Jorma Kaukonen w/ Loudon Wainwright III @ The Colonial Theater, Phoenixville PA, September 14th, 2012

Not long after entering the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, I entered the men’s room, just in time to hear a couple of guys, at least two decades my senior, talking about their excitement about seeing Jorma Kaukonen. I was a bit irritated, however, to hear one of them announce, apropos of his excitement, how great Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969) is, and the other swear that that album, Jefferson Airplane’s first and best live album, goes together with their third album, After Bathing at Baxter’s (1967). I was irritated not because I disagree about the greatness of either (although listening back to Baxter’s now, it’s a bit uneven, though its great moments are some of the Airplane’s greatest), but because you’d think Jorma hadn’t done anything since the ‘60s were over. But he had just gotten started. In any case, Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna shows seem to attract folks who, if their offhand comments and in-concert whooping are any indication, checked out after the Airplane landed, or perhaps after Hot Tuna cooled off at the end of the 1970s, and were out to recapture something. This is not the first time I’ve noticed this—and as someone who was born in the later 1970s himself, I’m at a generational disadvantage in assessing an audience that in some broad sense I’m not a part of—but it’s the first time I found myself a little annoyed. Jorma Kaukonen plays a lot of traditional material—folk songs, let’s say—but he’s not a nostalgia act. Over the past decade or so, he’s been recording some excellent albums, including the first new Hot Tuna studio album in over 20 years, and he doesn’t shy away from performing those songs in concert.

The opening act for the evening was Loudon Wainwright III, who takes generational solidarity more seriously than most touring singers his age simply by writing the personal songs that he’s always written and not pretending that he is anything other than he is. At the moment, what that means is that he knows that most of his life is over, and death is very much on his mind. Several of the songs from his set came from his most recent album, Older than My Old Man Now (2012), which contains entirely songs about “death and decay,” as he told us. He preceded two of the songs he played from that album—the title track, along with “Something’s Out to Get Me”—with recitations of Life Magazine columns that his father had written, one about his own father (Loudon Wainwright I, that is) and another about his own impending demise. The generational disjuncture made itself felt about halfway through the set, when he made a show out of peering into the audience and claiming to notice that he could see his demographic out in the crowd. That comment led into “My Meds” from the new album, a recitation of all the substances he was on (or would be on by the end of the night, he assured us). “Heaven” and “The Picture” both featured death in their own way, one moving me to laugh out loud, the other making me tear up. “Over the Hill” he co-wrote with his late wife Kate McGarrigle, before either had turned 30. When they weren’t playing music together or raising their son, he said, “we were trying to kill each other.” “The Morgue” was the highlight of the night, as it combined “death and decay” with his favorite theme from earlier in his career, “shitty love.” And there was also time for “Ode to Pittsburg,” which he wrote in 1969 and was trying to prepare for his show in that city the next night, where he went to college. He forgot about half the words, prompting him to announce, as he struck the final chord, that he was going to have to go home and google the song so that he could memorize the words in time for the show.

While Loudon Wainwright’s performances tend to be emotional roller coasters, Jorma Kaukonen’s performances (at least his solo acoustic ones; Hot Tuna is another matter) are, by contrast, steadier enterprises. This is a function of the kinds of material they perform, their performing styles, and their own particular quirks and talents. Jorma is a blues singer, plain and (not so) simple. His set with Barry Mitterhoff, as usual, combined a handful of original songs with traditional blues songs, some of which have been in Jorma’s repertoire since the 1960s, like “Good Shepherd” and “Come Back Baby” which, probably not by coincidence, are also the two songs that featured the longest jams of the night. “Hesitation Blues” and “How Long Blues” were recorded for the first Hot Tuna album and elicited some of the loudest applause of the evening. As usual there were plenty of Reverend Gary Davis songs, this time including “Children of Zion” and “Let Us Get Together Right down Here.”

