One True Thing

Tylan, formerly of the folk-pop group Girlyman, played last night at Ann Arbor's Green Wood Coffee House (despite the large dangling cross, an intimate and meditative venue). She's on tour with her first solo album, 'One True Thing', a huge shift away from the three-part harmonies and stage banter of Girlyman. Not that Tylan has left Girlyman behind; she sang some tunes she wrote for the band, and her melodic style very much defined what Girlyman did in the past and what Ty is doing solo now. She even began with a Girlyman song, “Empire of Our State,” which jarringly pushed my memories of familiar Girlyman harmonies against the reality of Tylan playing it alone on stage.

After playing that first tune solo, Tylan was joined by Ingrid Elizabeth of Coyote Grace, a bass player who also happens to be Ty's “steady date.” Without her, I think I would have missed full sound of Girlyman much more than I did; she helped fill in the sound I remember from other recordings.

Sometimes you listen to music on your iPod or in your car or on the radio, and it's evocative of a certain perspective. Seeing the same music performed live, even by the same musician, adds layers of meaning. Maybe it's because roots musicians tend to feel the need to expand on what they're already expressing with their music; even if only the 'Cliff Notes version' of a song: “Getting screwed over sucks more when it's done by someone who's awesome.” Or because musicians rarely play a tune exactly as it is on their album. Or there's something to that live show experience, something about the way the sound waves move; the intangible interaction between the audience and the performer that seems nonsensical because the audience only offers laughter, applause, whoops—nonverbal cues—in return to the performer's words and music. Whatever it is, I have come away with a changed idea of this album. Each tune has become clearer, more distinct. The meaning I draw from them has become more complex, layered with not just my own interpretation but the way the Tylan presented them. 

“House Song,” a truly sad song, she introduced by saying, “Have you ever been in a couple's house where everything screams 'We're going to break up?'” She didn't often play this song, she said, because people would want to know if everything was okay—but she wrote it about someone else. Now, I can't separate her presentation of the song from my experiencing it. This, I think, is part of why folk singers appeal to us sitting in the audience. We take their joy and suffering, the memories they offer us, and appropriate them so that these musicians become friends sitting for a chat and a cup of tea at our kitchen table. I have seen Ty perform at least seven times that I can think of, and Ingrid twice before tonight. I gossip about them, about Girlyman with my friends: Ty's relationships, Girlyman's break-up, band member Doris's cancer, new album Kickstarters. And yet, as much as we may feel that we know these people on a personal level, they don't know us as individuals—even as they make us feel welcome and appreciated at every show. 

Tylan finished her show with a tune from one of Girlyman's earlier albums, “Young James Dean.” Dealing with being treated differently for being gay, for dressing dapper, for stepping outside traditional gender roles, I think this song must still resonate with moments of Ty's life after years of being sung. After all, she introduced it by telling a story about being told she used the wrong public restrooms until she started wearing a pink barrette in her hair so people would know without any doubt she was a girl. A barrette that she happened to have in her pocket. 

  

It's odd, being on the wrong side of the mirror from someone. You end up knowing so much about them, and they wouldn't recognize you if you lived next door. Isn't that still magical, though? To love the art that someone gives the world? To embrace a new perspective? I like to think so.

Some Glad Afternoon

'Bluegrass' is what we heard, 'free concert by the ocean.' So we studied our maps, finding Golden Gate Park, and we went.

“So many hippies,” my friend Jordan said, his voice shocked and low.  “So many hipsters.” So much plaid, so much pot, so much 'stach. We were standing between the two stages of the Warren Hellman Public Celebration, a free concert honoring a man who brought about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. There were people crammed everywhere, people sitting down and chatting, people on the beach, people with children and cameras.

The music blasted over us through an impressive set of speakers, but the maker (Steve Earle) was only a tiny, blobby figure on a far-away stage, discernible only because I could see the flashing of his guitar as he swayed back and forth with his music.  Even with the proximity of being at this location, it was difficult to believe the music I could hear was the same music that was coming from Steve Earle's living, breathing, guitar-strumming self.

