Eggy 9/12/24 Hartford Live

 The jam lingers on at the HL series. Eggy carries the jam torch lit by guitarist’s Jake Brownsteins father Mark in his seminal jamtronica outfit The Disco Biscuits. The Biscuits were a tri-state area force that fused the extended freak outs of jam with the electronic wizardry of house. It allowed the tie-dye and corduroy crowd a chance to get down without getting laughed out of da clerb. They held these upstate NY forest ragers called Camp Bisco. Imagine, then, being a 6-12 year old Jake backstage at one of these things, god knows what he heard and witnessed. Seems natural to find a crew, hone your chops, and follow the path. Fast forward to 2024 where Eggy plays two solid sets behind the Old Statehouse. First set was tame and ballady but got some heads bobbing. The flow of these shows is critical to the concert experience. You can’t start with a face-melter and then sing Color My World (they did not do this). Fact is, Eggy could have. Talented quartet has Brownstein joined by bass, drums, and keys. They all sang, but drummer did the majority. Set two was where Eggy cooked: Smile , Remind Me, A Moments Notice,  Shallow Rivers, Southern Cross (CSN), Wayless One, One Stop Shop, Atomic Age, Must Come Down, encored with an extended Tom Corn Walker. Good crowd and perfect weather.

CT Folkfest 9/7/24 Edgerton Park

 The CT Folkfest is underwater. Not figuratively, but literally. Back in the day, the Doppler was a Gomer Pylish Hilton Kaderli predicting a “gulleywhomper “ of a storm happening sometime between May and March. In today’s world,  when the Doppler says it’s gonna rain at 5pm, it pretty much rains at 5. So what to do about a lineup that gets cooking at 5? Go at 5 and hope Kaderli is driving the low pressure system. We know how this ends, show up at 5, see a few tunes by 83  year old folk royalty Tom Rush, who gets flooded from the stage by said gulleywhomper. I mean it rained sideways. We took shelter in the beer tent before surrendering for the day. This festival has some great memories for me: Steve Earle,  Mary Gauthier and Greg Brown with recent highlights of Donna the Buffalo, Maria Muldaur, and Oliver Wood. It’s sad to report that today’s headliner Leyla McCalla and warmup act Kaleta and the Super Yamba Band were scratched due to rain. Kaleta has lineage to the afrobeat progenitor Fela. Ive seen him a couple of times and it was truly enjoyable. Don’t know much of McCalla, but she’s billed as a Haitian guitarist, cellist, activist. We can only imagine how this show would have been because Mother Nature had other plans. It’s doubly sad to realize that climate change has affected our way of talking about the weather. Instead of “April showers bring May flowers”, we are left with “September deluge brings beer tent refuge”, which just seems wrong on so many levels.

Max Creek 9/5/24 Hartford Live

 “ Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead!” Who can forget Eric Idle’s Monty Python scene. That movie line easily applies to a Max Creek show. Starting as a Connecticut based Grateful Dead cover band some 50 years ago, local hippies have been Creekin since way back. The business model is simple: get a somewhat reliable vehicle, learn some Dead songs, and play every bake sale, block party, and backyard in the tri-state area……for 50 years! A friend who is my vintage stated that he has seen Max Creek over 100 times, I believe it. Being in the business that long allows one to hone their chops and MC has morphed into a regional jam juggernaut with some excellent originals that dot their tease-heavy set. I arrive 630ish to see the band already on their journey. They play till 930 without a set break, a 3 hour tour if you will, you heard right, a three hour tour. The cast and crew were all there, Skipper and Gilligan natch, Ginger and the Howells were dressed in their finest tie-dye finerie, the Professor and Maryanne, well you get the picture. The nerds at setlist.com must have been smoking a big fatty because their call seemed to have some gaps. Emotional Railroad, Feelin Alright, Angel of My Mind, Jones, Gone at Last, Brown Water,  Wild Side, Something is Forming, Yes We Can Can,, Drums,  Same Things, Blood Red Roses. I know I heard Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes and Magic Carpet Ride in addition to Grateful Dead licks but who’s counting. In order to remain a band for 50 years, there must be some core chemistry. The original 3 of Scott Murawski on guitar, Mark Mercier on keys, and John Rider on bass are joined by current percussion duo Bill Carbone and Jamemurrell Stanley who weren’t even born when the Creek was founded. I love Hartford Live, and thanks to the Infinity Hall folks for making it happen. They even have a sense of humor. On the lawn near our group a large “ no smoking section “ sandwich board was placed, it’s a Creek show for goodness sakes, the no smoking section was several blocks away.

Jake Blount 9/1/24 CT River and Roots Festival, Windsor

 Maiden voyage for this fest held on the Windsor town green. Nice mix of craft and food vendors with the local Dudleytown Brewery providing libations. Jake has been positively reviewed in this blog before. He is an ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist master of string band music, deftly providing an educational tour of historical music from the American south. Playing fiddle and banjo, he is joined onstage by Nashville cat acoustic picker Ethan Hawkins. The pair roll through a nice selection of reels and jigs on the small stage. Ethan takes lead on the 50s novelty Plastic Jesus and Jake gives a history lesson for the traditional John Henry ( popularized as Spike Driver Blues by Mississippi John Hurt). I will never forget a previous viewing where Jake explained that the advent of the Sears Catalog supercharged the spread of the banjo diaspora. The focus was folk and roots music from the black and indigenous community, so it was no surprise that Jake got political in his tone. At this point, some elderly right wing crank stood up and gave the thumbs down while hastily bagging his chair to leave. Jake reiterated the thrust of this festival and the music he was playing as if to tell the guy “ what did you expect?” I guess if he launched into the classic “Talking Hillary Pizzagate Blues” the guy might have stuck around. Maybe he was late for the Ted Nugent / Kid Rock double bill down the street. Inexplicably ( which I later learn to be explicable), Jake and Ethan take a set break and yield the stage to local indigenous skronker Mixashawn Rozie and local poet and storyteller Robert Peters. Poems focused on racial justice and climate action were backed by Rozie’s sax, wooden flute, and the unusual berimbau. I’ve seen a lot of music over the years, but this was the first time viewing When Doves Cry and Johnny B. Goode delivered on the berimbau. Jake and Ethan did reappear for their final lap. Folk music has always championed civil rights, climate justice, and gender equality and it is refreshing to see young artists rally to the cause. The weather mostly held for a nice afternoon on a town green that was new to me. As for the cause? The answers my friend were blowing in the wind.