Jorma was a gracious host. While Barry did most of the talking, introducing songs and doing the usual thank yous, Jorma’s stage presence was wry and warm. He pointed out that the ukulele that Barry Mitterhoff took up for “The Terrible Operation” dated back to the 1920s. He shrugged off a particularly loud request for “Killing Time in the Crystal City” by saying “now there’s a cheerful song.” He dedicated “What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?” to his old friend and bandmate Jack Casady, whose wife passed away not long ago. He referred to Miller Highlife as “the champagne of bottled beer.” And, as usual, he let Barry advertise their merchandise: CDs, t-shirts, and an assortment of teas which, as Jorma said, was for our benefit, not theirs. He bade us all stay healthy and take good care of ourselves so that we could all make it to NYC for the Beacon Theater shows after Thanksgiving. The musical high points were when Jorma got flashy. His solo on “Barbeque King” was especially fine, and the uptempo segment of “Hesitation Blues” is always marvelous to behold. And the encore of “Embryonic Journey” was a great moment. It was the Jefferson Airplane song that the crowd had been waiting for. And I’m glad they, I mean we, got it

Marshall Crenshaw with The Bottle Rockets @ World Cafe Live, Philadelphia PA, July 25th, 2012

For my first evening of live music in Philadelphia (not counting a rather lonely evening at Ortlieb’s, watching a jazz guitarist solo over some r&b backing tracks for half an hour), I stuck with the tried and true—Marshall Crenshaw—and something new –The Bottle Rockets. I hadn’t heard of this band other than in the context of Marshall Crenshaw, who has been playing with them on and off for the past couple of years. It turns out they’ve been putting out albums for the last 20 years, pretty good ones according to Robert Christgau, although I did absolutely no research on them prior to the show. They played for about an hour, before returning later as Marshall Crenshaw’s backing band.

I associate the term “World Café” with the radio show, hosted by David Dye, which I’ve been listening to ever since I discovered WFUV about a week after moving to New York City in the summer of 1999. The venue of the same name is a place reminiscent of the now long-defunct Bottom Line in NYC, with a couple of rows of tables, one elevated a little , close to the bar, and a second cluster closer to the stage (which is where I was, very close to the sound engineer). Unlike the Bottom Line, there was also a big standing room area close to the stage. I was afraid at first that the standers would be in the way, but the stage was high enough for that not to be a problem. There were over 100 people, maybe as many as 150, at the show, and that was not quite enough to convey the impression of anything close to a sold-out show. I think all the sitting room was filled up, but there just weren’t enough folks up and dancing close to the stage and, toward the end of the show, it felt like the crowd was getting restless. I overheard at least one woman say that it was past her bedtime. This was clearly an audience full of Marshall Crenshaw fans, most of them well over the age of 40. The only clear Bottle Rockets fans were about a dozen or so younger folks—some college aged, a few around my age—who were clustered close to the stage, at least a few of whom seemed to vanish after the Bottle Rockets finished their opening set.

So, I didn’t know what to expect from the BRs. What I got was an hour’s worth of loud, raucous rock n’ roll. The crunching guitars were loud enough to drown out a lot of the singing (except when the bass player harmonized; I wish he’d done more of that), but it didn’t matter, because the band was great. Pretty much every song deployed a short, catchy riff, and every one had at least one guitar solo to absorb. Best of all was the drummer, who looked totally relaxed and was clearly having a great time. He held things together. They were tight and focused and clearly have been doing this for a long time. Some songs veered toward rockabilly, a few were slow. But most were uptempo and hard-rocking, and nothing bored me. They were a bit reminiscent of Joe Ely at his loudest. If you’ve heard Joe’s album Live at Liberty Lunch (1990), picture an hour’s worth of stuff like Joe’s “Are You Listening Lucky?” from that album. Song fragments I picked up included an opener called, I think, “Shame on Me,” “Indianapolis,” “Mountain to Climb,” “I Fell Down,” and a really great one called “Welfare Music.” Great stuff, and I’ll seek them out in the future.

Marshall Crenshaw, on the other hand, I know a thing or two about. The first time I saw him, he played as 1/3 of an acoustic trio, at NYC’s Rodeo Bar, but the next two times I saw him, in Brooklyn and in Northampton, he played alone on stage. He’s quite a guitar player, and I’m partial to his singing voice, but for years now I’ve craved seeing him with a rock band to back him up. And last night my craving got satisfied. I was not disappointed. The Bottle Rockets fit Marshall’s songs superbly. If anything, they sounded particularly good on the two newer songs, from the Jaggedland (2009) album: “Live and Learn” and “Stormy River.” They both featured some extended guitar solos that really worked. The ensemble playing was excellent throughout and have I mentioned that drummer they’ve got? He’s really something.

