all its large and small devastations.
The Comet is Coming, Bowery Ballroom, NYC
  • The Comet is Coming (Bowery Ballroom, NYC) – I’d already been lucky enough to see this band a few years ago – but after a blistering set by Shabaka Hutchings’ other bands, Sons of Kemet, I wasn’t going to miss this on our second trip to NYC in 2022. And it exceeded expectations by a mile – a surging dance party in Bowery Ballroom, after a terrific meal with good friends Heather and Adam and a play that also made my year-end list, Anne and I danced till we were sore and trekked up to East Village standby 2A to talk about it for another two hours (in the eye of the crushing hurricane of young people).
  • Los Carnash (Sonido Necrotico, Mexico City) – On a great Mexico City trip, we saw some wonderful music that just happened to appear – a dulcimer-led trio in La Opera, a mariachi band singing Dean Martin on the way back from Teotihuacan, a great New Orleans trad jazz group at Zinco Jazz Club – but the one thing we sought out, a garage-punk evening led by Sonido Necrotico, was an indelible memory. We couldn’t even get in the performance space. Los Carnash (90% sure, but based on the process of deduction) delivered a catchy, crunching set that shook Anne and me watching downstairs from the bar. A reminder of the power of youthful rock and roll.
  • Jon Langford and the Bright Shiners (Hogan House) – I saw a few other very good things after this (including running into the gracious Hogan House hosts PJ and Abbie twice more in the same week), but this new project from Jon Langford had such a sense of mischief and communal joy, stringing together songs from a variety of Langford’s projects from the Mekons (a magical, wistful “The Last Dance” and an appropriately righteous “Memphis, Egypt, Etc Etc”) to brand new songs in lockdown, and a couple perfectly chosen covers from Grant McLennan, The Kinks, and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. There was a sense of nostalgia – that to live is to miss people, but also a deep sense of being grateful and making each moment matter.
Nubya Garcia, Mill and Mine, Big Ears Festival, Knoxville
  • Big Ears Festival (Knoxville)
    • Tift Merritt with Eric Heywood – A singer-songwriter who’s given me as many songs I’ve loved in the last twenty years as literally anyone with her partner who redefined how I thought about the pedal steel guitar, doing a duo set in the most intimate venue of Big Ears, drinking a whiskey I’ve never seen before (thank you, bartenders, at Jig and Reel) and weeping, it was so beautiful.
    • Sons of Kemet – The fact that I could walk from that set above, across a set of railroad tracks, and go straight into this set, which stands among the best dance parties I’ve ever been to, justifies my getting to Big Ears every year I can make the money and time work out.
    • Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah – Finally got to see someone I’ve wanted to for a while, and chief aTunde more than delivered. A set that made me move and love the world and also reconsider a lot of long-standing preconceptions about the audience-performer dynamic.
    • Nubya Garcia – Someone else whose records I’ve loved for a while and is on the cusp of breaking through to a larger audience, playing a set with just a lean four-piece band, organ, bass, drums, and the purest saxophone tone I’ve heard in a very long time.
    • Andrew Cyrille and Marc Ribot – The first meeting of two of the instrumentalists who helped form the way I think about their respective instruments took on the whole of American music and sent me into the night with stars in my eyes.
Scrunchies, High Noon Saloon, Dirtnap Festival, Madison
  • Dirtnap Record Anniversary (Madison)
    • Scrunchies – If this set had been a standalone show, it would have been one of the two or three best rock and roll sets I saw all year. This band came more into their own with this year’s sophomore record Feral Beach, and live, they’re a force to be reckoned with and a powerful reminder of how much Dirtnap Records is still giving us.. If they come to your town, do not miss.
    • Fox Face – I’d been waiting to see this Milwaukee band since falling in love with their record End of Man in 2021, and they exceeded those sky-high expectations live.
    • Sugar Stems – I’ve been proselytizing for Sugar Stems’ blend of ’60s girl group and vintage punk since they blew me away at Gonerfest several years ago, and I had to buy everything. Hearing these songs again in this reunion set felt like the last call on the best Saturday night of your life, even though it was early afternoon.
    • Bad Sports – I love anything Orville Neeley, and this Bad Spots set was a perfect example, a quintessential example of what I’m looking for in a rock band.
    • River City Tanlines – Probably my favorite band from one of my favorite songwriters, Alicja Trout; this power trio left a pile of smoldering rubble in their wake. It had been too. goddamn. long.
Dana, Nelsonville Music Festival
  • Nelsonville Music Festival (Nelsonville)
    • SG Goodman – One of my favorite newish singer-songwriters, I was already enamored with her 2022 album Teeth Marks, and seeing her live with a perfect four-piece band reaffirmed everything I love about that genre and the specificity of these songs, making every detail ring out into the woods.
    • Tre Burt – With my recently-jacked-up ankle and wrist, I only made my way down into the semi-hidden wooded part of the new NMF site once, but I picked the right set. Tre Burt’s stunning solo set came the closest of anything I saw all weekend to make the hassles and first-year growing pains of the new site into conjuring the magic so many of my friends who love the festival so much talk about.
    • Dana – My favorite Columbus band proving they can own a big outdoor stage just as readily as a late-night club; their songs have the heft and power to translate.
Willie Phoenix, Hot Times Festival
  • Hot Times Festival
    • Willie Phoenix – I was already blown away by Damon Locks before Anne and I walked down to see the towering figure of Columbus guitar rock, dominating easily the best of the longer-running outdoor festivals. Still in great voice, still an unmistakable guitar tone.
    • The Four Mints – Columbus R&B loyalty with a fuller band behind them than we’re usually lucky enough to get and a beautiful multigenerational crowd soaking it in. This summed up everything I love about Hot Times and much of what I love about Columbus.
South Filthy, The Lamplighter, Memphis
  • Gonerfest (Memphis)
    • Compulsive Gamblers – Similar to Scrunchies, if this had been a standalone show, it’d be one of the couple best shows I saw all year. I never thought I’d get a full band version of this early Greg Cartwright/Jack Yarber collaboration, and while I loved the stripped-down quartet version that came through the Beachland, this almost made my heart burst out of my chest. The deep, warm sadness and empathic darkness of “Two Thieves” through the swaggering, grim boogie of “Rock and Roll Nurse” made me feel like I could fly.
    • King Khan and the BOlivians – A testament to the power of the community that’s grown up around Gonerfest, King Khan was forced to go alone as BBQ was ill, so he drafted old friends Greg and Jack Oblivian for a (probably) once in a lifetime set of their mutual songs.
    • South Filthy* – Asterisked because it’s not actually part of the festival but a side day show at the Lamplighter, but I don’t think it would have happened were Walter Daniels not drafted for the Compulsive Gamblers show. A Texas/Memphis supergroup who put out a couple of my favorite filthy roots rock records kicking up sparkling dust in the back room of one of my favorite bars in the world.
    • A Weirdo From Memphis – With members of his Unapologetic crew, AWFM owned the stage, the rigging above, and the sign overlooking us with a sprawling set of big hooks, righteously angry shouts, and dense, hypnotic arrangements.
    • Sick Thoughts – A classic. If you asked me what “Goner” music sounds like, I’d point to Sick Thoughts, but this year – with their new record and this killing victory lap of a set – they hit a new level full of songs I couldn’t get out of my head, played with extra fire.
Categories
Best Of live music

