Ani, in all her forms

I had been planning on writing on so many other things for so long--the Jack Hardy cannon, Robert Christgau's cool music reviews--but something else has come up. Thanks to a friendly trader I met on www.onherown.net, I now find myself with several (more) hours worth of live Ani recordings, over four shows: one from '94, one from '97, and two from '08. This particular trader has a fine selection of boots, and I had to choose from among a pretty wide selection. I won't bore readers with extensive reviews of each one...but some commentary is definitely in order.

Let's start with the performance from July 7th, 1997. This is from her European tour, her last series of shows before an August jaunt, opening for Bob Dylan. The legendary Andy Stochansky on drums, Jason Mercer on bass--a Canadian rhythm section. After she introduced them, she proceeded to inform her audience: "If you have any rhythmic or melodic complaints, you can address them directly." No complaints here: after listening to this show, I regret my recent comments about Ani's current band being my favorite. With all due respect to Allison Miller, Andy Stochansky has so many tricks up his sleeve, he makes Houdini look like Bozo. What he does with "Fire Door" and "Worthy" and, in particular, "Buildings and Bridges," make both songs sound better than they have ever sounded. Meanwhile, Jason Mercer is every bit the Sarah Lee. But Sarah looked so cool on stage. I was fortunate enough to see both of them play bass for Ani back in the day. I can hear their comparable musicalities on recordings, but I have a very fond recollection of seeing Sarah Lee grooving to the music on stage, looking oh so cool. As I write these words, I realize that my enjoyment of this recording has something to do with nostalgia. I remember seeing this band at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore and being blown away by everything. I remember hearing her sing the then-new, unrecorded song "Glass House" at Newport in 1996, and being mesmerized. I remember being with old friends at the Providence Performing Art Center not long after that, when she opened with "God's Country," which I'd never heard before that night. Strange in a way that Ani Difranco would be someone that I would associate emotional growth and the transition into maturity with, but I do. Anyway, she and her band were on fire on July 7th of 1997. "Glass House" sounds great, but the peak moment, I think, is "Letter to a John" leading into her old poem, "The Slant." And before she gets to the poem, she offers her lapdancing services for "10 deutchmarks a song."

If Andy S. sounded subtle and sensitive in 1997, he sounded raging and hard in 1994. The show from February of that year, from the now-defunct Wetlands in New York City, was a drums-and-Ani show, and it features some really hard-rocking stuff
from Andy...on basically every song. She covers her early catalog in lots of detail, including stuff I've basically forgotten about, like "4th of July" or "Falling is Like This," which reminds me that I should give Out of Range (1994) another spin one of these days. "Pick Yer Nose" is introduced as "a little dance tune." "In or Out" is so intense, it's almost unhinged. She precedes "My IQ" by asking her audience if she'd mentioned how happy she was to be there, and Andy's percussion is on overdrive on "Anticipate." And, after "Not so Soft," but before the encore ("Out of Range"), she ends the performance with an a capella cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long." Now, I can totally understand her affinity for Cockburn...but why that song, I wonder?

The material from 2008 is outstanding. The band captured on these recordings is the one that she continues to tour with today. It's been her touring unit since around 2006. Alison Miller isn't as subtle a drummer as Andy Stochansky, she's more of a power drummer. Todd Sickafoose has been playing bass for Ani since 2002 or thereabouts and is excellent, maybe her best bass player ever. And Mike Dillon handles vibes and a bunch of other percussion devices.

The recordings of her April 6th and July 13th shows from 2008 show off a slightly jazzy band, looking back at what has become a huge catalog of good and great songs. The April show has a tad too much audience noise for my taste, but the performance shines through anyway. What I love is the way that the old material shines through with Mike Dillon's contributions. When they play recent material, like "78%H20" and "Nicotine," he is spot on. For the April show, they opened with "Shy," and "Not a Pretty Girl" came a few songs in, and "As Is" a few songs after that...and Dillon is there with some subtle flourishes that elevate the material (and that goes double for "As Is"). This is something that her horn band didn't do (exhibit A: my recording of her April 14th, 2000 show at UC Davis, when the horns really muck up "Shameless," among other songs). On July 13th, a lot of oldies were performed, including "You Had Time," heartbreaking, and "Anticipate," harsh, but I was especially to hear "If He Tries Anything," performed solo. And "Untouchable Face" with a lot of vocal tricks and some typically subtle and effective touches from Mike Dillon's vibes. Final note on the April 6th show: they did "Evolve" to finish up. On record, it's just fine, or maybe slightly better than that. With the full band backing her, and a screaming audience, it becomes a fireball, a call to arms, a hard rocking rant. My recollection of her performance of that one at the Pines from last summer is a treasured memory.