When he finished his set, we all drifted and shifted to the stage on the other side for a similar performance from Buddy Miller; I didn't feel that deep and abiding attraction to any musician until I shoved and sneaked my way up the side just so I could see the stage. 

I was just in time to see Gillian Welch, with her partner David Rawlings, wondering to her listeners what tunes would go well with their matching sequined outfits.  She looked tiny on that stage, but not so lost from my sight that I couldn't connect her to the tunes she played: "Elvis Presley Blues," "Look at Miss Ohio," "The Way It Goes."  I marveled at how the notes and chords fitted together so well; how they were both familiar and strange to my ears.  To finish it off, EmmyLou Harris joined them. They offered up that old gospel tune “I'll Fly Away,” and even over the added voices of the audience, the sound had a beautiful sense of intimacy.

 To see as well Old Crow Medicine Show from that distant but workable vantage point was another pleasure of the day.  To be drawn into their onstage energy, their high-fuel performance, as if life and music were a freight train destined to crash—known to be destined to crash, and pushed to a greater speed despite that knowledge, was incomparable in experience to any of their recordings I have heard.  They played some fast, fast tunes, and of course they played “Wagon Wheel,” (you've probably heard it: “Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel,”)...they played, too, a tribute to Whitney Housten and another to Warren Hellman.  What makes OCMS remarkable (besides front-man Ketch Secor's Virginian accent) is their rough-edged force, which draws in people like some of the friends I've come with, for whom OCMS is the only recognizable name on the bill.

I'm sorry to say that public transportation schedules made me leave then, to the sound of Robert Earl Keen.  My feet ached from standing for hours, but I would have stayed if I could; there was still more music to be heard.

Problems

I came to San Francisco to see the San Francisco Symphony play a heart-filling piece written by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886: his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 78, the Organ Symphony. They played, too, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Opus 40, and Prelude to Act I of Die Gezeichneten by Franz Schreker. These were bonus pieces for me; I had never heard of them before sitting down in the Davies Symphony Hall for the pre-performance music talk.

The problem with talking about orchestral music is that if I talk about the theory or the history of the music, it doesn't mean much in terms of the sheer emotional qualities that are present in performance. So while I can tell you that, interestingly, Rachmaninoff had hands about a thumb longer than the average hand, and so his music can be physically challenging for pianists of today, it tells you very little about the way you would hear the sound—the way it would impact your body, your soul...whatever it is that makes up the collection of you when you experience a glorious piece of music.

Conversely, if I can only tell you that the music I heard was beautiful (it was) or deeply moving (it was that too), you will no notion of the magnificence of the full orchestra: the sound of thirty violinists playing a figure, and the low brass adding emphasis with the string basses, all while the rest of the orchestra offers multiple other voices and rhythms so that you, listening, have no notion of exactly how many different parts are coming together to create this linear movement from one moment to the next. And that movement is where what we hear is no longer just noise, but music, and everything we think of music as being.

So I will distill my evening down to a single moment for you. I am looking down a long distance to the stage, watching the full orchestra: the bows of the violins moving as if they are all drawn by the same hand; the the bells of the trumpets and trombones flashing as they are raised, and a moment later, lowered; the conductor's arms and baton creating continuious, inclusive motion that brings each musician together so we, listening, are only aware of the culminated effect even as we can see so many musicians playing. Then—the organ sounds, the strings play that line, the woodwinds have gone all tinkly, the brass rises above the rest and I can feel my skin as though it is disolving cell by cell into the sound. It is induplicatable—this feeling is the reason why I come and sit in a hall full of other people, just to hear the crashing of music against me, to feel again a little like I felt the first time I thought I knew what love meant.

Lovely, Magnificent, Wonderful

I've been serving my country with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.  It's a wonderful experience, but sometimes music—and internet—is difficult to come by.  So even though this performance happened way back in November, I'm putting this memory out there.  It was one of those nuggets of civilian life that reminds me of where I was before I joined NCCC, and what I'm looking forward to returning to this fall.

