Hot Tuna returned to town this past Saturday night for an acoustic show. This is the 5th time I've seen them and, as usual, I was delighted. All the more so because I was sitting in the 5th row, slightly off to stage left, so that I was staring straight ahead at Barry Mitterhoff, the multi-instrumentalist that Jorma and Jack having been playing with for the past 5 or 6 years. Boy is he good.
There was no opening act. The band hit the stage at about 8:10 and they left after their encore at about 11:10. In between, they played about two dozen songs, separated by a 30 minute intermission. So, the band was onstage for about 2.5 hours. It was clearly a bit chilly backstage, and maybe onstage too. Jack walked on rubbing his hands together and, in a clearly exaggerated way, rubbed the neck of his bass guitar with a cloth to warm it up. Jorma smiled at him as he did this. Jack has always been the showman of the band, hamming it up with winks and nods and occasional commentary.
I could hardly have been more satisfied by the performance. It opened with "Search My Heart," the same song they opened their Calvin show with last year. Here's the entire set, double-checked from Jorma's own website:
Set One:
1. "Search My Heart": This was recorded for their 1970 debut album, still my favorite album of theirs, and they opened their last Calvin show with this song as well. Sounded very good, slow and deliberate.
2. "There’s A Bright Side Somewhere": A Reverend Gary Davis song from Jorma's 2009 album, River of Time. Not one of my favorite of the Gary Davis songs the band does, but it sounded just fine.
3. "I’ll Let You Know Before I Leave": a nifty instrumental from Jorma's 1974 solo album, Quah. Featured some tasty playing from the two guitarists.
4. "More Than My Old Guitar": a Merle Haggard song that Jorma sang with Barry harmonizing. I like this one a lot.
5. "I See The Light": the highlight of the concert, just like it was at their Calvin show last year. The interplay between all three musicians is delicate one moment, sharp and aggressive the next, and the climax over the course of the last minute or so is incredible every time I hear it. A classic.
6. "Come Back Baby": a song that dates back to Jefferson Airplane days, although the version from this past weekend was slow and bluesy. Great solos from Jorma and Barry on this one.
7. "River Of Time": title track to the recent Jorma album. Very nice Jorma original.
8. "Breadline Blues": a song about the 1932 presidential election. Some great jamming here, and a false ending, prompting the audience to applaud, before the band starts up again with the final verse. Barry shone on this one.
9. "Hesitation Blues": there was some "hesitation" before playing the song, as Barry and Jorma appeared to disagree about what should come next. When Jorma announced this one, the audience exploded. This is also from the first Hot Tuna album, and it's one of the great ones. The instrumental section always smokes, and it sure did Saturday night.
10. "99 Year Blues": from 1972's Burgers. Jack's first bass solo of the night, and it was a dandy.
11. "I Know You Rider": from the first Tuna album. Better than the Grateful Dead's version. Or anyone else's.
I confess to having been pretty tired during the second set. Partly that had to do with not getting enough sleep the previous night. The intermission was about half an hour long. Too long, in my humble opinion. At any rate, I don't remember as many specifics as I probably should have noticed....
Set Two:
1. "Trouble In Mind": Hot Tuna recorded this for Live at Sweetwater (1993), and it's also on the new Jorma album. An excellent one.
2. "Things That Might Have Been": brand new Jorma song. I liked it.
3. "Cracks In The Finish": a Jorma original from River of Time. One of his better originals from recent albums.
4. "Full Go Round": a Roy Book Binder song from River of Time. A great one.
5. "How Long Blues": another from the first Hot Tuna album. There isn't a bad track on the first album, and I'm always excited to hear anything from it performed live.
6. "Serpent Of Dreams": another highlight of the concert. I love hearing the acoustic version of this song, and I'm thrilled that it's one of the songs from Hot Tuna's "Metal Years" (say, 1974-1978) that they continue to perform today. A touch of the psychedelic mixed in to the blues.
