It’s rare to take the three variables of every concert – venue, sound and performer – and get all three right. Saturday night, the three came together in a better-than-should-be expected way, and gave the Jason Wilber show at the Royal Theatre in Danville a magical quality.
Wilber, the fulltime guitar player for folk legend John Prine, hushed a crowd of nearly 300 at the historic theatre with his folk-inflected songs. It was a wise move to bring along a full band, featuring a sax and trumpet, drums and bass, and John Mellencamp’s keyboard player Troye Kinnett all finding the spots to sneakily shine.
It was a listening audience, less concerned with chatting up friends than they were to hang on the notes and the words of the performance. A nice change from the cacophony that can be a club show.
The musicians took advantage of the focused audience to hit their spots and serve the music. Tim Grimm and wife Jan opened the show, with 40 minutes of exquisite vocal interplay, understated and funny stories, and Tim’s great folk finger-picking. He adds a bit of percussion to his strumming and pushes the songs along, while Jan’s high harmonies would make Emmylou Harris smile. I’d drop him into a Lyle Lovett/Robert Earle Keen/James McMurtry for this night. Midway through their set, Jan pulled out an instrument she called a “spring drum” to an evocative, rumbling success, perfectly providing a unique duet to Tim’s words and guitar. A thoroughly enjoyable set.
Clean, nearly pristine sound is an element of the great little theatre. So many times at a show, I can’t hear certain instruments, or the volume is too loud or not loud enough. I am picky about the mix at a show, and am relatively unsympathetic to a room (and live sound man) that could do better, especially if it is a music venue that hosts shows regularly. Whether you have had 5 or 50 years to solve any problems with the venue sound mix, if a room sounds good, I like to think it’s an owner who cares enough to make it right. They have it right at Royal.
Wilber put together the evening with Grimm (he and Grimm and Wilber work together on many occasions, including recording a unique “soundtrack” to James Still’s play “Amber Waves” which is the story of immigrants who settle on a farm in Indiana.) and his decision to bring a band (Jason Wilber and His Fabulous Band) elevated Wilber’s music. The five other musicians were effective in pushing the energy level higher on many of Jason’s tunes. Laying down a Stax-like sound on the upbeat songs, and fitting and filling in beautifully on the slow songs, Kinnett especially shined, not just on solos, but coloring the night’s music with pretty piano and a gospel B3 sound.
Jason was generous with the providing spots for musicians to step forward, making eye contact with each in most songs, nodding for solos to start, and smiling to himself when the band put him in the musical pocket so he could close his eyes and feel the music around him.
He told stories throughout the evening, many short and simply told recollections of where he wrote a song (whether it was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, or London) and then letting the audience hear the rest of the story as he played it.
Mixing older songs off his solo records with what he revealed as new music, Wilber was comfortable, seasoned and engaged all night. His story about sitting in Russell Square in London, on his way to, but never arriving at, a famous art museum, was typical of the evening. Good stories told in a movie house. He remembered how he enjoyed the park in London and its surroundings far too much to leave, even for a museum he was informed he must see.
Emitting a nice 1970s vibe, the theatre, built in 1927 and smartly refurbished, has the letter “R” in multiple monogram-style spots on each side of a blueish/green room color. Or that’s the color to me ,with the lights low and after a visit to the hidden jewel of the night: a tiny theatre taproom. (They have area-brewed beers and wine).
Can you tell it was a good evening? A terrific night of heartland-infused music, in a cool theatre, from two Indiana singer/songwriters who represent a folk tradition that, based on this night, seems pretty healthy in Central Indiana.
The Royal Theatre has upcoming shows on the schedule; the booking of Alejandro Escovedo in April is brilliant. He’s touring behind a fantastic album and Springsteen-certified after the two dueted on Escovedo’s “Always a Friend” at a Bruce show in 2008.
Put me down for two.
Rob Nichols
Concert Review: Old Crow Medicine Show – The Vogue/Indianapolis
The crowd at the sold out Vogue Theatre was ready for the Old Crow Medicine Show to bring the old country instrumentation and killer harmonies to town on Saturday night, and the Nashville band didn’t disappoint those packed into the club.