Ani is one of very few touring musicians on the scene right now who I always go out of my way to catch, and these live recordings verify that I'm not making a mistake. Good thing too, because I have tickets to see her twice in November.

Signature Sounds 15th Anniversary Celebration @ The Green River Festival, Greenfield, MA, July 17th, 2009

A lovely evening of music last night in Greenfield, MA....The original plan had been to attend the Carsie Blanton CD release party @ Club Passim this evening and skip out on the Signature Sounds 15th anniversary festivities in Greenfield last night. In the end, the opposite happened. After discovered that Matt would be there (and would most likely not make it to Falcon Ridge), I got in the ole' rental car and moved on up to Greenfield. I thought at the time that I would make it to Cambridge tonight but, after an afternoon of sitting in front of a computer without getting a lick of work done on my book, I've decided to stay in tonight. I'm writing this blog entry, and then I'll be a busy beaver all night long.

So, then. Signature Sounds has been the home for a lot of my favorites over the years. I was happy to see a former SigSounder, Erin McKeown, hit the stage for a song or two last night. Knowing then that even former SigSounders were welcome, I held out hope for a Brooks Williams sighting. No such luck. One wonders why anyone would leave as cool a label as Signature, but I digress.

The festival began with the house band jamming on a few tunes. I was happy to see David Goodrich and Jim Henry playing guitars, and Mark Erelli joined them too. Paul Kochanski, who plays with the Nields from time to time I think, was on the drums. Didn't catch the bassist's name, but I learn from Matt's review of the show that the dude's name is Jason Beek (I promise, by the way, that everything that follows is being written without consulting Matt's blog; just wanted to get that detail right). They were solid. The opener was a jam on an instrumental Peter Mulvey song. Then they moved on to something called 28th of July, with Tracy Grammer, looking lovely and upbeat, joining in on fiddle. After yet another instrumental, a special guest arrived.

Erin McKeown is special indeed, special enough to get her own paragraph. Her first album for Signature was Distillation (2000), and it's one of the best pieces of singer-songwriter product of the past 10 years. I think I discussed it a bit in my review of her Iron Horse show from last year. At any rate, she played "Blackbirds" from that album, with the drummer producing a slightly off-kilter rhythm to the song that fit the tune just right. She showed up again later to sing some harmonies.

What followed was a series of short sets, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 minutes for the first five or six acts, followed by longer sets for the final four performers. There was a second stage too, but I never made it there. Hence I missed Rani Arbo with Daisy Mayhem, the Winterpills, and a few others.

Up first was Tracy Grammer with Jim Henry. It occurs to me that Jim has now been playing with Tracy longer than Tracy played with Dave Carter, a sad thought in a way. But the music was lovely. She opened with "Crocodile Man." The performance was good, but there were sound problems that would persist for the first few performances. Buzzing in the monitors, and an overall sound that was too bass heavy. Anyway, the first song sounded good, although it signaled to me that Chris Smither probably wouldn't be playing that song in his set later that night. After that came Carter's greatest song, "Gentle Arms of Eden," and a cover of Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," very good. Tracy mentioned, with a laugh, that that was the song that brought last year's Falcon Ridge Folk Festival to a rather disastrous conclusion (see here). They finished with Tracy's own, "Verdant Mile," a line from which became the title of Matt Winters' blog.

Next up was Mark Erelli. I don't know this guy's songs, but I've seen him live a few times before, and I always enjoy him. He has a Steve Forbert-ish singing voice, and he's comfortable with a band, and last night's band in particular. The highlight was Tracy Grammer's assistance on Erelli's version of Dave Carter's "Cowboy Singer." Back in 2002, this is the song that Mark Erelli did at the Falcon Ridge tribute to Dave Carter, about 9 days after Dave's death. His version of it sparkles.