2021 Best Of – Live Music

Reigning Sound, Gonerfest

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. 
The Randys, Dick’s Den

Categories
live music

Ten Years Gone and Back – Return to Gonerfest

The Check In Scene at Central Station Hotel

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. 

Categories
"Hey, Fred!" live music

Things I’ve Been Digging – 03/08/2021

More thinking about absent friends and the circles they ran in, especially as this weekend brought news a missing friend’s body was found. RIP Lane Campbell. And this weekend was the anniversary of another friend’s death, Melissa Bontempo. Two of the biggest music fans I was ever lucky enough to know among many, many other fine qualities.

From left; Charles Wetherbee, Marisa Ishikawa, Ariana Nelson, Korine Fujiwara; taken from stream and edited

Carpe Diem String Quartet – Ancestors on 03/07/2021

Carpe Diem String Quartet have been one of the Columbus music scene’s gems for 15 years, straddling the line between the classic quartet repertoire and brand new work from living composers. Their stream this week was a brilliant example of how well they work both sides of that line.

The quartet kicked off their program with the founding father of the modern string quartet. Their jubilant thrill-ride take on Haydn’s “Opus 76, No. 1,” amplified and underlined the sense of invention and play and the different forms rubbing against and sparking with one another, sacrificing none of the piece’s intense emotional impact.

They closed with Erberk Eryılmaz’s dazzling fireworks display and deep dive into the folk music of Thrace, “Tracian Airs of Besime Sultan.” Bold spinning dances and sudden fires as the quartet zoomed in and out of the most microscopic details, shining a light on them like an Elizabeth Bishop villanelle then pulling back to show us the whole undulating landscape.

As great as those pieces were, I came for the world premiere in the middle and it more than lived up to my high expectations. Mark Lomax II has been at the highest tier of Columbus’s best composers for a long time. The world got to experience that brilliance with wider recognition of his epic 400: An Afrikan Suite in 2019. 

When interviewing him about that masterpiece for a preview, it surprised me that Lomax had less luck breaking into the classical/chamber music worlds, with quartets and even a ballet that weren’t produced. With recent connections to the Wexner Center and the Johnstone Fund, that’s happily started to change in recent years. This world premiere of the entirety of “String Quartet No. 1” continues that much-needed corrective arc.

Partly inspired by his Grandfather and two other elders who were important to him, Lomax also made connections to the more than 500,000 people we lost this year in a soaring four-movement work of tribute and memory that never succumbs to despair. The opening movement uses long tones and swirling harmonies to evoke a home-going ceremony, rapturous cries bubble up and recede.

The second movement, “Reflection,” ripples with bouncing pizzicato and dialogue between the strings. Some of the most joyous writing and playing in the entire piece shows up here and the kind of uncanny tightness you only see in this sort of ensemble from players who know one another this intimately; this was the section of the piece that reminded me most of Lomax’s jazz writing, the catchy but always surprising rhythms and the sense of trust in the players.