By the time the band hit their third song, “Humdinger” from their
recent Tennessee Pusher album, both the group and the crowd were
into high-energy mode.
Performing most of the songs off the new record, OCMS’ guitarist and singer
Willie Watson introduced “Next Go Round” as a “genuine country song,” and then singer/fiddle player Ketch Secor dedicated “I HearThem All” to Pete Seeger, who they had met the night before at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival.
Old Crow dipped generously into two of their older albums, 2006’s “Big Iron World” and 2004’s “O.C.M.S.” for “James River Blues”, a rousing “Union Made”, crowd favorite “Cocaine Habit” and
their most well-known song, “Wagon Wheel”, which got the fans of the band into full singalong gear midway through the second of two sets they played.
Their bluesy version of “C.C.Rider” was dedicated to the women in the house, and Secor spent much of the between-song moments reciting landmarks in Indianapolis, and making it known the band had studied up on Broad Ripple
and the Hoosier State. He ripped off a list of cities and towns as the encores ran down, mentioning Goshen, Richmond, Vincennes, Fort Wayne and Evansville.
Their reputation for live show preceded them, and OCMS connected Saturday night. For a rock and roll/bluegrass band that doesn’t make it onto the radio too often, and relies on word-of-mouth, the web and their reputation to build
their audience up, they did nothing to disappoint the Indy folks, most of whom obviously have the albums and/or have seen them play before, judging from the reaction to both the new and old material.
Good to see the knowledge Indianapolis has for a roots band like Old Crow Medicine
Show. A nice mix of men and women (a little more than half of the crowd was male) did their homework, knew their stuff and supported a band that, despite their lack of true mainstream success, have carved a meaningful niche
in the Americana music world, and put it into the spotlight Saturday night.
Review: Bruce Springsteen – "Working on Dream"
The Bruce Springsteen album Working on A Dream is getting roundly ripped for being rushed and lyrically vapid, and also earning some glowing reviews that focus on the well-executed pop/rock sonic departure and commend him for not using his platform to perform a soundtrack to the Obama juggernaut.
Here’s what it really is: Working on a Dream actually allows us a new way to listen to a Springsteen album. Is rocks and pops like nothing he has made. Clear and undone of the muddy Brendan O’Brien production on Magic, it positively gleams. The band shines, even if much of it was overdubbed after a core group of Bruce, pianist Roy Bitten, drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Gary Tallent cut the basic tracks. But it moves me. And I wasn’t trying to like it, anymore than I was trying to hate it. I was just listening.
There are hooks and shining chord changes and plenty to make it as interesting — in a spiritually musical sense — as any music coming from any artist.
Lyrically, I’ll agree with those who say the gut-wreching, subtle universal truths revealed by Bruce are fewer than on, say, Darkness on the Edge of Town. Yet it feels like a record (and I will periodically still use the term “record” to refer to albums. I won’t however, say eight-track) that will grow, peeling back to reveal more good tracks than bad with repeated listens. As I write about the latest Old Crow Medicine Show album, Tennessee Pusher, the best albums are never just a sugar buzz, though need enough instant gratification out of the case to warrant a deeper dive.
Bruce has something good here. So I will continue to dive in. More listens will tell me if this one is a masterpiece hidden by those who bemoan because of what it is (different), or if it is really just a 2009 version of Human Touch (shiny and empty). I’ve been wrong before. But my gut is saying interesting and worth the time to get to know it
I’ve been right before too.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVqnzr5VUQ]
OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW HITS INDIANAPOLIS WITH NEW ALBUM, CLASSIC SOUNDS
With Tennessee Pusher, left-of-center bluegrass-slash-rock band Old Crow Medicine Show has a new album iconic and idiosyncratic enough to be both mainstream and misunderstood. If justice were to prevail, this gem of a record would be in line to earn a Country Album of the Year award. But it won’t and you get the feeling Old Crow’s Ketch Secor doesn’t care.