Third: Caroline Herring, who I'd never heard before. She opened with "Long Black Veil." When I mentioned to Matt that this was the first song I ever learned how to finger pick on the guitar, Matt told me that I probably played it better than Caroline Herring. Ouch. Next up came Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors," an interesting pick. But then the singer redeemed herself with two originals, one called "Wise Woman," with reference to a number of folks that Herring met while traveling in southwestern Mississippi, and another, whose title I forget, about a southern artist. Both were good songs, performed smoothly.

Jeffrey Foucault performed next. The main thing I recall about the performance was the rockingness of the band, featuring some distorted rockish guitar solos from Goody Goodrich. I have yet to be really impressed by Foucault. He's far from bad, but he doesn't blow me away. He didn't play anything from the one CD of his I own, Stripping Cane.

I saw Peter Mulvey for the first time in Newport about 10 years ago, a performance that I don't remember in the slightest (although I have the photo of him that I took back then). He also enjoyed rocking out a bit with the band, and two of his songs from last night were memorable: "Some People," which sounded like a second-rate version of Chris Smither's "Hey, Hey, Hey" (and that's no dis), and "Sad, sad, sad, and so far away from home" (or something like that), for which Jeffrey and Erin (and Kris? can't remember) came back out to sing, and Mark Erelli came back out to play some electric slide guitar. They sounded fabulous together, even if the sound system really pounded the music out a bit too loud.

By the way, speaking of Foucault and Mulvey and Smither, have you seen this?

Anyhow, up next came Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault's wife. I think I saw her for the first time at the new artists' showcase at Falcon Ridge. I also saw her at the Postcrypt, with Joanna and Marisa, back in 2001 or thereabouts. She's really cute, and she can write. The memorable moment from her set was a song called "1000 Reasons" that featured the Winterpills, another Signature Sounds band that I once saw open for Erin McKeown, backing her. I was hoping for "North Dakota" but no such luck. Her husband came onstage to sing harmonies for a song or two, but I can't remember the particular songs.

After a short break, the festival performers went from the very good to the great. Richard Shindell played alone onstage, sitting front and center with his guitar. He opened with "Clara," a song from his most recent album that I had not heard before. On the basis of that song, and one other from his new album, something about a balloon man, I think the album is probably great. Richard Shindell is an excellent songwriter, a strong guitar player, and an expressive singer. He played a brand new song, "Abby" (or "Abbie"?), about a dog, a song which he reports having written while in Florence (Italy, not Massachusetts). "There Goes Mavis" was from Vuelta. James Kellaghan's "Cold Missouri Waters" and Shindell's own "Transit" were the highlights. Both of them were spellbinding. After "Transit," all I could think about was Falcon Ridge in 2001, where I heard Shindell play that song on a workshop stage. I remember that it was a songwriting workshop and, after Shindell played, it was Dave Carter's turn to play. But before he did, he glanced at Richard Shindell and said, into the microphone, that that was one of the greatest songs he'd ever heard. I know what he meant.

Finally came the performance I'd been waiting for, the one that I suspected (correctly as it turned out) would be the highlight. Chris Smither performed solo, which is what I like best. The last two times I'd seen him, he had a couple of backing musicians (including David Goodrich on guitar). But he doesn't need them, not with his foot-tapping and his incredible guitar playing. He opened the show with the song he's played to open each of the past four or five shows of his I've seen: "Open Up." The opening lines are, "I don't think for pleasure / it's just hard not to do / my thinking is a measure of / how much I need a clue" and that alone, along with Mississippi John Hurt-ish guitar playing and a rich, full, deep, weathered voice, got me hook, line, and sinker. Not much he could do to screw up after that. I mean, I think of that song as one of his more ordinary songs, but it beats the pants off of 90% of the other performers I see at folk festivals. With his second song, "Link of Chain," it's more like 98%: "can't you see / i can't explain / i'm a little like a link of chain / just a ring around another / running in and out again." The rest of the set was devoted to new songs, which I imagine will appear on his new album, due out in September. There was a song about his new adopted daughter called, I think, "I Don't Know" that wound up not being about his daughter at all. There was a topical song called "Surprise, Surprise." And there were two others, both in the mold of "Mail Order Mystics" or "Drive You Home Again," that sort of thing. And if you don't know either of those songs, you're missing out....Once again, Chris Smither shows what 40+ years of writing, singing, and performing experience will do for you. The highlight of the evening.