“Acceptance,” the third movement, orbits around a haunting, evolving viola melody from Korine Fujiwara as the rest of the quartet creates a world for that line to inhabit. “Soul in Flight” ends the piece with high, sliding, and soaring lines swirling around a singing cello from Ariana Nelson.

It’s remarkable work from one of my favorite composers and, looking at death again both near and far as I said in the preface, it was exactly the balm I needed on a down Sunday evening. A brilliantly arranged and ordered program that makes me want to get out and see something as soon as I responsibly can.

This is still available on YouTube for an indeterminate amount of time: https://youtu.be/V7CZPUiN5fY

Categories
"Hey, Fred!" live music theatre

Things I’ve Been Digging – 02/15/2021

Livelabs: On Love by Mfoniso Udofia presented by MCC Theater 

I saw a reading of Mfoniso Udofia’s In Old Age in a Chelsea rehearsal space as part of a Page 73 reading series. I’ve never been so glad I made one choice over the carnival ride multiplicity of delights on a New York City afternoon; within five minutes, I knew this is one of the great voices of my time.

For all its troubles and difficulty, this enforced streaming age – at its best – makes these voices available to a wide range of people all at once. MCC’s Livelabs series does a great job bringing new work at affordable prices through its youtube channel. I got reacquainted with Udofia’s crackling writing with its layered depth of feeling via On Love, expertly directed by Awoye Timbo.

These vignettes turned the prism of love around and played with different refracted light, between Eros and Agape, from Ludus to Mania, exposing the very different impressions these loves leave and how thin the barriers between them are. With a crackling cast spanning superstars like Keith David to Broadway heroes like Anastacia McClesky and rising Off-Broadway mavens Antwayn Hopper, everyone delivered.

Using perfectly carved moments. On Love opened us to these characters hinted at whole worlds and lives. There wasn’t a person I met for these few minutes I didn’t want to know for a full-length play. I want to see every person in this – especially those new to me – in something else. And more than anything else, this made me hungry for more of Udofia’s writing.

Tim Easton, taken from stream and edited

Tim Easton – The Truth About Us 20th Anniversary

In early 2001, Columbus’s treasured son Tim Easton made his entrance onto a wider national stage with his second solo album, The Truth About Us. For this debut with ascendent alt.country label New West Records, Tim Easton recruited an all-star lineup, including producer Joe Chiccarelli (Lone Justice, Steve Wynn, Oingo Boingo) and the core of Wilco at the time (multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, bassist John Stirratt, and drummer Ken Coomer as the backing band. 

Easton and Chiccarelli augmented that sturdy core with guests of the highest order – Mark Olson and Victoria Williams singing on one track, Petra Haden’s haunting violin, Bruce Kaphan’s pedal steel, Kat Maslich on vocals, and local confederates like Chris Burney (who’d been playing bass for him on the road and would soon lead underrated Warner Brothers rock act The Sun).

Like many songwriters, Easton uses this pandemic to webcast from his home – including trying out new songs and dialoguing with old friends like JP Olsen. Last week, in honor of its 20th anniversary, he revisited The Truth About Us from front to back. He peppered the set with reminisces about its making – including fond recollections of everyone who worked with him on it.

That hour and a half was a powerful nostalgia trip, remembering trudging through the snow to Little Brothers for the release show – great Cleveland band Rosavelt backing and opening for Easton – with my roommate at the time. It also reminded me how well the songs hold up two decades later.

At its best, The Truth About Us grapples with the very concept of truth and its value. Trying to understand people’s motivations, and his own, to get out of the writer’s own way, while also trying to find their place inside an “us.”

Around the time of this record, I saw many shows – frequently local – and listened to a lot of records with my friend Heather, now based solidly in LA. Easton’s deceptively easy-going manner and charm put her off, feeling like its truths weren’t as hard-fought as her favorite writers: “It’s all good, but it comes too easily to him.” 

The one song she made an exception for was the second song on The Truth About Us: “Carry Me,” a plea for forgiveness and an accounting. The tune hides a knife in its gentleness: a catchy, fingerpicked lilt that drifts from “People love you like a diamond in their hand, but they don’t know that diamond like I do” through “It was selfish to think you’d be better off just ‘cause I wanted to be further along,” into “Here comes that old devil midnight and I have not slept in days.” Hearing him do this one again, with just that acoustic guitar, chilled my blood.

“Happy Now,” always one of my favorite hooks Easton wrote – in a period he wrote more jangling, haunt-your-sleep choruses than anyone else in town – reasserted a psychological weight I didn’t give it credit for at the time. I’d never seen a Rauschenberg combine when I heard that song, and I’d barely graced the surface of cut-ups as a form, so the accretion of collaged emotional details took me a while. Stripped from the Byrds chime of the guitar and the grooving Kinksish organ on the record, the depth of feeling hit harder. 

Verses paint people in crisis, a tattoo parlor owner’s wife screaming at him, “You’re ruining me somehow”; a man jumping a roof to find the same callous disregard in death – “He wanted them to miss him, that was part of the plan, but nobody ever even gave a damn. Are you happy now? They were laughing as you went down;” a woman in her front yard praying with the prayers answered by, “Nobody knew what to do or what to say; the traffic light changed, and we just drove away.” s the chorus taunting “Are you happy now” with the sinking suspicion the narrator’s turning on himself.

