Pt. 2: Music is the God-Juice

I've seen pictures of Theo Katzman. He is not (in my personal opinion) a very photogenic man. But when he gets on stage, I can't take my eyes off of him. Here he is, on stage at the Ark, playing with his band Love Massive, and he draws us into the music. He's got the kind of good-natured stage presence that makes the crowd happy to stop half a minute into a tune because he started in a too-high key—we can just laugh about it, and get caught up again in the show. We can hear it all again without even mild complaint.

The music is full-bodied and—well—happy. The band balances out: Joe Dart grooving with his bass line, Mike Shea on the drums, and guest guitarist Tom Stoker completing the motion of the band. All of this fitting together, sounding like the music is meant to be this way, with Theo Katzman as the centerpiece.

They finished with the song 'Feel Love All The Time,' which starts off with the audience joining in on the chorus, and continues with lyrics that are everything I ask for. They work. They have meaning. They're effortless—and above that, they don't sound like they're being written for preschoolers with unending rhymes. In fact, they don't really sound like lyrics at all*:

Somebody called me a fag today
cause of the shoes I wear
They're the only pair I ever bought myself
They cost me a hundred bucks
and I was proud of it
cause I worked for that shit
but I didn't work that hard

It's all so easy—the way the band sounds like they do nothing besides jam together, the lyrics, the performance so laid-back but still full of energy. When the song is done and they leave the stage, the audience is up and applauding. We're wanting a last song, something to hold onto, and a little afraid the band wouldn't have any tunes left for an encore—but here they come, with that stage love, making jokes as they set up about being asked to play Mustang Sally at their last gig. And so we plunge in again, with a furious guitar solo from Stoker; Joe Dart loose-jointed and bobble-headed in all the right ways; Theo Katzman singing and playing guitar while moving in a compact, wild, inviting fashion.

I don't know how he does it—makes me feel so welcome, makes me feel like everyone in the room is welcome, while at the same time making me forget that there is anyone else on the stage. Intellectually, I know he's there with Love Massive, but I can't drag my eyes away from him long enough to watch Joe Dart play the bass, and I love watching that man play bass. This sounds bad, in an obsessive way, but I promise, it's only when I see him onstage.



*I once posted this as my facebook status, and people were asking me if I was traumatized by the experience, and what kind of shoes they were. Not a single person figured out that they were lyrics.

Pt. 1: Let's Hear That Again...

When I heard Hannah Winkler was opening for Theo Katzman & Love Massive at the Ark, I made sure (with a little begging and cajoling) that I would be there. Hannah is someone I've been running into at various shows around Ann Arbor for a while. The last time I saw her on stage, though, was as a supporting musician for Theo Katzman when they opened this year's Ann Arbor Folk Festival. She was bang-up then, but I wanted to see what she was up to on her own—and of course another chance to see Theo Katzman & Love Massive made the package perfect.

The line to get in the building at ten minutes to 8 meandered down the sidewalk. People in line were questioning whether we would get in, quoting a local myth that whoever opens the Folk Fest will sell out the Ark for their next performance. We all squeezed in, but the stage remained empty until more or less everyone found a satisfactory place to sit—I was tucked up in a corner with a good view of center stage and a couple minutes later, of Hannah and her guitar.

She's got a voice that shifted from sweet and nostalgic with an occasional wavering vibrato, to cutting and focused. Her voice sounded most comfortable when paired with her guitar, but the guitar sound was thinned out by the drummer and bassist backing her up. Things heated up when she switched from guitar to the heavier sound of the keyboard for a humorous tune based on the idea, 'I wish I were the kind of person who has their shit together'. (I wish I were that kind of person too...) The performance was rounded out when she was joined by Theo Katzman, providing accompaniment with some rather abrupt bottleneck guitar.

When she introduced the band, Hannah told the crowd this was the second time they'd played a show as a group. With Rob on drums and Jordan on bass, Hannah's group is still coming together. They've got a couple rough edges, but they're still playing some tunes that I sure would like to hear again.