That's not to say Crooked Still didn't knock my socks off too. They did, particularly by opening with a cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" before doing one of my favorites of their originals, "Lula Gall" (or "Hop High," as I know it). Really, this is a great band. Their performance was hot, and it featured some dynamic interplay between bass, cello, and fiddle, with the banjo occasionally asserting itself in some wild solos. They finished up with their version of "Shady Grove" and invited us to sing along, which we did.

We left before the final performance, by someone named Eilen Jewell, who I've never heard (of) before.

So that was that. Looking forward to Falcon Ridge, coming up this Thursday.

Odds and ends

It's been a month or so since I last posted, so here are some Sunday evening reflections (music-related, of course)....

I've been listening to Tracy Grammer's Book of Sparrows a lot lately. It connected with me for the first time in a powerful way this past March, while Denise and I were in the car, on the way to New Jersey. The scaled-down arrangement of Dave Carter's "Gypsy Rose" is the highlight, a definite improvement on the version she recorded for Flower of Avalon. The unreleased Dave Carter song "Lord of the Buffalo" is a gem. And, on our drive from the outer banks of North Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia, I found myself tearing up at Tracy's version of Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of a Heart." The CD is 7 songs long, about 30 minutes of music; those three songs, plus Tom Russell's "Blue Wing" and Simon and Garfunkle's "April, Come She Will" are all great. There's also a song called "Travis John," which is (a bit obliquely) about a boy killed in war on foreign soil. I think Tracy Grammer has become a better and better singer over time, or maybe it's just me. I've never disliked her, but I've never liked her as much as I do now. She'll be playing Falcon Ridge this year, and I can hardly wait.

What else? Some of the greats have new material out. The new Neil Young album is very good. It's full of loud, toneless crunch, and there are at least three really good songs, two of which bookend the CD. I'm not sure it's quite at the level of Living with War, although Christgau disagrees with me. I like it better than the new Dylan album, which has some great hooks here and there (like on "Jolene") but doesn't connect with me as well as Modern Times or "Love and Theft" or Time Out of Mind.

I recently bought a used copy of John Hiatt's Crossing Muddy Waters, parts of which I heard for the first time on WFUV in New York. The opening three songs are all excellent, and so is "Gone," about halfway through the record. Still trying to listen to the other songs to see what's there. Also bought a used Flatlanders CD, but I haven't listened to it yet.

I've been thinking a lot about Jack Hardy lately. I'll be sure to write more about his stuff in the weeks to come. Excited to see that Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright will be playing some shows together on the east coast this fall. I've already got tickets for their show at the Calvin Theater in Northampton.

What your favorite Grateful Dead song says about you

Also on the topic of the Grateful Dead:

http://www.slate.com/id/2217149/

Ani Difranco @ The Colonial Theater, Pittsfield, MA, April 21st, 2009

For most of the beautiful drive to Pittsfield, up in the Berkshires, I listened to a Grateful Dead channel on the satellite radio that came with my rental car. One of the things that I learned about the Dead when I was in high school was that, from night to night, their sets changed. They would play different songs from night to night, and they would play the same songs in different ways. I can remember rifling through the pages of Relix magazine, looking for anything Jefferson Airplane or Neil Young related and, instead, looking through Grateful Dead setlists, marveling at how many different songs the same six people knew how to play together. And they seemed to be touring constantly! Over the years, I learned about various band personnel changes and, now that the Dead are touring again, I have been reading stories in the New York Times about the degree of Deadhead sophistication when it comes to understanding what different periods in the history of the band reveal about changes in the band’s music.