The obsessive ramble that always recalled Elizabeth Bishop to me, “I Would Have Married You,” retained its keening, searching power in this format. Easton rightly called out the magnificence of Petra Haden’s violin – this was the first I’d heard of her, and her playing drove me to pick up my first That Dog record – Maslich’s harmonies and Kaphan’s moaning steel.

Easton’s affection for people and memory for detail is the not-so-secret engine that’s powered his career and created the longevity he enjoys. This evening was a reminder of that joy, as much as the record is. Nowhere does that manifest more than in his long-running friendship with JP Olsen. The two songs on The Truth About Us not penned by Easton come from Olsen: “Bad Florida,” a standout on my sleeper pick for best Columbus album, Burn Barrel’s Reviled!, and last-call promise from Olsen’s band The Beetkeepers, “Don’t Walk Alone.” The latter closes the record and imbues Olsen’s razor-sharp words and sly melody with a greater earnestness as he  bolsters the anthemic qualities of the chorus with surging backing vocals and my favorite Haden string parts here. That anthem recast clings to his arrangement, even with the elements stripped away.

This is still viewable on Tim Easton’s official Facebook page.

Categories
"Hey, Fred!" live music theatre

Things I’ve Been Digging – 01/25/2021

Blue Ridge from the Atlantic Theater Company website

Blue Ridge by Abby Rosebrock, directed by Taibi Magar, presented by Play Per View

Play Per View made their name earlier in the pandemic with some of the best Off-Broadway plays of the last few years, often reuniting their original casts. They scored another winner with Rosebrock’s Blue Ridge, assembling the stellar actors of the Obie-winning Atlantic Theater’s 2018 production for a Zoom reading.

Blue Ridge singed my damn eyebrows off. Marin Ireland’s Abby is a heartbreakingly relatable character – a portrait of someone getting in her way, so good at some things it lets her not acknowledge her toxicity radiating into the people around her. Whip-change moves underpinned by simultaneously a steely reserve and tragic desperation.

Under Magar’s direction, the rest of the cast crackles, with Kyle Beltran’s Wade, a fellow resident of the sober living house to which Abby was court-appointed, and Kristolyn Lloyd’s Cherie, Abby’s close friend and further along in her path to sobriety. Those two characters’ take the program’s lessons seriously, and their struggle is easier to relate to without the main character’s causticity. But Rosebrock is too canny a writer to let the audience rest in the easy moralistic dichotomy; everyone here is a person, and we’re all broken with varying degrees of self-awareness.

This pitch-black comedy set in the tip of Appalachia grapples with the difficulty of getting help and the often Sisyphean task of getting better, of treating your fellow humans with the love it’s hard to even see ourselves as deserving. 

Questlove 50th Promo Picture from Youtube

Questlove’s 50th Birthday Stream

I was delighted to take a breath on January 20th for the Biden and Harris inauguration, and both Garth Brooks’ a capella “Amazing Grace” and Amanda Gorman’s stirring poem moved me. But when work ended and the night rolled around, the celebration I wanted to partake in from my couch – the closest representation of America I want, I have to choose, to believe in – was a celebratory birthday takeover of a scheduled Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson broadcast on The Roots’ YouTube channel.

Questlove’s been the heart and engine of some of my favorite music of all time. Without question, he was among the driving forces of most of my favorite music of college and immediately after. I’m in the middle of my third re-read of Creative Quest, trying to kickstart my brain out of a winter slump. His DJing is also rightly legendary – anyone watching him rock a massive crowd at Brooklyn Bowl knows we’re in the presence of someone hitting an apex of that form.

In the five or so hours of #Questo50 Anne and I were lucky to see a tribute to Questlove’s wide-ranging network of friends and influences on both sides. And each DJ – without trying too hard, they frequently overlapped a song or two – took up a distinct space. They treated that evening as a great party, even if we were all in our own houses. The latter also presented a heavier version of the usual Wednesday night problem: no waiting for champagne and whiskey that have already been paid for.

DJ Rashida’s infectious set played a greatest hits of Questlove’s work – classic The Roots, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Common – and his compatriots Q-Tip and Dilla. She served a burst of the best parts of memory, dancing to those songs in clubs and basements, probably not surprising since she’s within a month of my age.

DJ Sasara from Tokyo spoke to his international presence and the flow of ideas. She worked local floor-fillers like DJ Kawasaki into smooth ‘70s soul and hard-driving Colombian and Brazillian tunes. Stones Throw general Peanut Butter Wolf worked with the record nerd side. Having picked a crate of 45s he thought Questlove would enjoy, he chose them at random, delighting in the sensual, sometimes incongruity of the way they sparked against each other.

DJ Tara was that modern East Coast party, smoothly and seamlessly beat-matched and the perfect mix of stuff I already knew and loved and great surprises that all made me want to move. And the headliner, as only seems right, was Philly giant DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Like a real club night or warehouse party, I wanted to check in and still have a full night’s sleep for work. I couldn’t turn away – I was happily hooked on this until 1:00 am.