7. "The Terrible Operation"
8. "Sea Child": one of my favorite songs from Burgers. Beautiful picking from Jorma and Barry.
9. "Good Shepherd": longest jam of the night, although I didn't time it. All three musicians had ample time to solo.
10. "3rd Week In The Chelsea": originally recorded on Jefferson Airplane's Bark (1971).
11. "Just Because"
12. Encore: "Embryonic Journey"
By the time the band finished up with the old Jefferson Airplane instrumental, I was ready for bed. A very satisfying show, just like their Calvin show of last year was. And there's still the electric show coming up at the Beacon next weekend!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Ani Difranco @ The Calvin Theater, November 15th, 2009
About half a dozen songs into Ani Difranco's recent Calvin Theater show, I had as emotional an experience as I've had at an Ani show for many years. The singer-songwriter-bandleader had already knocked my socks off by opening with "Anticipate" and following it up with "Swan Dive." And she made me want to revisit To The Teeth (1999) by following that with "Providence." And then there was one of her new ones, "Promiscuity." But the truest, realest, awesomest moment came next. After thanking her friend Animal for the inspiration, and with Todd Sickafoose playing a keyboard part, she began singing "She Says."
My reaction had less to do with the greatness of the song and more with my own personal history. I cannot really identify with what goes on in the song. But from the opening line, I was transported back to my lonely college dorm in the fall of 1995. The previous summer, my friends and I had seen Ani play the Newport Folk Festival, and it seemed that everyone I knew had to buy a copy of Not a Pretty Girl after that. Me, I was pretty uptight about saving my pennies at the time. But, a couple of months into college life, I shelled out the big bucks to buy the only Ani album I could find at the local CD store: Like I Said (1993). I listened to it constantly for the rest of the academic year. Hearing the opening to that tune, "She said forget what you have to do / pretend there is nothing outside this room" actually made my chest clench up a bit and brought tears to my eyes. When I was a college freshman, I didn't think nearly enough about the world outside my room, outside my own head, and I was a scared little pup.
So, this isn't about Ani's greatness. It's about the fact that I came of age with her, as I've written in previous entries.
The greatness was on display elsewhere, namely in the the depth of her catalog (which is, by now, astonishing, prompting her to say, early on, that she's had to learn new old songs, "to the keep the old new, as it were") and in her freakishly intense guitar playing and singing. But let's dwell for a moment on her back catalog, shall we? That's where "Swan Dive" and "Providence" and "She Said" came from, and it's also where "Garden of Simple" came from. Other old ones were "old" old ones: "Fuel" and, for the first encore, "Both Hands." She whipped the crowd into a frenzy toward the end with "Alla This" from Red Letter Year (2008), and she also did "Present/Infant," one of the best from that album. She played new songs, like "Promiscuity," "Albacore," a cute ode to anarchism, played on the ukulele, and, for the second encore, "If You're Not." She closed the regular set with her take on the old union song, "Which Side Are Your On." I winced a bit when she talked about, when she changed some of the words, she did so in the folk music tradition of "fucking with the past." That's not exactly what they do, Ani, although I know what you mean. Made me think about Patti Smith's declaration: "I don't fuck much with the past / but I fuck plenty with the future" or something like that.
Ani was charming, as usual. After the opening song, she said something that I've often thought: "Northhampton, Massachusetts--well, well, well!" with emphasis on the last "well." After "Albacore," she stared incredulously out into the crowd and repeated what a fan had just screamed: "You just got your swine flu vaccination?! Good for you! You clearly understood the subtext of that last song." And, after taking up the ukulele for a new song, said something like, "Well, "Dilate" would sound kinda funny on the uke, so...." She laughed, she stuttered, she semi-sermonized, she joked. That is, she was herself.