A quick perusal of www.onherown.net reveals many of the same things about Ani Difranco. Her sets don’t vary quite as much as the Dead’s—whose do?—but she and her band mix things up quite a bit. And her sound, like the Dead’s, has somehow managed to simultaneously change while still being unmistakably Ani. Since she and her bands haven’t jammed with the same degree of improvisatory abstraction as the Grateful Dead—the Dead were never, ever as tight as an Ani band at its loosest—there isn’t as much variation between performances as you’d hear in Dead recordings. Ani Difranco, after all, cares too much about songs to mess with them too much; for the Dead, the songs were simply an excuse to jam. But for the faithful, the small details with which Ani and her bandmates infuse performances of familiar material are little treasures, adding new shades of meaning or, for me, eliciting joyous smiles at the band’s musicality. Oh, and one more thing…both the Dead and Ani’s various bands are anchored by a singer-guitarist of enormous power and charisma. The late Jerry Garcia, I am told, interacted less and less with audiences as the years went by. Ani Difranco, on the other hand, is conversational and informal.

I was thinking about the Dead and Difranco together for the entire ride to Pittsfield, and then the performance verified everything I had been thinking. After greeting us, Mr. Difranco played the opening lick to “Shy,” and the four-piece band made the song sound both different from the versions on Not a Pretty Girl (1995) and Living in Clip (1997) and the various other live recordings I own, and somehow the same. It occurred to me in the middle of the second song, “78%H2O,” that this is my favorite band in Ani’s history. Perhaps that has more to do with me than with her, but Allison Miller and Mike Dillon and Todd Sickafoose make her music jump and groove and careen forward with a very cool mixture of tightness and lively energy that makes every single song raise the levels on my internal emotional thermometer. Even when I found myself listening more to the music than to the words, I found immense satisfaction in everything. And there was, of course, the charismatic stage presence. Ani talked about all the new songs she’d be playing for us. After we cheered, she told us that “this isn’t one of them,” before ripping into “Manhole,” to our collective delight. It was most satisfying night of live music I’ve experienced in months.

Last night, Ani’s set was focused on newer material. There were four or five songs that have yet to be recorded, including “Promiscuity,” which she told us that she’d written after compiling the material for the Cannon (2007) anthology, which revealed to her, she said, how much she’d lied to herself over the years. There was also a wedding song, performed on solo guitar, and a song about appreciating one’s own life, set to a very danceable Latin rhythm. There was “Here for Now,” a great song from Evolve (2003) that I’d forgotten about, until I felt it shake my hand hello from the stage. She talked about Katrina and New Orleans before and after “Red Letter Year,” atomic energy before and after “The Atom,” and Barack Obama before and after the unrecorded “November 4th, 2008.” There was also “Good Luck” and “Smiling Underneath” from Red Letter Year (2008), both songs sounding better in front of an audience than they do on record.

While picking out a particular high point from the show is tough, there was a definitely a pivotal moment in the second half of the set. Ani announced that she had been invited to attend Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, before performing the song that she had been asked to perform at the party: “Which Side Are You On?” She updated the lyrics a bit, and the band piped in to harmonize. She also invited us to sing along, reminding us that, after all, this was folk music. And from there, she dedicated an intense version of “Alla This” to Utah Philips. And finally, after telling us that we’d warmed up our singing voices, she pulled out one of the warmest of Difranco oldies (what she would call “a crusty old one”), “Both Hands,” to end the set.

We screamed for more, of course, and we got more: the percussion-heavy arrangement of “Every State Line,” plus the biggest sing-along moment of the show, “Gravel,” and, finally, a gentle “Hypnotized” to send us home.

I listened to more of the Grateful Dead on the way home. Heard a version of “Sugar Magnolia” that rocked. It went on for about 15 or 20 minutes. Hmm. Anybody ready for a half hour jam on “Shamless”…? Thought not.

Odds and Ends

I've got another Ani Difranco show coming up in a couple of days at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. That's about an hour's drive away. I'm pretty excited about it. I've yet to be disappointed by one of Mr. Difranco's performances: over the years, they've ranged from pretty good to fantastic.

