Drive By Truckers, Mississippi Nights, Oct. 25, 2006

I don’t know why I’ve been putting this off – maybe if I write the review, I’ll have to move on, and the show was so great that I don’t want to forget about it.

J and I had taken the afternoon off work and gotten a hotel room in a smaller town on the Illinois side (cheaper!), so we had a leisurely drive and time to check in to the room and relax before time to drive into town for the show. Despite the world series (and the game ended up being cancelled because of rain anyway), we had no hassles – took the easy bridge and were nice and early. The lot we usually park in was pretty empty, and it was drizzley, so we parked where we could see the venue and waited in the car for a few minutes to keep warm. The tour buses were parked right outside. (If you’re early, you can often see band members going in and out the door where you’re lined up at – apparently there’s no convenient back way for the band.) We saw a few people pass, and eventually saw that someone was in line, and I can’t stand to be early and NOT be in line, so we went ahead.

We bought tickets through the Truckers web site that were will-call only, so we went into the little foyer and picked them up. After us, the shutter went down and everyone else had to wait till the doors opened and get their tickets on the way in, I think. Anyway, there weren’t that many people in line, so there was room for us to wait inside – double doors with windows on either side, so we could peer at the stage and watch the staff eat dinner while we waited. J and I tend not to gab much in line because we’re shy and it seems like we always regret joining the conversation – it always turns into some kind of ‘I’m a bigger fan than you’ kind of subtle bragging match. How many times have you seen them, oh, I’ve seen them five. Not that interested. We didn’t talk much there either but the people around us were cool, and (like us) all from out of town.

When the doors opened there still wasn’t a big huge line. Late crowd, I guess? We sauntered straight down to the floor and parked ourselves square in the middle. Awesome Canadian couple (P.J. and Maria) landed next to us. Their first show, and practically our first, because we just saw them last summer opening for Black Crowes.

Opener was The Drams, three fifths of whom used to be Slobberbone. I regretted not checking out Slobberbone before, so this was redemption night, and we’d gotten the Drams album, which I’d listened to across Indiana on my way home from my Ohio Tour. It was pretty good. They were loud (duh, we were stage-side, on top of the monitors and with the amps pointed at us – I don’t mean to imply that the mix was loud, just that we were standing in a loud place) but enjoyable. I’d brought earplugs, but they make me feel strange and kind of disassociated. I think we’ll have to look into getting some more expensive ones out of a musician’s supply catalog and see if they work better; these were just foam cheapies.

After the Drams they moved the center pair of monitors apart so that Patterson (singer/guitarist) was just to our left and Shonna (bass) was a bit to our right. It was a bit too far, though; during the show he moved his stuff (yanking up tape and prompting a roadie to come help) because he was kind of jammed together on the left half of the stage.

I heard the people next to me talking about Beatle Bob: "I bet he gets onstage, he was onstage at the Flaming Lips." I knew it had to be him. I peered around but didn't see him ... but ten minutes later there he was, five people further down on the left, the one and only. Didn't get onstage, but he did have a good time.

Anyway, the Truckers were amazing. We were so close, we grinned the whole time, and they had so much energy and played so well (even though, as I said, we weren’t in the optimal place for sound; that’s the ‘being really close to the stage’ tradeoff). LOUD! So much enthusiasm. Their stage includes a velvet elvis and a velvet Jesus hovering over a semi truck. What’s not to love? Along with a big bottle of Jack Daniels that they share during the show. Especially Patterson. By the end they were all lit and Patterson was holding the bottle for the other band members. There were so many moments, eye contact, smiles, hand touches, practically moshing down there, screaming and singing even though I wasn’t supposed to because I need my lungs to live. I don’t know when I’ve seen J have such a good time, either. It was great. I’m happy when he’s happy. Great set list. Patterson at the end like if Bono were an unpretentious six-foot-fiver from Alabama all drunk and sweaty standing over us singing to the back of the house, with us leaning back away looking straight up at him and hoping he didn’t swing the mike stand and accidentally kill us. I actually ducked away from kicks. During the encore on his knees, yanking the mike cord and us all helping tilt the monitors to free it, screaming, holding the mike out for Canada Maria, and J, and then I, to scream back at him. J said later “Nobody’s ever screamed in my face like that; it was kind of weird.” But awesome. Screaming back at the top of my voice, feeling as sweaty and bold as he was. The kind of crowd interaction that just feeds the band, and the band feeds it back to the crowd, and the crowd gives it back again, and everything gets hotter and louder and drunker and bigger. Here’s a picture J found on flicker featuring the back of my head.



