Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Leeds w/ Bird Street 11/26/18 Cafe 9

Bird Street is an LA-based singer songwriter. He came to the 9 armed with an acoustic and a hat. Caught the last couple tunes of his set. Assured vocals with decent picking and song structure. Final song had him straddling the precipice between singing and yelling, which I find fascinating.
Leeds is Royston Langdon,  a musician from Leeds but based in NYC. He sang and played bass for the 90s-ish band Spacehog. His British accent and banter had me thinking of Bowie or Robyn Hitchcock. Langdon had to be pushing 50, and he told the crowd not to clap for him. This aw shucks style gave the air of a has-been trying to regain (or forget?) his stage presence from a bygone era. It was a pity because I really wanted to clap. Leeds said that Spacehog toured with Oasis and The Black Crowes back in the day. Langdon remained friends with Rich Robinson ( the less baked, axe-wielding brother of the Crowes) and played a tune which they co-wrote. Excellent cover of Grant Lee Buffalo's Jupiter and Teardrop. Closed with a wonderful rendition of Todd Rundgren's A Dream Goes On Forever complete with audience sing along for the acapella bits. I kooked Leeds after the show, " you won't let us clap, but you want us to sing in the Todd register?"

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Dom Flemons w/ Kevin Burt 11/24/18 East Rock Concert Series

I recently joined a gym in my neighborhood on Nicoll St. called mActivity that caters to the growing hip young population in this area. New, clean, and easily accessible were reasons to join. A pleasant ( and seemingly targeted at me!) bonus is the East Rock Concert Series, a cache of folk-oriented shows promoted by local scenester Fernando Pinto. The music takes place in the sizable loungey front room of mActivity. Opener Kevin Burt was a big fella blues man who had a penchant for blues-afying pop tunes. He sat playing a gorgeous resonator guitar for tunes like Eleanor Rigby and Smack Dab in the Middle. Closed with an excellent cover of The Doobie Brothers' Long Train Runnin. Burt explained that the International Blues challenge, where hundreds of performers compete in Memphis , had never had a triple crown winner, until he won the honors last year.
Dom Flemons is a self-proclaimed "American Songster", an archivist and historian of the African American music legacy. He was also one third of the now defunct Carolina Chocolate Drops ( note the 11/13/18 blog post). Flemons is a true multi -instrumentalist, on this evening he showcased: rhythm bones, quills, harmonicas, acoustic guitars, and a variety of banjos including one made out of a gourd. Listening to Flemons is like getting a musical history lesson on country and bluegrass. He payed homage to Bill Monroe at The Grand Ole Opry. He scatted through some gospel tunes. He made reference to a collaborative folk project with the legendary British guitarist Martin Simpson. He took the audience on a tour of the south with tunes by Elizabeth Cotton and Ella Jenkins. Flemons gave props to his Carolina mentor by opening with the standard Cindy Gal. It seems fitting that Smithsonian Folkways ( and the legacy of Alan Lomax), sponsored Dom's recent Black Cowboy record. Songs were covers or inspired by Flemons' research into the genre. One striking story was of the Lone Ranger who was an African American US Marshall who spent time on a reservation before embarking on his perfect record of rounding up bad guys.  On the back of his custom gourd banjo, there was a drawing of Dom with his wife and young child with some birds flying forward but their beaks facing back. He explained the bird depiction was from an Ashanti proverb " fetch it back"' where there is power in learning the past past while carrying it forward. Very enjoyable listen at yet another new venue in the area.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Elizabeth and The Catapult w/ Julia Caesar 11/19/18 Cafe 9

Burlington VT quartet Julia Caesar has two female guitarists, female bass, and a young man on drums. They play original rock and seem to have a queer following. Good songs that dabble in some spacey jamminess.
Elizabeth and the Catapult played at Bar years ago. A trio with guitar, drums, and Elizabeth Niman on  vocals/keys and acoustic guitar was the group. NYC native Elizabeth has collaborated with Gillian Welch, Bens Folds, and Richard Swift (The Shins) as well as composing for videos and documentaries. She reminded me of Laura Nyro, both sound and looks. Gorgeous, full singing voice was the highlight of most tunes. Industry experience and years of live dates makes for a confident stage presence. On this evening, a crew of 4 or 5 pro-looking tango dancers shook and sashayed in front of the stage. Elizabeth rolled with this odd crowd dimension, and embraced sharing the visual with the dancers.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Rhiannon Giddens 11/13/18 Sudler Hall, Yale