I recently discovered--by accident, while surfing the net looking for something else--that Neil Young's newest album came out. Of course, I shelled out the bucks for it. This is probably the one and only popular recording artist whose product I'll pay for, sight unseen and sound unheard. That said, I'll probably pass on the Neil Young Archives. Much as I love the guy's music, this seems like overexpensive overkill to me. Anyway, the new one is called Fork in the Road. It's a rocker, but without Crazy Horse...more like Living with War than Greendale or Broken Arrow. It was recorded with the rhythm section of Rick Rosas and Chad Cromwell. They are more of a straight-up rock band than Crazy Horse, but the crude, offhand crunch of the guitars sounds a lot like Neil and the Horse. Pay attention to the rhythm to hear the difference. I've only listened to it a couple of times but, so far, I like it. I'll post something more substantial about it sometime soon.

The Two Man Gentleman Band @ The Iron Horse, March 13th, 2009

The original plan was to stay late at the Iron Horse this evening for their free concert: The Two Man Gentleman Band (2MGB hereafter, www.thetwogentlemen.com) and The Primate Fiasco (www.primatefiasco.com). But about 24 hours ago, I decided to drive down to NYC on Saturday, which nearly moved me to abandon the whole night. Then I decided to go after all, and the schedule cooperated: I really only wanted to see 2MGB anyway, and they wound up opening. It turns out that The Primate Fiasco is a local group, and they like to bring outsiders into town for gigs like this one. And if I weren't going to drive to the city, I would have stuck around to hear their whole set--they are a kind of psychedelic, dixieland jazz ensemble (that actually sounds pretty appealing), with drums, clarinet, banjo, guitar, and tuba. I listened to their first song, a jam on "Sweet Georgia Brown," and split.

But, before then, the 2MGB worked their magic. At around 10:15, they hit the stage with a sign reading "Free Kazoos." True to their word, their lead singer, Andy Bean placed a box full of the things at the foot of the stage and, before you knew it, the entire place was armed and ready. By the way, I have never seen the Iron Horse so packed as it was this evening. Amazing the number of people who will attend a free show! I'm surprised it wasn't a fire hazard. I mean really: the staff had pushed or taken away all the tables to clear the floor for dancing and the crowd, mostly college-aged, filled the space and was seen still jiggling around by the time I left the establishment.

So, on to business. I know of the 2MGB by way of Matt Winters, who put a song of theirs, "The War of Northern Aggression" on one of his New Years CDs (see here for a video of a performance of that one). They are--yes, you guessed it--a duo of male musicians. Their shtick is that of the conservative, depression-era gentlemen. They are anti-prohibition, they praise the fat man, William Howard Taft, and they compare a breakup to the War of Northern Aggression. Beyond that, they get pretty silly, as the Iron Horse audience quickly learned. The opening number was a saucy little thing called "When Your Lips Are Playing My Kazoo." Songs like "Prime Numbers" and "Fancy Beer" yielded some raucous singalongs, and lead man Andy Bean encouraged us to play our kazoos. Which we didn't do very often. People were much more interested in dancing, although lots of the dancers--the women in particular--picked up on the gleefully filthy lyrics and found themselves laughing pretty hard as they shook and shimmied.

What else? There was "The Rabbit Foot Stomp" from their newest album, Drip Dryin’ with The Two Man Gentlemen Band (2009), about making meat out of your pet rabbit. "Drip Dryin'," about the newest dancing sensation, which Andy Bean demonstrated for us in the middle of the song. There was "Sloppy Drunk," very danceable, and "I've Been Drinking," which featured the other Gentleman, "The Councilman" Fuller Condon. In between songs, the rapport between the two consisted of quietly homoerotic gestures by way of Mr. Bean, who would reach out and stroke The Councilman's bass and touch his fingers, as he spoke affectionately of his bandmate and their life on the road together. The Councilman responded by looking nervous. The 2G were dressed in lovely suits and hats, and The Council wore a spiffy bowtie.

The 2MGB played for about 40 minutes. Andy Bean played 4-string banjo and a little guitar, along with a Jesse Fuller-style set-up, including cowbell, cymbals, horn, and so forth. "The Councilman" Fuller Condon played stand-up bass and sang harmonies. Andy played lead kazoo and The Councilman played back-up kazoo ("tenor kazoo," he protested, when Andy Bean introduced him, prompting him to make the correction).

I had wanted to say hello to the gentlemen after the show and maybe offer them a lift back to Queens tomorrow, but I lost them in the crowd. It turns out that they are making their way to Boston tomorrow, anyway.