“When I listen to country radio, I listen to it because I like to know what we are up against and who is setting the trends we are here to buck,” says Secor, the chief songwriter and frontman for a band that doesn’t seem to give a crap about pomp or glitz. As Secor talks, it’s evident he wants real, tangible, greasy, smoky, oozing vitality in his music, whether out of the five band members he tours with, or from speakers that play the music of others.
“I believe in the power of music – to console, comfort, heal and to bring joy.” Says Secor, on the phone from Nashville as the band gears up for a tour that will take it across the United States again and then to Australia for the first time. The band hits Indy for a show at the Vogue January 31, for the fourth stop of the tour
The record debuted at #7 on the Billboard Country Music album charts with scarcely any mainstream radio help.
And here’s why it is a great album: It is full of hook-laden, embraceable harmonies and genuine rock and roll attitude from a bunch of guys who have cloaked it all in classic country instrumentation. Unique yet familiar. An oddly compelling record that reveals itself with multiple listens, as great albums do. Well-crafted and inspirational songs about mortality (“Evening Sun”, “Next Go ‘Round”) mixed with boozy party songs (“Alabama High-Test” – an ode to moonshine, and “Humdinger” – a Crow retro-sounding cut about a cop-free party).
There are also distinct reminders of influences that blow through their music. Listen closely and hear moments that echo The Beatles, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Kristofferson, Springsteen, Skynyrd, and Neil Young.
Playing music together since 1998, Old Crow Medicine Show was started by Harrisonburg, Virginia junior high buddies Secor and Critter Fuqua. They went to New York state, met friends Willie Watson and Ben Gould, and recorded a record (1998’s Trans:mission) in Critter’s bedroom, so they would have something to sell when they went on the road. Since then, the current lineup of Secor, Fuqua, Watson, traveled hard – crisscrossing the country, playing thousands of shows.
“People are going to get a high energy, pulse-racing, foot-stomping show,” Secor says of the band’s concert. “Sometimes it feels like a little bit of a camp meeting, like a little proselytizing is going on, in a snake handling, strychnine drinking way. Though I’m not saying were are going to drink strychnine on stage, and I don’t want to encourage anyone else to either. But if you are seeing us for the first time, I do hope you have tomorrow off from work.”
Secor, intelligent and forthcoming in an interview, is strident about his quest to carry American music forward.
“Regionality in music is one of the most important factors we have today,” he says, as I hear a dog bark in the Nashville background. “I like a sense of place in music. I really like artists who come from somewhere. Listen to John Cougar and you know the guy’s from the Hoosier state. There’s a backdrop to all the language in his songs. There is a rusty truck idling outside of a Quik Mart. I know where that is.”
There is plenty of unique landscape in the “Tennessee Pusher” album. The harmonies are raggedly perfect. The fiddle playing screams like a rock and roll guitar. The banjos and harmonicas and stand up bass ring familiar. It is deep-rooted American music, blasted into 2009.
Produced by Don Was (best known for helping resurrect the career of Bonnie Raitt, crafting her 1990 “Nick of Time” Grammy winning album), the band also enlisted legendary drummer Jim Keltner for six of the 12 tracks and Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench on four.
“The album is a progression more than a departure from our earlier albums,” Secor says. “It is a little more accessible. That is because of Don.”
Secor seems to relish the band’s place in the continuum of American music, no matter what their too-soon-to-tell legacy ends up being.
“I am honored to be a part of the work that has gone on in the past to get us to the present,” he adds. “I like to think Old Crow and Barrack and the dreamers, thinkers and tinkerers are all part of a new paradigm.”
(also read at nuvo.net – Indianapolis’s Alternative Newsweekly)
New Springsteen – Working on Dream – The First Listen
Picked up the new Bruce Springsteen album “Working on A Dream” a few days early. It is getting both roundly ripped for being rushed and lyrically vapid, and also earning some glowing reviews, focusing on the well-executed pop/rock sonic departure and commending him for not using his platform to perform a soundtrack to the Obama juggernaut.