Set list:
1. Marry Me
2. Ronnie & Neil
3. Never Gonna Change
4. Feb. 14
5. Gravity’s Gone
6. Sinkhole (“damned if I wouldn’t go to church on Sunday and look the preacher in the eye”)
7. Goddamn Lonely Love
8. Do It Yourself
9. When the Pin Hits the Shell ("you can't lie to nobody with that cold steel in your face")
10. The Living Bubba
11. Moonlight Mile
12. Steve McQueen (“the baddest motherfucker on the silver screen”)
13. Dead, Drunk and Naked
14. Guitar Man Upstairs (“Think I’m gonna call the po-lice”)
15. The Day John Henry Died
16. Puttin’ People on the Moon (“Goddamned Bush is in the white house”)
17. Space City
18. Hell No, I Ain’t Happy (“but I ain’t too crappy!”)
19. Lookout Mountain
-encore-
20. Dress Blues
21. Let There Be Rock
22. Shut Up and Get On The Plane
23. Buttholeville (“never going back never going back never going”)
24. People Who Died (“they were my friends, and they fucking died! They fucking died!”)

They don’t make an actual set list (though I was in prime position to get one, if they did), they decide on the fly (although many of their shows do feature many of the same songs, so they have it in mind) without a lot of wasted time in between.

At the end when Patterson introduced Mike Cooley, Cooley just stood there drinking from the bottle and giving the room the finger while we applauded. One of the funniest damned things I’ve ever seen. Awesome.

Afterward, as I said, the venue doesn’t have the greatest floor plan for the band, but it’s great for the audience. The dressing room’s in a corner and its wall on one side and the edge of the stage on the other side make a kind of hallway. They have a security guy sit at the audience end, and if you want to meet the band you hang around there and hope they come out. But you’re so close, if the dressing room door opens you can call to them and see them and hopefully persuade them. That’s what we did, and they came out one at a time, Shonna first, she was so cute and sweet and totally held her own up there with the guys and why ever not? Go Shonna. EZB the drummer, Jason, then a pause. A couple of chicks had squeezed in ahead of us, but it wasn’t a line, it was like a circle. One of them kept telling the band it was her birthday would they PLEASE sign something? J brought the only sharpie anyone had, so birthday chick then would say “And it’s their sharpie so could you please sign for them too???” and we let everyone use the sharpie and it worked out well. Then I saw Patterson come out and I made eye contact and he saw us all and came over. He didn’t look so gigantic when he wasn’t towering over me on a three-foot stage. Hee. Something made him laugh, I forget, oh, J had a liner booklet and I was just having them sign my ticket, and it was so full when I handed it to Patterson that he just kind of looked at it, bemused, and I said, “You could initial it,” and he laughed a little and scrawled at it. Cooley was last and he turned it over to sign on the back because it was so full.

Also here’s the DBT fan message boards.

I think I’m kind of in love. But I don’t know with what, or whom. It was the best show I’d seen in so long, and J and I were just wrung-out exhausted after. After all the autographs and everything we limped back to the car and got to the hotel in minutes.

Next day we went back into the city and had lunch at Duff’s, my favorite restaurant in the whole world, then went window-shopping at a ‘centre’ we hadn’t been to before (high-end! Yikes!) and then came home.