Lee Fields and the Expressions 8/24/24 Levitt Pavilion Westport

 Many towns have summertime shows at woodshop gazebos with Samyo  sound systems and underemptied port-olets. With acts like the Ghosts of Memphis or Bowzer’s (from Sha-na-na) cousin, not Westport. This town has a cool shopping area, riverwalk, modern library, ample parking, that houses a beautiful outdoor amphitheater known as the Levitt. Beautiful green space, excellent sound and sight lines, and high ticket backers make for a pleasant, and many times free concert experience. Martha goddamn Stewart is a resident. So it is no surprise that modern soul  wailer Lee Fields and his crack Daptone band The Expressions got a chance to tear it up. Septuagenarian Fields is a legit force. He says that he injured his knee and had to cut out twirls and splits. Lee’s bio has him mentoring other members of the Daptone label, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley (both,sadly, no longer with us). The Brooklyn based label has made a name for themselves by coaxing musicians out of retirement, pairing them with seasoned hipster session musicians and getting them in front of audiences. Lee has had a renaissance with these guys. The band was trumpet, sax, drums, organ, electric bass, and guitar. Fields stature and movements had me thinking of James Brown, he even led the sax man around the stage with his microphone. The setlist included some gems: Never Be Another You, Wish You Were Here, Ladies, and closed with the chestnut Honey Dove. As an old black man soul singer, some of the subject matter and lyrics were cringeworthy in the Me-Too era. What was also startling, Lee Fields appeared to be the only black person in attendance. White organizers, white crowd, even the Expressions were Caucasian. Lee had the crowd involved by exhorting “are you happy?”, and”somebody scream!”. He even had the honkey hedge fund managers counting out the hours for his work around the clock song. I am thankful for the Levitt and the apparatus needed to wrangle these shows. Cultural appropriation? Modern day minstrelsy?  Straight up sexism? Or a down home soul stew? Maybe all of the above.

The Chameleons 8/9/24 Space Ballroom

 It’s been 40 years since the Manchester based post- punk legends released their opus Strange Times. The Geffen release was critically acclaimed but never received the popularity it deserved. A small clatch of pre-adult bandits masquerading as UConn students thought it would be a good idea to gobble some hallucinogens and drive through the woods to Providence, visit a rickety low ceilinged club to catch a glimpse of  The Chameleons lightning in a bottle. Fast (or maybe lurch) forward to 2024 and the magnetic front man vocalist bass player Mark Burgess along with original guitarist Reg came back to these shores for the reincarnation of Strange Times. With a younger crew of keys, drums, and second guitar the new Chameleons launched. The Ballroom was packed with grizzled punks and new appreciators, even some of those same bandits 40 years hence. The setlist was stellar: Mad Jack, Caution, Tears, Soul In Isolation ( snippets of The End, Be My Wife, Eleanor Rigby, and There Is a Light),  Swamp Thing, Time/ The End of Time, Seriocity, In Answer, Childhood, I’ll Remember, Ever After. The encores were jacked: Where Are You, In Shreds, Nostalgia,Second Skin ( snippet of Please, Please, Me), and Don’t Fall ( snippet of Cracked Actor). Burgess has not skipped a beat, older, paunchier, but the same level of magnetism. The crowd was rapt, I even spied my friends singing along with each tune. At one point, Mark spit a short rhyme “ time is not a thief in the night, time is an embezzler, time….is your enemy now.” Forty years is a long time, the LSD and Panama Red was replaced with Prevagen and Statins, the music on the other hand was decidedly the same. Lightning. One thing is for sure, “it is autumn before the winter”, and I experienced “ man’s last mad surge of youth”.

The New Pornographers w/ Gustav 8/8/24 Hartford Live

 Opening show for the 2024 HL series. Free shows put on behind the Old State House attempt to bring non-business people to town. Unfortunately a rainy day with the promise of nighttime drizzle kept the crowd to a minimum. First up was Brooklyn glammy punks Gustav. Female-centric band had four women and a B-52s-ish Fred Schneider on guitar and vocals. The ladies each had a Darth Vader button on their mics which moved the music toward creepy glam. When more than one hit this button, the music devolved into freak show territory. There is a reason that a Darth-Chucky-Jason-Freddy quartet was never a thing. Lead singer had a Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs singer) complex in how she prowled the stage.

The New Pornographers were a treat to catch for free. Under the radar outfit from Vancouver is a launch pad for other popular indie artists. Warbler Neko Case was a member, Dan Bejar from Destroyer was a member. Founder Todd Fancy has taken those elements and continues the tradition. The group has been around since 2000, scoring some familiar power pop gems. Two female singers, guitar vocals, bass, and drums held the damp crowd. The Neko Case replacement was excellent and played some keys. Kudos to the Infinity Hall crew to keep this series going.