Here’s really what it is: “Working on a Dream” actually allows us a new way to listen to a Springsteen album. Is rocks and pops like nothing he has made. Clear and undone of the muddy Brendan O’Brien production of “Magic”, it positively gleams. The band shines, even if much of it was overdubbed, after a core group of Bruce, pianist Roy Bitten, drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Gary Tallent cut the basic tracks. But it moves me. And I wasn’t trying to like it, anymore than I was trying to hate it. I was just listening.
There are hooks and shining chord changes and plenty to make it as interesting – in spiritually musical sense – as any music coming from any artist.
Lyrically, I will give those who say the gut-wreching, subtle universal truths revealed by Bruce are fewer than on, say, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”. Yet it feels like a record (and I will periodically still use the term RECORD to refer to albums. I won’t however, say EIGHT-TRACK) that will grow, peeling back to reveal more good tracks than bad with repeated listens. As I write about the latest Old Crow Medicine Show album, “Tennessee Pusher”, the best albums are never just a sugar buzz, though need enough instant gratification out of the case to warrant a deeper dive.
Bruce has something good here. So I will continue to dive in. More listens will tell me if this one is a masterpiece hidden by those who bemoan because of what it is (different), or if it is really just a 2009 version of “Human Touch” (shiny and empty). I’ve been wrong before. But my gut is saying interesting and worth the time to get to know it
I’ve been right before too.
Look Out. It's Wedding Night in America.
None of this is true.
All names have been altered to protect wills from being changed to exclude the writer.
Got it straight?
Totally fictional. Wink, wink.
***
First question. Been to any wedding?
Second question. Did you have any fun?
Third question. (especially crucial answer here) Were any family members involved, either in the ceremony or the reception?
Is it just the weddings I go to, but are they mostly affairs that tend to bring out the same traits in friends and fellow members of your family? Holidays and weddings. The two most statistically ripe times for drunkenness, erratic behavior and bad old habits.
Allow me to cite examples.
Instead of taking in a killer concert this past Saturday night with the Why Store, and Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies, my wife Amy and I were guests a wedding for one of my cousins.
Oh man. Life’s scariest cliches spring to life. Recognize any?
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we.
We pull up in the driveway of the First Church of the Unlimited Giving in Indianapolis, and are greeted by a rent-a-cop decrying all compact cars carrying fewer than three people must park on the other side the lot, which can only be reached by getting back on the interstate and reentering the lot via the dirt road by the down by the river.
Ok. Fine. At least we were on time. We go, park, and I get out of the car, look over and notice my wife is looking at the right front fender.
“When did you get this dent?” she asks.
Huh? What dent?
“This one that looks like somebody leaned too hard against your car.”
I got no idea. Seriously. Great start, though. Oh, and the lot has parking meters. Nice touch.
We walk the nearly two miles to the church, and are greeted my cousin Jason. The cousin who thinks dressing up means clean jeans and menthol instead of unfiltered Camels. “Menthols smell better, right?” he’s been heard to say.
“Sup?” he asks.
“Not much. How’s (Oh, God, what is her name?), uh, life treatin’ ya?” I say. “You remember Amy, right.?”
“Oh. yeah. Absolutely.”
Noticing a leering quality, I decide to push on.
Inside, we run into Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob of the eternally rock hard handshake.
“Well, there’s the kids.” Bob yells. “How we doin?”
He extends his hand. The land of no return.
Crunch.
“You kids in town for the night? Staying close by?” he inquires.
Loaded questions. Better fib.
“Nah. We need to get back to Fort Wayne tonight. Have some work to do at the office tomorrow. What are you doing?”
“Well, you know Alice. She’ll be dancing until they kick her out tonight, so were at the Ramada. Come on by later,” Bob says, volunteering his room for us to crash in, I guess.
“Hey, maybe. Supposed to be a nice reception.” I interject.
“Yeah, I hope drinks are free,” he says.
After these first two conversations, I think “me too”.
Amy and I are escorted into the sanctuary by one of the ushers from the brides side. Seems nice enough. Wonder to myself the relevance of the partially hidden ax tattoo over his right ear. . No problems though, as we walk into a nicely decorated church, with loads of white colors, live flowers and candles.