Oh, and she led a reformed band. Todd Sickafoose remains on bass, but Mike Dillon is gone, and the new drummer is a guy named Andy something-or-other. He's good. At first, I thought he was a real rock drummer, kinda like Allison Miller, but as the show wore on, I realized that he bears a stronger resemblance to Andy Stochansky, a drummer who *can* rock out, but is every bit as interested in swinging and adding quiet, subtle touches to the songs that require it. I had grown to really like the Dillon-Miller-Sickafoose band, but I sense that I'll grow to like this one even faster. His playing on the opener, "Anticipate," was especially great, starting off by slapping a wooden box positioned in front of the drum kit for a couple of verses before moving to the kit to hammer out the rest of the song. He made "Alla This" sound like the raging storm that it is. Verdict: this guy is good.
Kudos to Gabby Moreno for opening the concert with 30 minutes worth of music. She has a big strong voice, and the high point was a medley of Spanish-language songs. She is from Guatemala and speaks English with a slight but very charming accent. Her embarrassed stage patter was comparably charming, not cloying in the way that a lot of Difranco openers have been over the years. Thank goodness.
My reaction had less to do with the greatness of the song and more with my own personal history. I cannot really identify with what goes on in the song. But from the opening line, I was transported back to my lonely college dorm in the fall of 1995. The previous summer, my friends and I had seen Ani play the Newport Folk Festival, and it seemed that everyone I knew had to buy a copy of Not a Pretty Girl after that. Me, I was pretty uptight about saving my pennies at the time. But, a couple of months into college life, I shelled out the big bucks to buy the only Ani album I could find at the local CD store: Like I Said (1993). I listened to it constantly for the rest of the academic year. Hearing the opening to that tune, "She said forget what you have to do / pretend there is nothing outside this room" actually made my chest clench up a bit and brought tears to my eyes. When I was a college freshman, I didn't think nearly enough about the world outside my room, outside my own head, and I was a scared little pup.
So, this isn't about Ani's greatness. It's about the fact that I came of age with her, as I've written in previous entries.
The greatness was on display elsewhere, namely in the the depth of her catalog (which is, by now, astonishing, prompting her to say, early on, that she's had to learn new old songs, "to the keep the old new, as it were") and in her freakishly intense guitar playing and singing. But let's dwell for a moment on her back catalog, shall we? That's where "Swan Dive" and "Providence" and "She Said" came from, and it's also where "Garden of Simple" came from. Other old ones were "old" old ones: "Fuel" and, for the first encore, "Both Hands." She whipped the crowd into a frenzy toward the end with "Alla This" from Red Letter Year (2008), and she also did "Present/Infant," one of the best from that album. She played new songs, like "Promiscuity," "Albacore," a cute ode to anarchism, played on the ukulele, and, for the second encore, "If You're Not." She closed the regular set with her take on the old union song, "Which Side Are Your On." I winced a bit when she talked about, when she changed some of the words, she did so in the folk music tradition of "fucking with the past." That's not exactly what they do, Ani, although I know what you mean. Made me think about Patti Smith's declaration: "I don't fuck much with the past / but I fuck plenty with the future" or something like that.
Ani was charming, as usual. After the opening song, she said something that I've often thought: "Northhampton, Massachusetts--well, well, well!" with emphasis on the last "well." After "Albacore," she stared incredulously out into the crowd and repeated what a fan had just screamed: "You just got your swine flu vaccination?! Good for you! You clearly understood the subtext of that last song." And, after taking up the ukulele for a new song, said something like, "Well, "Dilate" would sound kinda funny on the uke, so...." She laughed, she stuttered, she semi-sermonized, she joked. That is, she was herself.