Categories
"Hey, Fred!" live music theatre

Things I’ve Been Digging – 01/17/2021

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, from left Kris Davis, Daryl Johns, Immanuel Wilkins, Kewku Sumbry; taken from stream and edited

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet at Smalls

I mentioned APAP in last week’s writeup. Generally, in one of these years when I’d be in New York for mid-January, soaking up the remnants of arts presenters’ bounties, I’d be catching between 6 and 20 sets over a few days of Winter Jazz Fest. WJF’s excellent pivot of panels and performances is going on through March, but I caught a few streams that gave me some of that feeling.

The set that gave me the heftiest dose of that energy came from a stalwart of the classic NYC clubs and at the vanguard of this new digital era, Smalls. Immanuel Wilkins (also a standout on Joel Ross’ astonishing record last year) and one of our finest alto players, lead a striking quartet with Kris Davis (who closed out my previous New York trip with an explosion) on piano, Daryl Johns on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums. 

The group wove together songs into unbroken suites, building landscapes and shifting them. Simmering, glistening ballads jostled with ecstatic classic fire music. Long, screeching cries curled like smoke into gorgeous melodies. Textures played out and expanded, then splintered and came together. 

This set was everything I want from a band coming out of the jazz tradition. It made me miss New York, it made me miss walking down to Dick’s Den on a good night, and it made me miss being in the room; at the same time, it reminded me how lucky I am to have this option.

From left: Vijay Iyer, Arooj Aftab, Shazad Ismaily; taken from stream and edited

Love in Exile at Jazz Gallery

Jazz Gallery continues to present a wealth of fascinating programming in its streaming iteration and I was enthralled by their trio this week of pianist Vijay Iyer, multi-instrumentalist Shazad Ismaily (both of whom I’ve seen many times) and vocalist Arooj Aftab whose name pricked my consciousness when she played a Big Ears but I’d never seen.

This was an astonishing, glowing hour of music. Mostly working in these slow, unfolding oceanic tempos, the trio displayed an uncanny telepathy. On one piece, Iyer’s exploded flurries of his classic diamond hard-and-glistening attack into spaces left by Aftab’s silky melodies and Ismaily’s circular, hypnotic bass. Another used that tempo to expand into a rich, cinematic, baroque ballad, riding accumulations into a majestic cascade. 

Other pieces had Ismaily bringing in a droning keyboard tone to underpin a dual longing between Aftab and Iyer. Beautiful and beguiling.

Espíritu; shot taken from stream and edited

Espíritu at Under the Radar

Caught up on the rest of the previous week’s Under the Radar and my favorite piece, Espíritu, came from the Chilean company Teatro Anónimo and the pen of Trinidad González. 

It focuses on – mostly young – people grappling with the deep sickness of ennui and hopelessness. As one character says early on, “We are just a group of useless people with a great plan to stop the destruction of the world.”

That plan staggers and stumbles, people are wracked by cruelty and driven into impoverished fantasies that pass that cruelty on through jagged vignettes. Lines like “People yell at me and that makes them happy…Sometimes they think they’re making love but it’s something different from love. Do they dream?” and “If I were your father I’d burn that notebook and send you off to fight a war,” haunted me for days after seeing this.

If I were managing a company, I’d program a double bill of this with Matt Slaybaugh’s The Absurdity of Writing Poetry but there are probably dozens of plays about fighting despair with art, even, especially, when it feels hopeless, this would productively spark against. It made me miss UTR, made me miss NYC, and made me miss the theaters where I first loved work like this in the Wexner Center and at Available Light.

Categories
"Hey, Fred!" live music

Things I’ve Been Digging – 01/04/2021

Welcome back, anyone still reading this. I appreciate the kind words about the year-end wrap-up posts more than I can ever say, and I always appreciate all of you. Hoping we’re only a few months away from easing into my bending some of your ears in person, but I hope and intend to keep this up even when most of the things I love in a week are back out in the world. Keep the faith, stay safe, burn your lanterns of hope.

I started 2021 strong on the New Year’s Eve weekend with three shows that reminded me that music and storytelling are frequently social forms. Instead of making me despair at being so far away from the people I’d be seeing shows with – and the bands I’d be dancing to – it made me feel warm and close to that vibration.

Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Derry deBorja, taken from stream and edited

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, 12/31/2020

I prepped for a round of Zoom New Year’s Eve celebrations by getting dressed and dancing in the living room to Isbell’s finely tuned band’s perfect mix of rocking wistfulness, ass-shaking melancholy, soulful empathy, and hope for the world.

Isbell’s 2020 record Reunions played with cleaner, shimmering textures and rhythms than his last few and continued the more open arrangements and space for the band to make their mark started with The Nashville Sound. For many of us, even those of us who are sick of that sparkling Dire Straits guitar, those tones cut a distinct tunnel to nostalgia, and Isbell used that with a perfect set of songs about his (and our) growing up and also about living in the world now.

For someone who’s written so many stirring crowd-pleasers, I enjoyed seeing how these new songs held their own and made space in dialogue with tunes we’ve been singing along to for years. Wrapping the encore with his surging anthem to questioning and rejecting complacency, to the implacable sense we can all always be doing better, “What Have I Done To Help,” felt like a perfect hymn for the coming year. It also felt like the character’s direct evolution from his breakout hit “Cover Me Up” played right before.