But it wasn’t the newer material that this crowd wanted to hear, it was the songs that made the man’s career, 30 years ago. “There She Goes Again” and “Cynical Girl” opened the set back-to-back, and “Mary Anne” came a few songs later, with “Calling Out for Love at Crying Time” and “Starless Summer Sky” in between. The final four songs of the set went from great to greatest: “Whenever You’re On My Mind,” “Something’s Gonna Happen,” “Someday Someway,” and, to end the set, “Better Back Off,” a song that Marshall described as “a happy song about anxiety.” But to me it’s simply a song about a man trying to get his lover to stop being so critical of herself. Why don’t more people write those kinds of lyrics? The same guy also wrote “What Do You Dream Of?” which came in the middle of the set, and is incredibly beautiful, one of my most favorite songs by anyone. The covers of Buddy Holly’s “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” and Richard Thompson’s “Valerie” soared, and the encore of “Not For Me” left me wanting more. Here’s hoping these two acts start teaming up more regularly. And here's a young man and his upbeat band getting famous in 1982.

Aoife O'Donovan w/ John Fullbright @ One Longfellow Square, June 13th, 2012

Wednesday night's concert at OLS was a beauty. I know Aoife O'Donovan as the lead singer for Crooked Still, who I've seen half a dozen times or more, and who I hope to see perform again sometime. For the time being, though, that band has fragmented, with its constitutive parts all doing their own thing. Aoife has lately been touring with her own band and recorded a short CD called the Peachstone EP (2012) which I regret not buying. On the basis of what I heard at OLS, this is one to buy.

Before I get to her, though, there is the matter of John Fullbright. He took the stage with a wry, "how ya' feelin' out there Wichita?" He was an Oklahoma native and, we learned, doesn't play out east too much. After that greeting, he let us into his world with the following: "Don’t tell me that you love me / I’ve got nothing left in turn / Except this empty bag of promises / And second degree burns." He had barely 30 minutes to perform, so he kept between-song commentary to a minimum and, instead, let his crisp guitar playing and big soulful voice fill the room. By the end of that first song, "Satan and St. Paul," he had clearly won over the audience. The applause from the still-only-half-full room was big and enthusiastic. It's always exciting when something like this happens, and after the fourth song, "Forgotten Flowers," which conveyed heartbreak with a splitting cry in the singing, I realized that I was watching a star being born. After that one, he told us about the two CDs he had for sale at the show. You'll probably like the first one better, he explained. The second one was recorded live in concert. So if we liked what we were hearing this evening, maybe that would be the one to buy. "It's no better or worse than what you're seeing." In other words, he's a pretty funny guy. He ended with "Jericho," in which he howled about walls come tumbling down, and in which I didn't hear anything funny at all. Watch for this guy.

The featured act came onstage at about 10 minutes before 9:00, accompanied by a 5-piece band: Ryan Scott on guitars, Jacob Silver on bass, Robin MacMillan on drums, Maine native Jed Wilson on keyboards, and Charlie Rose on pedal steel. They played for a little over an hour, and almost all the songs were Aoife originals. Many of them were from the Peachstone EP, including "Lay My Burden Down" which, I now learn, Alison Krauss recorded for her newest album. "The Beekeeper" was particularly striking, as was "Electric Ponies," which was the longest song of the evening and featured Jed Wilson playing some xylophone, some enticing shifts of melody, and some particularly nuanced percussion. Throughout the performance, Aoife sang beautifully, but the real attractions were the arrangements and ensemble playing. There was obvious care taken to build sophisticated music around the lyrics to "Pearls," "The Beekeeper, and "Electric Ponies," in particular. It felt ambitious, a gently psychedelic folk-rock with the pedal steel adding an eerie undercurrent to every song, and Ryan Scott alternating between soft functional accompaniment and searing bluesy solos that I can imagine competing with the banjo in a Crooked Still arrangement. Like I said, I really should have bought the CDs that were on sale.