My only regret really is that I didn't take a camera. I wasn't sure of the venue policy and they returned my e-mail too late. But it would've been a big distraction anyway. I was already keeping a set list, singing, moshing, standing, keeping track of our jackets and junk on the stage, breathing, yelling. I could've gotten some good ones, but me taking them with my camera, they wouldn't have been that good anyway. I'm just trying not to think about it so I'm not really pissed that I didn't take it. I said to J, next time I'm on the fence, just tell me to take it. sigh. Could've gotten a picture of me with Patterson!!

Halloweenfest

Friday night husband J and I went to the Jack-o'-the-Lantern event at Washington Park, a fundraiser for the Carillon Society. Here are some pictures:

scary face!






I never would have thought of this. loved it.






I loved this one too.


This one was a lot more impressive before we saw two others just like it and figured it must've been a pattern sold somewhere. But we respected it a lot before that.






This one cracked my shit up.

Ruthie Foster, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Bo Diddley, Oct. 17, 2006

The first opener was Ruthie Foster. Someone had given me a burned copy of one of her cds to prep with, but I didn't really love it. She had a good voice, but it was kind of soul gospel, which doesn't really trip me. (J called this the Keb' Mo' syndrome.) But in person, it was just her and an acoustic guitar. First of all, she could really play; she wasn't just someone who thinks of herself as a singer but has to accompany herself. Secondly, I loved her stage presence; she gave off a great, personable vibe with good, conversational rapport. Thirdly, great voice. And fourthly, her song choices were much more bluesy than I'd anticipated. She had me at Sister Rosetta Tharpe, really, but Brownie McGhee? Get outta town. Very nice. I wish her set had been longer, really.

Second was Alvin Youngblood Hart.
here's a picture:


J and I saw him open for B.B. King several years ago, but then he was doing an acoustic thing. This time he was electrified. I don't know whether he played with The Bo Diddley Band or whether his band also backed Bo, but it was the same band (including him). He was, again, really good. J and I both prefer his bluesier stuff to when he goes for a more straightforward rock sound. In particular, he did a mean version of "In My Time of Dying" dedicated to the late Freddy Fender. Good stuff.

After the break, Bo Diddley.
He began inauspiciously with pedal trouble. Strangely, it looked like he didn't have a guitar tech; the guy who came out to help is a local sound guy we know. (The place was crawling with local sound guys, actually.) He was funny, though. "I think it broke," he said, then shook his head. "A hundred and forty dollars."

Anyway, I try to cut an 80-year-old blues legend some slack. And for me the point was really to be in the same room with Bo Diddley while he's alive. The only comparable artists I've seen are B.B. King and Buddy Guy. B.B., I'd say, is physically more comparable to Bo; while obese rather than slim, he likewise sits the whole time, and his band carries a lot of the show. He does play more than Bo did, but his show is a big time kind of vegas production in some ways, very choreographed, including banter. Buddy Guy was physically vigorous and still able to play well, but he was ... instead of playing a bunch of songs, he'd play a song, then do a thing where he played and talked and made a medley and screwed around. Well, bo was like that, only much more so. If I'd really expected a lot of killer guitar playing, I'd have been sorely disappointed. He hardly played at all. He did talk a lot. From a non-legend perspective, it wasn't worth it at all. But I did 'see' Bo Diddley, and, well, I have a greatest hits cd when I need to really hear him. I just felt very sad afterward, and so did J. He seemed so old. I know he is old, but he really seemed like he should be retired. I hate to say that. sigh. stupid blues.

Here's a web site that's on tripod but looks like it wants to be his official site:
click and here's his wikipedia entry.

Here are a coupla pictures of him:

Old Crow Medicine Show and Wilco at Cincinnati's Tall Stacks Festival

I went on an Ohio road trip last weekend, and on Saturday my friend Shannon, her husband, and I went to OCMS and Wilco at festival last Saturday.

We got there and got a space not five minutes before the band before Wilco started. We were there for Wilco, but I rather like OCMS, so it worked well for me.