November 11, 2011

The venue is Raw Space, a coffee shop with a beer and wine license and a nice little stage behind the storefront that looks like it should be next door, but isn't. The town is Ellensburg, Washington, home of Central Washington University and its cello studio.

There's four of them, opening for Ashia Grzesik.  I can tell they are unseasoned, still students by their general inability to hear how their individual parts fit with the other individual parts, how the chords are structured and balanced—but after all this time, it's so lovely, magnificent, wonderful to hear music that isn't pop, music that is live and tangible—the different voices of each cello so distinct, each player's fingers moving over the fingerboard—music that isn't overplayed or disagreed upon or disliked, dismissed by one or another team member when the eleven of us are crammed in the van.

And then the stage clears, and an accordion player begins a tango-esque duet with a violinist—they are the only bodies on stage: this long, skinnylegged girl and this happy accordion-playing man, alone, until Ashia comes on, stepping carefully—artfully—from the back of the stage, black-gloved hands moving so the walk becomes a dance, a flourish, a visual invitation.  She sits down, pulls off her gloved fingers one by one—the first hand her left, the bow hand—helped by the right hand, the right hand fingers, one by one, with her teeth because her bow is already in her left hand—she imagines her glove as a violin, stretched from her hand to her mouth, bow moving back and forth over it—she flings it down—the music—the music!

I can hear the gaps in her voice, the river-like flow of her (in)articulation—the steadiness of her cello in her hands as she plays, head tipped back in song.  Cello, accordion, and violin, rushing onwards through love songs and Poland songs and blame songs. In between Ashia is gesturing, telling stories with her hands. She speaks of farmers and bison and a square window in a square house holding a grandmama with World War II cars, stories, and the the best pirogies, the best pirogies...

The songs run together, beautiful and sure—but the stories—she tells them with her hands and face, ribcage and toes, everything expanding from that tiny, lipsticked mouth to us, her audience.  We are giving and she is giving. In this polite venue, I can smile in gleeful silence, wrapped up in the music, the concept of performance and vibrations and time over space.  The things I have missed so much since coming to AmeriCorps NCCC, the things that kind people like the biologist on this project, Scott, bring to our lives because making the world better happens in so many, many ways.

Impressions

Here we are again at The Ark, Xanthe and I in the dark while the stage is brightly lit. We came for Orpheum Bell, but first onstage are the Red Sea Pedestrians. I've heard their CD, and it was ok, it was nothing better or worse than most of the CDs that come through my hands, but I can't match what I heard before I came and what I am seeing onstage. It's hard to know what to expect-maybe plain, upstanding music; you could call them plain, upstanding people by the way their jeans fit, the way banjo player Ira Cohen wears a full-beard like a miner from long ago, the way the two woman are a little careworn and haven't 'done' their hair.

But then they begin to play, and any comparisons I thought I was going to make seem unfair--the music is fast, complicated, modal--maybe eastern European in influence. I want to call their sound steampunk, though Xanthe says steampunk would probably require more organ, or possibly accordian. They have a fiddler, Cori Somers, although I'm tempted to say she's using more classical technique, fancy fingerwork and no folky double-stops. And the clarinet player, Rachel Flanigan-I've heard worse clarinetist who studied for years in college. They mix together a moment of rock drumming with something more folky. Tarantella. Mazurka. A song about Julius Caesar, and Rome. Another about the seances Houdini's wife would hold on Halloween every year after his death. Still another about The Harrison Act, which banned laudenum, this in Ira Cohen's quavery voice. The tunes had humor, balance, talent. It carried you through the mediocre voices--untrained, maybe unused to singing--and the mildly unfocused and unprofessional--disjointed, even--banter between tunes, through to the hand-clapping, foot-stomping end.

So You've Probably Heard of Him...

One of the first enthusiastic mentions of Trombone Shorty came from a friend who once told me that jazz was music for intellectuals. While Trombone Shorty isn’t strictly jazz—he’s more closely aligned with funk, and the production of his album Backatown is, in my opinion, very much pop-influenced—he is rooted in the traditions of New Orleans*, and jazz.