Throughout the show, Aoife was a charming hostess, smiling and friendly. During the music, though, she was focused on her guitar-playing and singing. She and her band seemed very comfortable with each other, and there were plenty of little in-jokes tossed back and forth between the half dozen people on stage. For the encore, they gave us Bonnie Raitt's "Love Letter," with Aoife dancing a bit, grinning up a storm, and smiling at Ryan Scott, who let it all hang out.

Chris Smither @ One Longfellow Square, Portland ME, May 20th, 2012

A few songs into Chris Smither's Sunday night performance, I found myself wondering what it would be like to hear Chris Smither again for the first time. Not possible for me, of course, and every person's first connection with a musician or work or art that becomes meaningful cannot be duplicated. But before the show I was wondering if hearing the great man could ever feel as meaningful as it did a decade ago, at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2002, or at the Joe's Pub shows in the years that followed, or even the performance at the Green River Festival in 2009. Perhaps thinking in that way put me in the right frame of mind, or maybe sitting less than 5 feet away from the performer had something to do with it, but Sunday night's show was one of the greatest performances I've seen from him. I sat front row center and looked up into the great man's worn, serious face as he picked and stomped and sung song after song with more power than I've heard from him in years. My attention rarely swayed after that one moment early on.

One thing that made the show unusual was that the performer was promoting a new album. He played most of the songs from Hundred Dollar Valentine (2012), which is now available. The only ones from the album that he didn't do were the oldies that he rerecorded, the profoundly plain-spoken "I Feel the Same" and the dark but hopeful "Every Mother's Son." I haven't listened to the CD yet--I bought it after the show--so I didn't know any of the new songs. There was some dense verbiage in several of them, and one was a blues that the writer remarked he didn't write too much of anymore. If you think you've heard it before, he told us, there's a good reason for that. There wasn’t a single dull moment in the entire show, including the new songs whose hooks and twists seemed familiar somehow, offhandedly borrowed from the same wellspring of blues and folk music that are the square root of everything the great music plays.

He played two one hour sets, separated by about a half hour intermission. The early set featured mostly recent material. After the opening manifesto "Open Up" and the diseased love song "Lola," he unveiled the new material, and it sounded glorious. The foot-tapping was as simple as always, and as profound as always too, as it complemented the lyricism in the words, the rough depth of the voice, and rhythmic syncopation of the guitar. The new album's title track was particularly fine, especially with the line about the airline taking away his lighter. And "Don't Call Me Stranger" from Time Stands Still (2009) elicited laughter and applause with its greatest couplet, "I'm not evil / I'm just bad."

The second set began with "Link of Chain" and "Can't Shake These Blues," songs that date back to the mid-1990s. Smither's longevity and reluctance to play any original material that he recorded before 1990 allow for the labeling of those two songs as oldies. Much of the rest of the second set consisted of familiar material, like "No Love Today," which elicited some of the loudest applause. Dave Carter's "Crocodile Man" smoked, and so did "Seems So Real," which sounds ok on the Train Home (2003) album, but really gathers steam in concert. The set concluded with "Leave the Light On," which will probably conclude his sets for many years to come.

For the encore, he played the oldest of the oldies, "Sitting on Top of the World," which dates back to the 1920s. Or back to the 1984 album It Ain't Easy if, like me, you think that Chris Smither reinvented the song. Which brings the "oldies" question back onto the table…and reminded me of the performance I heard earlier in the day of a trio performing a honky-tonk version of the same song, at Local Sprouts. As I once heard Stephin Merrit say in an NPR interview, song lyrics don’t convey enough information to direct a singer how to sing them—or something like that. I’ve heard this particular song over and over again, in different arrangements with different attitudes. Earlier in the day, the trio played the song for good times and smiles. At night, Chris Smither’s performance evoked peaceful quietude, hiding something sad, even dreadful, as the stolid foot-tapping transformed the suppressed hurt into graceful forbearance.