The melancholy of nostalgia and longing for absent friends in songs like “Dreamsicle” and “Only Children,” bloomed in three dimensions, a reminder that memory and paying witness are celebrations even when we’re sad. The surge of the rhythm section helped keep anything – even songs in a quieter space like “Something More Than Free” – from being staid or stiff, and there was always air for the melodic flights of Amanda Shires’ violin and Sadler Vaden and Isbell’s dueling guitars to spark off one another. 

Weird as it was seeing the full Brooklyn Bowl light show cut through the shadows of their cavernous, empty Nashville outpost, this never felt like a rehearsal. Nothing seemed phoned in or rushed, nor was it too slick. This set reminded me of the promise of a great, muscular rock band on a good night. It made me hungry to be in the room for the real thing but grateful for this marker until we can do that.

Maceo Parker, Bruno Speight, and Will Boulware, taken from stream and edited

Maceo Parker, SFJAZZ, 01/01/2021 (archival from 2015)

Maceo’s horn has defined American music from the early 1960s on. I was lucky enough to see him with Prince, with Ani Difranco (in a double bill that still feels like the most fun I’ve ever seen two bands have on stage with one another), and tearing up the Scioto Mile on a ferocious free summer set. 

I’ve rhapsodized about the SFJAZZ streams for members in this space, and we were treated to an exquisite example from Parker’s 2015 NYE run. I marveled at the way Parker builds and sustains these relationships, how much gratitude he brings to this band, and in return, how tight they are as a unit, following through the kaleidoscopic range of moods and tones he calls out.

He reached back through pieces of his (and the nation’s) history in a tight hour and ten set. He briefly touched on the jazz of the booking’s name with a sweet duet on the Ellington classic “Satin Doll” as a duo with keyboardist Will Boulware. His JBs days got sultry, hard-edged workout on “Make It Funky,” featuring a flame-licked trombone solo from Greg Boyer (who he met in his days with George Clinton) and a closing tent-revival version of “Pass the Peas.”

Nikki Glaspie from Dumpstaphunk and the Nth Power kicked Parker’s classic Prince collaboration “Baby Knows” from Dial M-A-C-E-O into high gear with a crackling drum intro. She threw that same explosive energy into the slightly smoother shine of their arrangement on The Meters’ “Hey Pocky A-Way.” 

Her hookup with P-Funk bassist Rodney “Skeet” Curtis shone throughout the set, especially on moments like her perfect, surprising comping behind his melodic slap solo on the Parker original “Off The Hook.” The band worked just as well when the energy slipped into a simmer, especially on an instrumental cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On” the let Parker show off that sweet but never too sugary tone in full undulating pillow talk mode.

In addition to shouting out the band and creating showcase spots for them, Parker even made time to shout out and thank the crew from the stage, many of them by name. That love for people lit up the band and the music, bringing a tear to my eye.

Lenny Kaye and the Lonesome Prairie Dogs, taken from the stream and edited

Various Artists, Hank-O-Rama, Bowery Electric, 01/01/2021

For the last 17 years, Brooklyn roots band The Lonesome Prairie Dogs have honored Hank Williams with a set on the day he died, making up for the Canton Ohio show he missed. This year, they marked the anniversary with a stream from Bowery Electric.

Lenny Kaye played pedal steel on almost everything. The Lonesome Horns (a trio of brass players from Antibalas led by Jordan McLean) augmenting several songs enhanced this hard-swinging four-piece core. This seasoned NYC institution tore through raging party classics like “Settin’ The Woods On Fire” and aching ballads like “Cold, Cold Heart” with equal aplomb.

A rotating set of other lead singers fleshed out the visions of Hank here, with East Village organizer and singer-songwriter Tom Clark, MC Lindy Loo, and Sean Kershaw all taking turns at the mic, along with Kaye stepping out from behind the steel for his tribute to Williams’ alter ego Luke the Drifter (from his 1984 Lenny Kaye Connection record) and the Lonesome Horns’  rotating lead vocals on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

These Bowery Electric shows always remind me of what I love most about New York, the way scenes feel malleable and overlap and this sense of “Kids putting on a show” but with the highest caliber of musicians you’ll find anywhere. Even some technical rough spots – moments where multiple singers worked together, as the finale “I Saw The Light” exposed some serious monitor problems – made this feel like home.

Categories
Best Of live music

Best of 2020 – Live Music, Sometimes Virtual

In this fucked-up year, I was lucky enough to see 35 things before it shut down in early March, in four cities. So I was trying to make good on my promise of excitement! And I still tried, even when it felt like just sitting around my house.

Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons, Sultan Room

Live:

  • Brett Burleson Quartet (01/04/2020, Dick’s Den) – It’s not always the first show of the year but Burleson’s annual birthday show is a burst of heat early in January that feels like a starting pistol and an invocation to call forth the spirit of a good damn year. This one in particular, at the end of a marathon also celebrating my friend Crystal’s birthday in the little suburb I grew up, and saying goodbye to college standby The Library with some of Anne’s best friends (including the owner Cricket who was selling it), the two sets I caught here were exactly what I needed. Seeing Burleson with a second guitar player is always a rare treat, and his duets with Josh Hindmarsh over a sizzling rhythm section were some of the most beautiful Jim Hall-style melodic guitar fireworks I could have hoped for.
  • Ryan Truesdell’s Tribute to Bob Brookmeyer (01/08/2020, Jazz Standard, NYC) – I wrote about this at some length earlier but this tribute/memorial birthday party to one of the great arrangers (and teachers, my friend Mike still talks about Brookmeyer with massive fondness) summed up the kind of warm feeling of being at an honest-to-god hang. A feeling I’ve gotten more at NYC jazz clubs than anywhere else in the world, and especially at the (RIP) Jazz Standard, a club that always tried harder than it had to and delivered in spades.
From left: Cochemea at Secret Planet Showcase, Drom; Makaya Mccraven at Webster Hall; Millenial Territory Orchestra featuring Catherine Russell at Le Poisson Rouge
  • Winter Jazzfest (01/10/2020 and 01/11/2020, Various Venues, NYC) – For over a decade, WJF has lived up to its promise of giving out of town bookers (here for APAP) and adventurous locals a concentrated look at one of the greatest, most vibrant scenes in the world. It’s expanded to bring in Chicago and London and Brussels and hit all the major genres without feeling like it’s pandering or diluting. Catherine Russell raising her eyebrow at Steven Bernstein on the Le Poisson Rouge stage. Philip Cohran’s sons in Hypnotic Brass Ensemble tearing SOBs apart. Two old friends hugging each other in front of me during Makaya McCraven’s set and the musicians on stage in awe of their bandmates. A marathon for poet Steve Dalachinsky (one of my inspirations, reminding me how often I’d see him around shows). Every time I go, about every other year, I want to go every year.
  • Secret Planet Showcase (01/11/2020, Drom, NYC) – A punky, world music party in one of my favorite clubs (co-thrown by another of my favorite bars, Barbes). I always leave this sore and sweaty. This year was exceptional, with Daptone horn meister Cochemea leading a frenzied band of almost all percussionists, Sunny Jain from Red Baraat’s rippling spaghetti western tuba funk, the lilting melodies and beguiling rhythm of Alba and The Lions. Magic front to back.
Rock Potluck, Ace of Cups
  • Sarah Hennies and Mara Baldwin (01/12/2020, National Sawdust, NYC) – Sarah Hennies, long one of my favorite percussionists and composers, had a hell of a year with a couple of her finest records and what felt like new performances every time I turned around. This collaboration with Mara Baldwin, a violin quartet led by Anna Roberts-Gevalt, with sculptures inspired by Shaker furniture transported me and made a deep impression in a long day of magic that just kept getting better (I’d already seen the Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith dance piece, the Rachel Harrison retro at the Whitney, and Simon Stone’s Medea with only a break for dinner at St Anselm, and that was all Sunday). 
  • Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons (01/12/2020, Sultan Room, NYC) – Pianist Kris Davis is a recurring presence on these lists. She gets better and better. This live production of one of my favorite records of last year was a kaleidoscopic explosion with one of the tightest, most surprising bands I’ve ever seen – including Val Jeanty on turntables and electronics, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, Tony Malaby on tenor – in my first trip to the tight, sweaty back room of this Middle Eastern restaurant. I got to end this trip on the highest of high notes, with grooves and crackling melody dancing around my head all the way through a nightcap and a fitful sleep before the next morning’s flight.
  • Final Rock Potluck (01/18/2020, Ace of Cups) – Bobby Miller’s given me a lot of my favorite moments in Columbus music – 4th and 4th Fest, Megacity Music Marathon, the last few years of Ace of Cups booking – but maybe his most enduring impact on this town we both love is (with Shane Sweeney in the first couple years) the importing and localizing of the great Dallas tradition as the Rock Potluck. One night only conglomerations of musicians making sparks fly unlike what we’d expect from their own bands. I was still fighting fatigue- and the kind of wet, shitty day January specializes in –  but Anne and I dragged ourselves down for the last few sets of this…and Oh My God. There was so much burbling joy in this room. Bob Starker took a sax solo behind Marcy Mays on a take on the Fleetwood Mac-via-Judas Priest chestnut “The Green Manalishi,” one of the women from Snarls launching into Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” and watching new songs come out of almost thin air. We all left with some of the best memories of this tradition that will be sorely missed.
Raphael Saadiq, Old Forester’s Parishtown Hall
  • Chuck Prophet (01/28/2020, Natalie’s Grandview) – Any of us who love touring music have at least a couple of stories of artists who got pushed back more than once. Alec Wightman booked Prophet’s full band, The Mission Express, in the hopes we’d get our shit together and had to cancel twice as COVID raged. But we were lucky to get the rare solo acoustic version. Classics like “You Could Make a Doubter Out of Jesus” and “Would You Love Me”, newer songs like “High as Johnny Thunders” and “Bad Year For Rock and Roll” co-existed in a set that felt like a journey. And the memory that stuck most with me is the first time I heard the song that most deeply imprinted this year for me, off Prophet’s new record, still a few months out, “Willie and Nill.” A perfect example of the kind of empathic, hard luck stories Prophet writes better than anyone, “Nilli said, ‘I had a body once, Willie you have no idea. I could make a grown man bark all night – anytime, anywhere.’ Willie said, ‘I had a lion’s mane. Now I sing at the top of my lungs till the neighbors get their broomsticks out and the cops all sing along.’”
  • Physical Boys (02/15/2020, Kaiju, Louisville) – The centerpiece of this Valentine’s Day weekend trip to Louisville – that had me miss the Theatre roundtable awards back home – didn’t disappoint but there’s a special joy getting to see something completely new. One of my favorite music rooms, Kaiju, hosted a newish Louisville band Physical Boys who played a beautiful, intoxicating mix of Stiff Records’ sharp jangle and Afghan Whigs operatic sleaze.
  • Raphael Saadiq with Jamila Woods (02/17/2020, Old Forester’s Parishtown Hall, Louisville) – Raphael Saadiq followed his darkest, most personal album with a stripped-down, muscular tour that was unlike any other time I’d ever seen him. Great venue, killer sightlines, fantastic sound. My only regret was missing most of the excellent (from what I caught) Jamila Woods set.
Bria Skonberg and Byron Stripling with Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Southern Theater
  • Bearthoven (02/18/2020, Short North Stage) – The Johnstone Fund has brought more new music (contemporary classical, whatever you want to call it) in the last few years than any earlier time I remember, filling a gap I sorely missed in our musical scene. This return visit from NYC trio – piano, bass, drums – Bearthoven paired a phenomenal new Sarah Hennies (see above) composition with the bright propulsion of a Michael Gordon premiere.
  • Radioactivity with Vacation and Good Shade (02/19/2020, Ace of Cups) – It had been too long since I caught Radioactivity’s spiky brand of angular Texas punk and this three-band bill reaffirmed my faith in catchy, sweaty rock and roll.
  • Columbus Jazz Orchestra featuring Bria Skonberg (02/23/2020, Southern Theater) – I don’t keep up with the CJO as much as I should but this unseasonably sunny Sunday matinee was a shot of pure light in my veins with the group having a ball alongside guest singer and trumpeter Skonberg on great rep including Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” and Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me.”
From left: Amy Lavere, Will Sexton (both at Natalie’s), Reigning Sound (Beachland Ballroom)
  • Reigning Sound with Venus Flytraps, Bloodshot Bill, and Alarm Clocks (03/06/2020, Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland) – The last trip out of town for some culture before this all went south (well, “as,” the weekend we were up there the first confirmed Ohio cases of COVID were diagnosed in Cleveland. A reunion tour of the original Reigning Sound lineup celebrating both my favorite rock club in the country and one of my favorite record labels, Norton, was everything I want in rock and roll.
  • Amy Lavere and Will Sexton (03/10/2020, Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – The last local show before everything went to hell  – one of my favorite songwriters, Lavere, backed by her longtime partner (whose songs are coming into their own on his terrific new record this year). Their tour was shortly canceled, but I was thankful for this last glimpse before locking down.