OCMS setlist (best I could do):

1. Cocaine Habit (aka Woody Guthrie's "Take a Whiff On Me")
2. (Johnny got your gun? unsure)
3. Down Home Girl
4. Big Time in the Jungle
5. Poor Man
6. Union Maid
7. (eastbound train? unsure)
8. God's Got It
9. I Hear Them All
10. Bobcat Tracks
11. Minglewood Blues
12. Wagon Wheel
13. Hard to Tell
14. Tear It Down
15. Band Intros/Tell It To Me
encore
16. (mother earth? unsure)
17. Hard to Love

Here's how far away we were:


J and I saw OCMS in St. Louis a couple of years ago opening for Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. We had their first - only, at the time - CD, which (like the new one) was produced by David Rawlings, and he sat in with their whole set when we saw them before, which was great. In St. Louis when they did band intros he introduced them by names of well-known St. Louis Cardinals past (baseball team), and I'd forgotten all about that until, in Cincinnati, he introduced them as great 70s Cincinnati Reds players and manager. hah. Anyway, they were as frenetic as ever, but their mellower stuff held up pretty well too. I couldn't listen to them every day, but I find that I'm more tolerant of some kinds of country music as long as it's not mainstream radio country ("hat music"). If it's alt.country or bluegrass or classic old monaural or folk-thrash, I can dig it. I think it's about the authenticity. Popular country music today is the suckiest of the most unauthentic music ever.

For Wilco we squirmed half again as close, I suppose. Visibility varied, but later I got a better view when things shifted around.
Wilco set list:
1. The Late Greats
2. A Shot in the Arm
3. (I know you're not listening? unsure.bad fan!)
4. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
5. War on War
6. Handshake Drugs
7. Jesus etc.
8. Walken
9. Airline to Heaven
10. Theologians
11. I'm the Man Who Loves You
12. Misunderstood
13. Forget the Flowers
14. Hummingbird
(encore)
15. Heavy Metal Drummer
16. (Carried Away? unsure/new?)
17. Kingpin

Or, if you're keeping score:
Four from A Ghost is Born
Five from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Three from Being There
A shocking mere one from Summerteeth
One from the Mermaid Avenue sessions (not California Stars, either!)
And possibly three new. Walken is definitely new (although they played it last time we saw them).

Anyway, despite our difficulties seeing, they were really on, and the older stuff and the brand new stuff all got as good responses as the last couple of albums stuff, so it's good. Crowd was really into it, musicianship was smoking. Wilco just does not disappoint. I dont' know how many times I've seen them now, must be going on half a dozen, and each time I'm reminded what a really, really great band they are. They're still doing that really huge thing at the end of "Misunderstood" - if you've seen them, you know. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! It's awesome. And I always love "Kingpin." They didn't do any truly old stuff - I like when they do New Madrid, and Casino Queen is always fun, but at a festival, short set, etc. Boy, now I want to see a whole night again soon.

Some bad, distant photos:














At the end, the crew was slow to come out, so I went down to try for a set list, thinking I'd still have a chance. No such luck, it was not to be, so I tried to get a picture of pedal board instead. No luck there either - couldn't get over the monitor.

Ah, at last I figure out how to get a title

Yeah. I'm dim. It's been that kind of week.

Eric Clapton/Robert Cray show

We saw Eric Clapton at the newly renamed Scottrade Center Monday, Sept. 18.

Set list
Pretending
I Shot The Sheriff
Got To Get Better In A Little While
Old Love (with Robert Cray)
Everybody Oughta Make A Change
Motherless Children

(sit down set)
Back Home
I Am Yours
Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Running On Faith

After Midnight (fast version)
Little Queen Of Spades
Further On Up The Road
Wonderful Tonight
Layla
Cocaine

Encore
Crossroads (with Robert Cray)


Some Links
Here are some reviews of the show, more like fan comments really.

Opener Robert Cray:
Robert Cray dot com.
Robert Cray in wikipedia

Eric Clapton dot com
Eric Clapton in wikipedia
Where's Eric? tour site

Eric's guitarists this tour:
Doyle Bramhall II
Doyle 2nd dot com (his official site)
Not to be confused with his father, drummer Doyle Bramhall
Doyle II in wikipedia

Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks dot com
Derek Trucks in wikipedia

I encourage you to have a visit to Derek's site in particular.