Article on Tom Russell and His New Disc

There's a nice piece in the Houston Chronicle talking about Tom Russell's new CD Mesabi and generally covering Russell's life and career.

Bearfoot w/ Hoots and Hellmouth @ One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME, November 20th, 2011

This past Sunday night, I walked up the hill for a lovely evening of music at One Longfellow Square. This was my second time at this venue, and I've grown very fond of it very quickly. In fact, I was first alerted to Sunday night's show at One Longfellow when I was there a couple of weeks ago to see Jorma Kaukonen. I had never even heard of Bearfoot until then.

I wasn't aware that there would be an opening act until after I arrived. Hoots and Hellmouth are a Philadelphia-based band--guitar, stand-up bass, drums, and mandolin--that played a mixture of mellow folk-rock and jazz, with a touch of spacey, psychedelic instrumentation. A couple of songs into the set, I found myself thinking about a group called The Secret Life of Sophia, which I saw open for the Black Spoons over 5 years ago, in New York City. TSLoS was a much harder, edgier group, but something about H&H's vibe reminded me of them. At any rate, the drummer was the man to watch, at least at first, as he switched off between sticks and brushes to dictate the feel of each piece. There were some great rocking moments on a song called "I Don't Mind Your Cussing" and there were some sweet harmonies, especially on something called "City Lights on a Country Ceiling." By the end of the set, though, I was paying more attention to the singer-guitarist, whose picking was nimble and confident. "Apple Like a Wrecking Ball" featured a particularly nice guitar part and, listening back to it now, courtesy of the band's website, it's making me want to buy their album. And I just might do it.

The featured act, Bearfoot, was every bit as good as I was hoping they'd be. They are a five-piece band--Angela Oudean on fiddle and Jason Norris on mandolin, Alaskans who founded the band 10 years ago, along with Nora Jane Struthers on guitar, PJ George on bass, and Todd Grebe (another Alaskan) on guitar--who play mostly original material (although I really enjoyed their cover of AP Carter's "Single Girl" and, for an encore, the Stanley Brothers' "Sweet Thing"). They performed all the songs from their recent album, American Story (2011), and they ranged from good to great. I was especially partial to the ones that Todd Grebe took the lead on--"Mr. Moonshine" and "Midnight in Montana" and "Must Be Hard Being You"--he apparently is in charge of the band's M songs. Nora Jane Struthers sang "When You're Away," the video for which One Longfellow had used to advertise the band when I saw Jorma Kaukonen there a couple of weeks ago. That's the one, in other words, that made me want to come see the band. She also sang a great song called "Country Girl Yodel #3," which isn't on the recent album, and one called "Come and Get Your Lonesome," which is.

Their music was mostly upbeat, and each band member had a moment to shine. PJ George had a solo or two, but he mostly was unobtrusive, alternating between stand-up bass and bass guitar. He was there to serve the songs, and I actually found myself paying a lot of attention to him, precisely because of how understated he was. I understand he's a newer member of the band--I hope for their sake he stays. Jason Norris sang some great harmonies and played some loud, flashy mandolin solos, although there was some problem with the placement of his mandoline mic for the first couple of songs. Angela Oudean had some tasty solos and harmonized wonderfully in song after song. And Nora Jane Struthers and Todd Grebe, newer members of the band (I've since learned) who did the lion's share of the songwriting for the recent album, were excellent hosts, introducing songs, chatting up the audience, and singing and playing with a lot of enthusiasm. At one point, the men left the stage, leaving Angela and Nora Jane alone to sing a duet. It took an uncomfortably long time for Angela to get her guitar in tune, leaving her bandmate to make small talk with the audience. During this sequence, Todd Grebe poked his head out from backstage and gestured intently to his watch. The song that the two women sang, "Romance," wound up being the only one for the duo, as the guys came back to help out with "Country Girl Yodel #3."

On my way out, I shook hands with a couple of members of each band. A bit tired, as the adrenaline rush of the show was already ebbing, I didn't stop to chat and pay them the big compliments they deserved. According to their website, Bearfoot won't be playing another show around here for awhile. But they're worth seeking out.