Oh, and she led a reformed band. Todd Sickafoose remains on bass, but Mike Dillon is gone, and the new drummer is a guy named Andy something-or-other. He's good. At first, I thought he was a real rock drummer, kinda like Allison Miller, but as the show wore on, I realized that he bears a stronger resemblance to Andy Stochansky, a drummer who *can* rock out, but is every bit as interested in swinging and adding quiet, subtle touches to the songs that require it. I had grown to really like the Dillon-Miller-Sickafoose band, but I sense that I'll grow to like this one even faster. His playing on the opener, "Anticipate," was especially great, starting off by slapping a wooden box positioned in front of the drum kit for a couple of verses before moving to the kit to hammer out the rest of the song. He made "Alla This" sound like the raging storm that it is. Verdict: this guy is good.
Kudos to Gabby Moreno for opening the concert with 30 minutes worth of music. She has a big strong voice, and the high point was a medley of Spanish-language songs. She is from Guatemala and speaks English with a slight but very charming accent. Her embarrassed stage patter was comparably charming, not cloying in the way that a lot of Difranco openers have been over the years. Thank goodness.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Chris Smither @ The Iron Horse, November 7th, 2009
As promised, I attended the Chris Smither show this past weekend. He was performing with the band that he recorded his latest album with: the guitarist "Goody" Goodrich and the drummer, Zak Trojano. I'm still not 100% sold on his non-solo performances. Something about the foot-tapping gets lost with a drummer accenting the beat. Nevertheless, I could hardly have been disappointed, and I wasn't.
I arrived at the Iron Horse at around 6:20, accompanied by the beautiful and talented Dani Carriveau, and we had a dinner of burgers and fries. The Iron Horse does fries pretty well, but I'll pass on the burgers from now on.
The opening act was a woman named Caroline Herring, who records for Signature Sounds. She performed a series of covers, including "Long Black Veil," "C C Rider," and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors," along with an original song that, Dani and I agreed at the time, was the best thing she played. An enjoyable performance, if nothing special.
After a 20 minute break, the man himself came onstage. For the first time in all the Iron Horse shows I've seen, there was someone on stage to do the introduction: Jim Olsen, from Signature Sounds. He announced that this was now a hometown gig for Chris; he's moved to the Valley. What great news!
The show began the same way that his shows have been beginning for years now: "Open Up," from Leave the Light On. It's a song that hits the spot, every time I hear it. From there, he moved back in time a bit for "Link of Chain" and then to a more recent one, "Lola," which is a favorite. And from there, he took us through more than half of his new album, along with older tunes like "Drive You Home Again" and "Help Me Now" and stuff from his most recent couple of albums, including "Train Home," "Never Needed It More," "Origin of Species," and, to close his set, "Leave the Light On." He didn't do any of the Bob Dylan material that he's been fond of lately, but he did do Dave Carter's "Crocodile Man." I hope that, one day, he'll tap his back catalog of songs from the early 1970s. Every once in a while, he'll play the song that kept food on his table for years, "Love You Like a Man," but I crave "Homunculus," "Don't It Drag On," and "Every Mother's Son." Maybe next time.
The audience was consistently appreciative. Certain lines in songs yielded applause: "I'm not evil / I'm just bad," "If I drive you to distraction / I will drive you home again," and about half the verses of "Origin of Species" and of "Surprise, Surprise" from the new album, a song that looks like it'll be an audience favorite before long. Goody Goodrich's guitar accompaniment was simple and tasteful, and the audience let him know it. And Smither was a gracious host, telling variations on stories I'd heard him tell before--about how his mother disliked "Lola," about his wanting to write songs for and about his father, about his adopted daughter--and some new stories--about his wife wanting him to write a "bad boy" song for her, about the inspiration for a song from the new album ("Call Yourself" was a reaction to watching Sunday morning religiously themed self-help programs), and about the dilemmas of writing and performing topical material, like "Surprise, Surprise." Smither's speaking voice is warm and comforting, and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being able to match a warm, deep baritone with lyrics that are cold-eyed and shot through with experience. I've always loved hearing him perform "Drive You Home Again," a song that is, in a sense, about warmth without actually being warm. The same goes for one of his greatest covers, which he did not perform the other night: Rolly Salley's "Killing the Blues." Listen to a recording of either of them, and tell me if you know what I mean.