Online:

It was never like being in a room with sweaty strangers, but the proliferation of livestreams and creative pivoting made me feel a little more connected and a little less alone. Favorites of the couple hundred shows I checked in with.

For the first few months of lockdown, Living Music With Nadia Sirota was a balm. One of my favorite violists and a key locus in the new music scene hosted a delightful show once or twice a week, bringing three or more of her pals together – from Claire Chase to Missy Mazzoli, Shilpa Ray to Nathalie Joachim, Judd Greenstein to Ted Hearne – for a taste of what they were doing and a taste of camaraderie I needed even from a remove.

Goner Records simultaneously made me miss Memphis more than ever but gave me a dose of their freewheeling spirit and impeccable taste. Their online translation of Gonerfest was the best streaming version of a festival this year, simultaneously recognizing the international spirit that makes the festival so successful and making us feel like we’re surrounded by our best friends.

Another dose of Memphis came from a weekly shot of John Paul Keith, turning the same skills he uses to keep audiences spellbound as a fine singer, a great guitarist and songwriter, and a charming raconteur toward the camera instead of a barroom. Keith’s jukebox-like memory for songs and artists leads him through delightful anecdotes and a real friendship with people logging in week after week. There was more than one exhausting Monday where hearing JPK say “Hey, Lydia,” brightened me right up – and I don’t even know Lydia.

The north flip-side of those great JPK shows came with Jesse Malin’s Fine Art of Self Distancing, alternately playing solo and his band, from his bars Berlin and Bowery Electric. Malin also ran – with Diane Gentile and others – translations of his fun tribute shows (to Johnny Thunders and The Cramps). Beyond his solid songs, just like Sirota and Keith, he understood and demonstrated what we needed most was fellowship.

Locally, Natalie’s led the way in outdoor shows and now streams, keeping up with their high standards for sound and sight. One of my favorite rooms in town that I dearly hope makes it through this. Ace of Cups got a late start, but I felt very safe on their patio with the precautions they’ve taken and the first of their streams I caught sounded great. 

Jazz clubs in New York have already noted one fallen (Jazz Standard) and are pivoting with great alacrity. Small’s Live and Jazz Gallery are both crushing it with regular, killing performances and Jazz Gallery adds conversations, happy hours, and dance parties. The legendary Village Vanguard is also putting out great sounding, great looking shows by the kind of giants who’d normally be playing to packed houses.

There are still more great performances than I can fit in and more to love than I have time for. I just hope most of these rooms I love make it to the other side and some assistance is forthcoming.