Jorma Kaukonen @ One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME, November 5th, 2011

Saturday night, I walked up the street to attend my first One Longfellow Square concert. This is a great venue, small and intimate, yet still managing to fit a couple hundred people or so. While I can't imagine what it would be like to hear a full band play there, it was ideal for the show that I just saw: Jorma Kaukonen, accompanied by his Hot Tuna bandmate Barry Mitterhoff. It was a sold-out show, the venue's first sold-out show for some time, we were told.

I've seen Jorma play a number of times now: 7 or 8 Hot Tuna shows since 1999, plus Jorma's set at the Half the Sky benefit show last year. But I've never been as close to him as I was Saturday night. I sat in the second row, a stone's toss from where he and Barry were stationed onstage. My view of Barry was almost completely unobstructed. Jorma had his music stand with him and it, and the sheet music that was on it, blocked my view of his right hand. But I sat right in front of where his left hand was positioned all night. Watching his left hand on the fretboard over the course of two 75 minute sets, including an encore, was a truly humbling experience. Over the past year or so, I've been trying to learn to play several of his songs, and watching the master himself at work, at such close range, was awe-inspiring. When the encore turned out to be "Water Song," I leaned forward, trying to make sure his fretting looked familiar to what I was trying to do when playing it.

Jorma and Barry were clearly in a good mood. Jorma was chattier than he's been on the previous occasions I've seen him, and his banter with his bandmate was fun. One of the themes of the night was presidents. Almost every time they played a song that was written before 1975 or so, Barry would mention the name of the president in office into the microphone. Before "Bread Line Blues," Herbert Hoover. Before "Vicksburg Stomp," FDR. And so forth. It was much more amusing, however, whenever it was a Jorma original. In fact, the matter first came up about five songs into the set, when Barry informed us that the next song was first recorded when Richard Nixon was president. That turned out to be "Sea Child," a high point of the first set. Nixon came up again, just prior to "Genesis." And a third time just after "I See the Light," prompting Jorma to say "Gimme a break." I was close enough to the stage to hear Barry say, "C'mon, your songs stand the test of time!" Jorma: "Better than he did."

After the second song, "Let Us Get Together Right Down Here," someone in the audience called out, "the Reverend!" "They're very sharp," Jorma said to Barry, gesturing to the crowd. "What did he say?" Barry asked. "I believe I heard someone say, 'the Reverend.'" "I thought he said, 'the rapper.'" "Different show, Barry." Later on, Jorma talked about a deranged fan who, sometime in the 1970s, wanted to have a gold tooth just like Jorma's, so he actually had one of his own teeth knocked out. "He knocked out the wrong one," Jorma said, grinning, so we could all see the gold. The same guy wanted to have a tattoo just like Jorma's, so he went to the tattoo parlor with a crumpled up poster of Jorma that depicted the tattoo. And the tattoo artists proceeded to reproduce not just the tattoo, but the wrinkles that the crumpling had created in the poster. Oops.

The show began with "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?" which Jorma recorded for his Blue Country Heart (2002) album. It's one of his gentler numbers, and it preceded "Let Us Get Together Right Down Here," the first of several Reverend Gary Davis songs he'd perform. In my mind, I always hear the recording from Burgers (1972), with Papa John Creach on fiddle, but it sounded just fine last night with Barry's frills and flourishes.

There were plenty of high points. I am partial to "Sea Child," a Burgers song whose guitar part is one of Jorma's greatest creations. I never tire of hearing that song. The same goes for "I See The Light," which makes me realize how much I love the man's songwriting. Of his more recent songs, I'm particularly fond of "Things That Might Have Been." He also did "Second Chances," which I remember hearing at the Half the Sky concert last year. The second set included "Good Shepherd" which featured the longest jam of the night. Barry outdid himself on that one, which Jorma pointed out afterward, asking him to "please remember that," because "you might have to do that again sometime," or something like that. The end of the second was "Parchman Farm," which segued into "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning," another great moment. Beyond all those, every song that Jorma originally recorded for the first Hot Tuna album in 1970 elicited big applause when he played them Saturday night: "Know You Rider," "How Long Blues," "Hesitation Blues," and "Uncle Sam Blues."