Much to my surprise, one of the high points was the encore. He did a song which I haven't heard him perform live in years, "Statesboro Blues," and he really used his voice on that one, roaring the words like he'd been made to do so. Beyond that, some of the new material sounded great, especially "Surprise, Surprise" and "Don't Call Me Stranger" and "I Don't Know." There really weren't any dull moments for me. Every time I see this guy, I am amazed anew, and I've seen him perform live maybe 10 times or so. He is one of the grandmasters, and I'm sure I'll return for more.
I arrived at the Iron Horse at around 6:20, accompanied by the beautiful and talented Dani Carriveau, and we had a dinner of burgers and fries. The Iron Horse does fries pretty well, but I'll pass on the burgers from now on.
The opening act was a woman named Caroline Herring, who records for Signature Sounds. She performed a series of covers, including "Long Black Veil," "C C Rider," and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors," along with an original song that, Dani and I agreed at the time, was the best thing she played. An enjoyable performance, if nothing special.
After a 20 minute break, the man himself came onstage. For the first time in all the Iron Horse shows I've seen, there was someone on stage to do the introduction: Jim Olsen, from Signature Sounds. He announced that this was now a hometown gig for Chris; he's moved to the Valley. What great news!
The show began the same way that his shows have been beginning for years now: "Open Up," from Leave the Light On. It's a song that hits the spot, every time I hear it. From there, he moved back in time a bit for "Link of Chain" and then to a more recent one, "Lola," which is a favorite. And from there, he took us through more than half of his new album, along with older tunes like "Drive You Home Again" and "Help Me Now" and stuff from his most recent couple of albums, including "Train Home," "Never Needed It More," "Origin of Species," and, to close his set, "Leave the Light On." He didn't do any of the Bob Dylan material that he's been fond of lately, but he did do Dave Carter's "Crocodile Man." I hope that, one day, he'll tap his back catalog of songs from the early 1970s. Every once in a while, he'll play the song that kept food on his table for years, "Love You Like a Man," but I crave "Homunculus," "Don't It Drag On," and "Every Mother's Son." Maybe next time.
The audience was consistently appreciative. Certain lines in songs yielded applause: "I'm not evil / I'm just bad," "If I drive you to distraction / I will drive you home again," and about half the verses of "Origin of Species" and of "Surprise, Surprise" from the new album, a song that looks like it'll be an audience favorite before long. Goody Goodrich's guitar accompaniment was simple and tasteful, and the audience let him know it. And Smither was a gracious host, telling variations on stories I'd heard him tell before--about how his mother disliked "Lola," about his wanting to write songs for and about his father, about his adopted daughter--and some new stories--about his wife wanting him to write a "bad boy" song for her, about the inspiration for a song from the new album ("Call Yourself" was a reaction to watching Sunday morning religiously themed self-help programs), and about the dilemmas of writing and performing topical material, like "Surprise, Surprise." Smither's speaking voice is warm and comforting, and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being able to match a warm, deep baritone with lyrics that are cold-eyed and shot through with experience. I've always loved hearing him perform "Drive You Home Again," a song that is, in a sense, about warmth without actually being warm. The same goes for one of his greatest covers, which he did not perform the other night: Rolly Salley's "Killing the Blues." Listen to a recording of either of them, and tell me if you know what I mean.
Much to my surprise, one of the high points was the encore. He did a song which I haven't heard him perform live in years, "Statesboro Blues," and he really used his voice on that one, roaring the words like he'd been made to do so. Beyond that, some of the new material sounded great, especially "Surprise, Surprise" and "Don't Call Me Stranger" and "I Don't Know." There really weren't any dull moments for me. Every time I see this guy, I am amazed anew, and I've seen him perform live maybe 10 times or so. He is one of the grandmasters, and I'm sure I'll return for more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)