As you might know, Doyle is left-handed and plays lefty-strung-righty, which means that he just flips a right-handed guitar over instead of restringing it. So instead of playing a mirror image, he's playing upside down. It's disorienting to watch, because you know that you go here for higher notes, but Doyle goes there instead.

Derek Trucks, meanwhile, is pretty much the second coming as far as I'm concerned. He's a better guitarist than anyone else who was in the house, and that includes Clapton. While Doyle uses a huge pedal board, Derek plugs straight into the amp and basically plays with his brain. He doesn't use a pick, either. He's a savant. He ... he plays straight into you. You don't know with your brain that he's a great guitarist, you know it in the part of your spirit that's why you love music to start with. Get a video, find footage of him. Seriously.

(If you also know that he's the nephew of Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks and basically replaces Duane Allman, and if you know that Duane Allman played with Clapton for the Derek and the Dominos session, well it's getting to be a pretty small world out there.)

We were in the 19th row on the floor, which could've been worse. But boy, does it look further away from the pictures I took. I also shot just a little video on the down low, and I’ve uploaded the three-minute, 61,400k “Wonderful Tonight” (all but the first verse – sorry) (posted at the end of this post). Photobucket would NOT let me load the other video, which is the entirety of "Crossroads," at 6:42, 143,000k.

Okay. Robert Cray was awesome. He really has his own very distinctive tone, so buttery and sweet and yet bluesy. Delicious. He did at least "Phone Booth," "Poor Johnny," "I'm Walkin'," and "Twenty," and a couple more for a 35-minute set. "Twenty" in particular is not only a great song but was a very heartfelt rendition. He introduced it as a song about a young man who joined the military after 9/11 to try to avenge some of the acts of 9/11 but instead was sent to Iraq. heh. Well put, Bob.

Not too close.


A bit closer.


Closer still.


Okay. Eric. Eric's set was great; he never seemed like a geezer up there, and his playing was as ever. Derek's playing was a beautiful partner to Eric's, especially as in "Layla" when he played this lovely womanly slide part on top of Eric's part.

"Pretending" was a great opener. "I Shot the Sheriff" was fun and the two female backup singers were nice and, I don't know, kind of howley like Bob Marley's singers could be. "Motherless Children" was another standout. They broke down for a semi-acoustic sit-down set in the middle, in which "Running on Faith" was one of the kickers and Derek particularly stood out again. It's not that Doyle wasn't good, but he was a little ... withdrawn, maybe? He took his solos, but he never really seemed to bust out, he was a little quieter, and he turned his back to the audience quite a bit. Maybe a bad night?

Then a ripping "After Midnight" - everyone was boogeying! - a very nice Little Queen of Spades, electrified, not the acoustic version. I've always had a kind of soft spot for "Wonderful Tonight," even though it's kind of sappy. And closing the set with "Layla" - oh, beautiful! - and straight into "Cocaine" was just *flails wordlessly*. The break before the encore was a little long, and then the encore consisted solely of "Crossroads" with Robert Cray back out with the band.

Here are some pictures. Either my camera's just not good with the crazy lighting or else I don't know how to set it to compensate for the crazy concert lighting. I'm shooting without flash, which would be silly, but J thinks maybe the lens has to stay open too long or the lights just overwhelm the camera or something. Anyway.





Doyle, Derek, Eric


With Robert Cray


Can you see the big projection of Clapton's head on the backdrop?




And the “Wonderful Tonight” clip.

Bono and Larry get haircuts

Stolen from various places on the web. Bono’s new haircut looks pretty good.






Bono’s not the only one who got a haircut, though.


Historical record: Here’s what Bono looked like a year ago this week outside the United Center.


And here’s Larry a year ago this week.

It seems like so long ago, the U2 concerts in Chicago last year, but I remember it so vividly, too. Getting up before dawn to get to the United Center by 6 or 7 a.m., the sitting, the walking, the waiting, the cold, the hot, the thirst, the hunger, the uncleanliness, the thirst, the waiting, the exhaustion, the chills! The thrills!