Madeleine Peyroux w/ Nellie McKay @ The State Theater, Portland, ME, October 6th, 2011

Thursday night, I returned to the lovely State Theater for the first time since January of 2008. Back then, I was living in Brunswick, ME, and I had to rent a car for the evening to make it down for the Ani Difranco show. I seem to recall listening to a Celts-Mavs game on the radio for the ride back, but my memory might be playing tricks on me. Anyway, I now live within walking distance of the State, and it takes 15 minutes to mosey over and 15 minutes to mosey back home. And rather than rock out with a theater full of screaming Difrancophiles, this time I sat quietly through a mellow 75 minute set of Madeleine Peyroux's jazzy crooning.

But before I get to her, there is the matter of Nellie McKay. I will never forget listening to WFUV one evening in May of 2003, alone in my girlfriend's apartment on the Upper West Side, when Rita Houston interviewed this then-19 year old for Words and Music from Studio A. She was simultaneous giddy, shy, nervous, and self-effacing. Lots of stuttering, but in a really charming way. It peaked with her referring to herself as a "ketchup whore," before wondering if it was ok to say that on the radio. As I type this, I'm listening to a recording of this interview, available via WFUV's archives here, and it's as fun as I remember it.

This was my second time hearing her perform live. The first time was in May of 2007, when she recorded a 20 minute set at Town Hall for a recording of Mountain Stage (which also featured The Roches, David Bromberg, and Joan Osborne). This time, she played for about half an hour, cramming 9 songs in, with very little chatter in between tunes. The set focused on older material, particularly from Get Away from Me (2004), and she opened with "Toto Dies" and "The Dog Song" and "I Wanna Get Married." Great song after great song, her voice rang and glistened, and her piano playing florid and strident and, for the third song, quiet and subtle. It was interesting listening to the audience respond to her. The majority were clearly there to hear the featured act, and it took until "I Wanna Get Married," with the line about reading Danielle Steele, to get some laughter. "Won't U Please Be Nice" is one of my favorites, and that got some some laughs too, but the set peaked when she got out from behind her piano, took up her banjo, walked up to the microphone center stage, and sang "Mother of Pearl" with its priceless opening line: "Feminists don't have a sense of humor." By then, everyone knew it was ok to laugh, and her "dance break" in the middle of the song was hilarious, with her high-heeled soft-shoe toe-tap and twirl performed with a big, charming smile. A couple of songs I didn't know came after that one, before she concluded with a song she said was about illegal immigration. Turns out that was "Don't Fence Me In," which I think was originally recorded by Bing Crosby sometime in the '40s.

While Nellie McKay dealt mostly in sarcasm and double entendres and quirky musicality, Madeleine Peyroux is a romantic, pure and simple. She performed with a four-piece band (guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums), and her set of a dozen songs was smooth and loose and relaxing. The songs I know best are the ones from Careless Love (2005), and she opened with three of them, "Don't Wait Too Long," "Don't Cry, Baby," and Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." That last one was the first of several to get to me. She cradles the words and melody in her voice with a lot of care, seeming to speak and sing the words simultaneously. Not that that quality didn't sound great in the first two songs, but "you're gonna make me give myself a good talking to" and "you can make me cry if you don't know" gave me goose bumps.

Madeleine Peyroux's most recent album, unheard by me, contains mostly songs that she wrote herself. She played several of them at the show I saw. "The Kind You Can't Afford," about money, was lovely, although she spoke the words a bit too softly. "Don't Pick a Fight with a Poet" was jaunty and fun and I wasn't really paying much attention to the poetry on that one. She also played a Robert Johnson song from the latest album, "Love in Vain." That happens to be my favorite Robert Johnson song, and I was thrilled with her arrangement. It was slow and plodding and featured a slightly distorted single note on the guitar that cut through the verses and seemed to mirror the psychic agony permeating the words: "the blue light was my blues / the red light was my mind."

Although, like the rest of the attendees, I was happy to hear Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love," I was more moved by her slower numbers. And her encore consisted of two of them. First, there was "J'ai Deux Amours," performed more slowly than the recording from Careless Love. "Walkin' After Midnight" came last, and it left me wanting more.