We’re seated next to by Aunt Karen. We like her. She doesn’t pass judgement on too many people, dresses nicely, at least pretends she likes us and has two daughters, my cousins, both nice and intelligent. We basically lucked out here. We could have the fate of by brother Ryan, who has to sit next to friend of the family, Betty, who has the worst smelling feet in the northern hemisphere.
At least we hope it’s her feet.
The bride is beautiful. The groom is handsome, just as they’re supposed to be.
Neither is Catholic, so no need to put extra money in the meter. Grandmas cry. Nobody passes out. I do. I do, and we’re done in less than 45 minutes.
And the race is on. Who knows the shortcut to the reception hall? Heck, who knows the short cut to our car? Disneyland has a tram for people parked as far away as we are.
Needless to say, we aren’t the first ones to the reception, held at a sweet little country club in the middle of nowhere. On the walk up the driveway, I notice the guys who were earlier serving as the ushers double-fisting beers. I take it as a good sign. Looks to be a party.
Relegated to a back table because of our arrival time, we do get a prime seat to survey the scene. Christmas, reunions, weddings, funerals. The cast of characters is always the same. Anybody look familiar to you?
There’s Crazy Jackie, with her boyfriend at least 20 years her junior. She’s got the DJ around waist, undoubtedly trying to sweet talk him into playing “The Stripper” song during the garter toss.
There’s Uncle Steve and his wife Aunt Christy. Between them, they wear six necklaces, seven rings, have had four plastic surgeries, and six kids. Gotta love ’em, just don’t get too close to Christy. She’ll pinch your ass before you can say goosedown pillow.
Hey, there’s Aunt Mary. Probably the nicest woman here. I walk up to hug her, and she hugs me first. Good feeling when that happens.
Unlike the feeling I get when, later in the evening, I look to the dance floor and see the Johnny Travolta (circa 1978) of the family, cousin Willie, by himself, doing his knee drops and toe spins, and arm waves to KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight”
Seems like the DJ, in his pink bowtie and pink suspenders, likes it though. That is, until Willie drops a little too hard on the portable dance floor, and causes the CD to stop completely.
Whoops. That’s just too bad.
I wave to Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma sees me, but I don’t think Grandpa does. And shouting will do no good. I’m sure the hearing aid went off about the time KC started singing. Or it might have gone off when Grandma told him 45 miles per hour was just too fast for the interstate.
Here comes the bride and groom, followed by a photographer who looks like he’s been run over by a car and a couple horses.
A video guy comes around with a camera and microphone wanting everybody to give best wishes to the newlyweds. I give directions to the Condoms R Us store in Daytona Beach. My wife slaps the back of my head.
I notice a lady two tables over takes a slug of her beer, and hold the microphone up to her ear like a telephone. I think about alerting America’s Funniest Home Videos that a tape is in the mail.
Some kids come running by, and head into the hallway to do a kiddie version of “YMCA”. I wonder if they know what that song was about when it came out. I sure didn’t until Jim and Tammy Bakker tried to save me by telling me all about it.
So we eat dinner, kick back, play tic-tac-toe with a one of kids sitting at the table. (I get “beat” three out of four games.) We move onto the “I Spy Game”. Again, the seven-year old kicks my butt.
Wallflower Jane, my Dad’s cousin, never moves from her spot at the neighboring table. I think her corduroy skirt has suctioned her too the chair.
A pack of high school girls I’ve never seen flit past our table wearing flowered dresses shorter than a popsicle in July. Of course, I didn’t look.
White wedding cake is eaten. A garter gets thrown. The bouquet is tossed. Some guy is on a table exhorting the crowd to do the “Country Joe and the Fish” cheer.
It’s time to go.
As we walk into the parking lot, and up the driveway, I look at Amy and smile. I mention how it’s nice the most people get married only once and Christmas with this crew is along ways away.
We grab each other’s hand and walk in silence until we get into the car.
“Have a good time?” she asks.
“Oh, yeah. Gotta love the family.” I say, starting the car.
Amy laughs.
So do I.