"Critical Listening Session" with Yale chair of the African American Studies department Professor Daphne Brooks and MacArthur Genius recipient and former leader of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, RG. The talk was a kind of "this is your life" presentation that dabbled in the history of the banjo as it related to minstrel music. Giddens grew up in Greensboro NC, went to Oberlin, worked as a graphic artist, formed the Grammy award winning CCD, and basically sky rocketed to fame all the while mining and resurrecting old time string band music. RG plays a replica minstrel banjo and fiddle. The lecture showcased CCD's "Snowden's Jig", a mournful instrumental with handclaps and foot stomping percussion that is truly haunting. "Julee" a tune inspired from the accounts of slaves depicts an enslaved woman on the cusp of freedom interacting with her female owner. "Black Is The Color" was a big budget video shot on the grounds of Fisk University. RG's tireless effort to unearth this beautiful music borne out of a painful history is compelling. It is worth noting that the trio that was CCD has disbanded, with members Giddens and Dom Flemons forging solo careers while Robinson moved away from the traditional music. Please listen to the podcast "Uncivil" and in particular the episode pertaining to the song "Dixie", where local hero Jack Hitt interviews Robinson to reveal his epiphany as it relates to minstrel music. At the Q and A, a teacher from Bridgeport asked " how he could get his students to listen to anything other than rap?" To which RG replied that her cousin was taking the banjo into the realm of rap, and that the most exciting music and art is happening "at the edges". Capacity crowd to hear from this acclaimed artist even as we seem to be moving backwards with regard to race and culture.

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Nathan Bowles w/ Weeping Bong Band and Stefan Christensen 11/9/18 The State House

Local knob twiddler Christensen routinely opens shows of this nature. He uses laptop and effects pad to create industrial machine sounding backdrop and then layers guitar and wordless vocals. The music is oddly soothing, as if the listener is suspended over a factory floor.
Massachusetts instrumental psych rock quartet Weeping Bong Band have some interesting material on Spotify. Young woman in a thrift store dress and crocheted hat played flute and guitar, grizzled leather-clad rocker on bass, man-bunned hipster scratched at a banjo, and a big fella in a tattered Mr. Rogers sweater on mandolin and wooden flutes. The set started with a dueling flute passage, in came a bass vamp and some banjo scratching. The songs seemed quiet, like a movie soundtrack to a slow moving thriller. I was waiting for the group to unleash, but it never came. Perhaps the thriller ended peacefully, the villain was caught and there was no need for a climactic score.
Nathan Bowles played banjo in The Black Twig Pickers, a psychedelic take on Appalachian string music. On this night, he played with a drummer and standup bassist. Bowles percussive style was on display. The first tune, Nathan played an unusual lute-like instrument. He switched to banjo on which he strummed, picked, bowed, and bongoed. Song structure was good, and the capable rhythm section helped to deliver the tunes. Decent crowd and an annoying old woman taking flash photos from behind the band.

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Jounce 11/5/18 Cafe 9

Power trio Jounce has played a Manic free show at Bar back in the day (2015, maybe?). Lead vocals/ bass, guitar/ backing vocals, and drums. High energy and speedy runs for this brief set of originals. The music straddled punk and metal, the mediocre vocals were buoyed by solid musicianship. Started with their signature tune, the riff I remembered from last viewing. Closed the show with a bouncy blues cover and then Cult of Personality by Living Color.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Thurston Moore, Wobbly, Byron Coley 11/3/18 The State House

Big Saturday show for the recently opened State House. I have been reading Byron Coley's music writing and record reviews for decades. He has written for Spin and Forced Exposure and holds down the monthly column "Size Matters" where he reviews odd formats ( 7", EPs, metal cassettes et. al.) for British zine Wire. Coley is a Northampton resident, like Moore, and runs the boutique record label FeedingTube, which gives label refuge to regional avant weirdos like Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano, and Sunburned Hand of the Man. On this night, Coley read poetry. He reminded me of Charles Bukowski, Ginsberg, or Burroughs in that many of his screeds described life in Frisco. Selling plasma, delivering local ad-news, or general scamming for dope and booze dominated many poems. He had some hysterical moments, like a nightmare he had about living in Dick Cheney's penis, wanting to beat the shit out of Brett Kavanaugh, and berating Joni Mitchell because she was tooling around in a Lincoln Navigator.
Wobbly is the stage name of Jon Leidecker, a member of the SF-based art terrorist collective Negativland. Please google Negativland if only to read about the legal battle with U2. Apparently the boys from Negativland recorded "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" on kazoos over a famous hot mic profanity laced rant about U2 from the mouth of an aging Kasey Casem. Classic. Wobbly is an electronic artist who coaxes bleeps and blaps from a series of iPads. The music is jarring with no discernible beat or song structure. The tones seemed decidedly old school as if someone's Atari was humping a PlayStation 1.
The Thurston affair was billed as "noise explorations of two 12-string guitars". Moore and James Sedwards on guitars were joined by female bassist (no, not Kim!), and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on drums. Churning, bubbling guitar ebbed and flowed at the conductorship of Moore. Thurston seemed to constantly be counting off "one-two" while nervously contorting his face to the dirge. Other than Shelley, Moore seemed to have 20 years on his bandmates and he led them around like a kindergarten field trip to avant skronk town. We know Thurston is in his 50s, but his demeanor is that of a junior high bad boy who just stole your lunch money while framing you for a flooded boys lav. The set consisted of one continuous "piece" that he said was inspired by Alice Coltrane and two female visual artists who I couldn't place. Good crowd for this unusual amalgam of outsiders.