Chris Smither @ Stone Mountain Arts Center, Brownfield ME, August 12th, 2011

I took Hillary to the Stone Mountain Arts Center (SMAC) on Friday night to share an even of Chris Smither music with her. I can't remember how many times I've seen him perform--a dozen? maybe more?--but his concerts are the very surest of sure things. And this was my first time at the SMAC since Anthony and I drove out there to hear Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas over three years ago. Hillary and I arrived early and partook of their delicious chicken soup (with cornbread and watermelon on the side) and spent over an hour chatting with each other and with the couple sitting next to us. In fact, I even found myself defending Hot Tuna to the gentleman sitting next to Hillary, after my passing mention of them yielded expressions of contempt from him and his woman friend. Jefferson Airplane? That got more eye rolls. It turns out that this couple has being seeing Chris Smither play shows all around New England since the late 1960s. "Are you on a hot date?" the woman asked us.

Chris Smither looked and sounded great. "Does he wax his hair?" Hillary wondered, which made me laugh. What didn't make me laugh, but did make me smile, was the way the great man foot-tapped his way into "Open Up," which he's been opening his concerts with for years now. Ditto the way he picks the introductory guitar licks to "Link of Chain" before his feet and guitar launch the blues shuffle that backbones the song. The laughter began next, as he talked about losing his GPS machines, which he eventually began calling "Lola," his next song. "She's got hooks to make a fish think twice."

I've seen Chris Smither enough times, and listened to his music enough, to know what was coming. His stories, even when I've heard them before, are a delight. He talked about his daughter's question about royalties before playing "I Don't Know," the fruit and vegetable man from his New Orleans childhood before "No Love Today," his father's longevity before "Father's Day," the difficulties of writing topical songs before "Surprise, Surprise," and the first time he met Dave Carter before Carter's own "Crocodile Man." His sets don't vary too much from show to show, but the quality of his voice, the intricate guitar playing, the toneless foot-tapping continue to call me back.

Having been "called back" at different times over the past 9 years or so, certain songs make more of an impression on me. Friday night, I was particularly moved by two of his newer songs: "I Don't Know," which I'm convinced is one of Chris Smither's very best songs, and "Time Stands Still," which is not the only love song he's written, but it's as close as he comes to a romantic song. Beyond those two, his version of "Sitting on Top of the World" is stark and ethereal in his voice and hands, and I never tire of hearing him singing it. He sang his own "Drive You Home Again" with plain-spoken gravity, and the audience's chuckle at the final lines, "if I drive you to distraction / I will drive you home again" was a great moment. "Seems So Real" sounds just fine on his Train Home (2003) album, but it really gathers steam in concert.

For the encore, he played Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" and got the last of the evening's big laughs with the song's greatest nonsense line, "geez, I can't find my knees." I'd forgotten how beautiful his version of this song is, performed in waltz time, with his rich easy voice delivering some of the greatest opening lines Bob Dylan has ever written: "Ain't it just like the night / to play tricks when you're trying to be quiet? / We sit here stranded / though we're all doing our best to deny it."

On our way out, Hillary and I watched the great man greet his fans and sign autographs, and I remembered the first time I ever got his autograph, at Joe's Pub back in the fall of 2006. That, and having heard him wish me a happy birthday from the stage in upstate New York in the summer of 2007 are enough for me. But I sure could use a dozen or so new songs from the great man, and it's those I await.

Weezer and The Flaming Lips

Kudos to Ben Ratliff for the following awesome paragraph from his review of the integrated Weezer / Flaming Lips shows in the New York area last week:

Rivers Cuomo, the geeky major-domo of Weezer, has grown famous on twitchy, distorted power-pop with strong melodic lines. If his songs were people, they’d be around 16, smart, self-absorbed and a little nasty; they would not like the taste of beer. Wayne Coyne, the relaxed, glad-handing singer and songwriter of the Flaming Lips, writes spaced-out, psychedelic singalongs. His songs might be around 21, kind of looking for an internship and very interested in who they were at 5. They have just dropped acid and want to talk to you.