Bob Dylan - New Yorker article

I was behind in my magazine reading, so I hadn't seen the thing in the last New Yorker about a collection of interviews with Bob Dylan coming out in book form.

The author (of the article) says that Dylan is, at least, a better interview than Elvis, because Elvis really just didn't have anything to say. But the thing about Dylan is, he lies. He lies like a dog. He also doesn't brook fools. But, of course, the other thing is that interviews used to be so much worse for musicians because the interviewers were a thousand years old and the music was new. I mean, you've seen the footage of interviews with the Beatles and Stones and Bob and everyone back then. Nobody in the media knew what to do.

(We saw a very funny example of this recently - a retrospective on drugs and pop culture and music, in which an interviewer asked Lou Reed whether, given that he made so many drug references in his songs, he himself used drugs. Perfectly straight, perfectly sincere, Lou replied that he was high on life, thank you very much. J and I nearly peed our pants laughing. It was nice not to hate Lou Reed for a minute.)

But back to the Dylan piece.

In one excerpt, from 1978, Bob talks about the "wild mercury" sound from Blonde on Blonde and before Highway 61, the Byrds and Beatles and "That ethereal twilight light, you know. It's the sound of the street with the sunrays, the sun shining down at a particular time, on a particular type of building. A particular type of people walking on a particular type of street. It's an outdoor sound that drifts even into open windows that you can hear. The sound of bells and distant railroad trains and arguments in apartment buildings and the clinking of silverware and knives and forks and beating with leather straps. ... All pretty natural sounds. It's water, you know water trickling down a brook. It's light flowing through the -"

Interviewer: "Late-afternoon light?"

Bob: "No, it's usually the crack of dawn. Music filters out to me in the crack of dawn."


And, at the end of the article, the author won my heart unreservedly:
"Dylan is also, despite the silly things people said about his voice when he started out, one of pop music's greatest vocalists. His chief weakness is a tendency to shout, particularly in performance (and he is, let us say, an inconsistent performer); but, when he is in control of the instrument, no one's voice, with that kind of music, is more textured or more beautiful. Ninety percent of musicianship is phrasing, and the easiest way to appreciate Dylan's genius for phrasing is to listen to him, on bootlegs or on the late albums of traditional songs, perform songs that he didn't write - "Folsom Prison Blues," or "People Get Ready," or "Froggie Went A-Courtin." He gets it all. When my children were little, we used to have a cassette around the house of songs for kids by pop stars, on which Dylan did "This Old Man" ("With a knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone"). That performance had the weight of the whole world in it. I listened to it a hundred times and never got tired of it. You can refute Hegel, Yeats said, but not the Song of Sixpence."

Ahhhhh.

Nature walk, wildlife pictures

Sunday we spent a wonderful morning at Lincoln Memorial Garden.

We saw and heard a number of the usual seagulls and woodpeckers that are too small or too far away to identify, your Canada goose, your probably-mallard ducks, and a little guy I remembered to look up when we got home - the white-breasted nuthatch, a cute little fellow. I showed J the picture in the book, and he confirmed. I noticed the markings on the head particularly; I think we saw a male. Then we were walking alongside the water and happened to come to an open space in the trees and look up just as a heron went by, not all that far away. They're so magnificent.

We saw spiderwebs aplenty, and walked through plenty of them too - ugh:




It was an absolutely beautiful day.


Guess it's a moth.


So bright!


The trails branch off a lot, and we were walking along when we both happened to glance to the left down a fork we were passing, and froze:


The trails made a kind of triangle; we were at one end, the deer was at another, and there were other people at the third point for a while, watching the deer too. We saw several of them, but not really grouped together for pictures. They totally knew we were there, but we were quiet and kept still, so they didn't worry too much.


We walked on, and they crossed the trail in front of us after awhile. From time to time after that we could see them through the trees, but eventually we parted ways, feeling very lucky. Deer here, while common, are fairly skittish. For a hundred-pound animal, I was struck, as always, by their slim legs and tiny little hooves, their nimble grace, and their quietness in the woods.