I’m thinking about this, sitting in my seat at the Power Center after the Macpodz have left the stage—a high-energy performance that just didn’t draw me in; I took more note of trumpet player Ross Huff’s badly fitted pants than I did the music—and then the lights are coming down and Trombone Shorty’s band, Orleans Avenue, is trouping onstage. Two sax players: Tim McFatter on tenor, and Dan Oestreicher on bari. Two percussionists: Joey Peebles and Dwayne “Big D” Williams. Bass player Michael Ballard. Guitarist Murano. And then finally, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews himself, with a trumpet in one and hand and a trombone in the other, both stretched high over his head in a triumphant greeting.

The crowd adores him, and when he starts to play I am surprised at his tone, his technique. He’s moving so much air through his horn, but the tone is still clear. I could go on—about how his tonguing is so crisp, it’s like having a door shut in your face, about the force of his sound—but despite his chops, he’s almost more of a showman than a brass player. He’s captured the audience with sheer stage presence. They’re standing up in their seats, crowding towards the front, dancing, clapping, shouting.

The band does “Let’s Get It On,” and “On The Sunny Side of the Street,” plus tunes from the album, including “Suburbia.” They take turns soloing, throw in a moment or two of free jazz stylings and Dixieland, and wind things up with that well-recognized tune “Shout.” Trombone Shorty gives each member time to shine, but a bari sax doesn’t always cut through the drumkit, and no matter how great the solo, we’ve all heard more guitar in our lives than probably any other instrument. It’s Trombone Shorty everyone is watching.

Ask a low-brass fanatic to name a famous trombone player, and they’ll probably say Christian Lindberg or Joseph Alessi. Ask a jazz junkie, and the answer is likely to be Tommy Dorsey, J.J. Johnson, or Jack Teagarden. The trombone player is generally not a huge phenomenon, but Trombone Shorty is nothing less than a superstar. And that, as a trombone player myself, is something I just cannot get my head wrapped around. Trombone Shorty, superstar.


*Jazz isn’t the only kind of music to be found in New Orleans. There’s blues, zydeco, Cajun, and more. But think Jazz Fest, second lines, and its reputation as the ‘birthplace of jazz’ (which takes, to say the least, a simplistic view of jazz history).

It's Called Innovation

My friend Xanthe is at the root of this, really. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have gone to the Ark's Folk Festival and seen The Paper Raincoat the first time. If I hadn't seen them at the Folk Fest, I wouldn't have ended up sitting at one of the Ark's front-row-and-to-the-side tables while Xanthe tells us that, according to facebook, Vienna Teng might be making an appearance.

Vienna Teng, if you're unfamiliar, is a musician currently residing in Ann Arbor. Alex Wong, the male half of The Paper Raincoat equation, refers to her as, “our famous friend, Vienna Teng.” But that's later. We're still waiting for the stage to light up and The Paper Raincoat to come out. There's a keyboard and a drumset, a guitar and several microphones set up, along with several other instruments.

And then here they are: Alex Wong and Amber Rubarth. The Paper Raincoat, joined by drummer Kevin Rice. On this stage, we are intimately familiar with them, although to see us, they have to ask for the house lights to come up—a bad idea if you're going to get nervous, but Alex and Amber handle this polite Ann Arbor audience with aplomb.

In their tunes, The Paper Raincoat often repeat instrumental lines as a first layer. I'm watching Alex Wong doing this with a set of bells balanced on arm, hitting the same notes again and again, but the exchange between a mix of instruments and the two vocal lines, aided by excellent and conscious drumming on the part of Kevin Rice, keeps us from yawning. There are the changes in sound, when one hand reaches out from guitar or piano or bells and adds something new. There’s the overtones of their voices, the striated complexity of Amber's voice against Alex's stable simplicity. We are listening because we want to know—what next? It’s the same set of voices and instruments, but we want to know how the sounds can be taken apart and put together again.

For the last tune, they leave any external instruments behind. All three stand together at the front of the stage and turn their bodies into music, with a cappella vocals and the percussion of their hands. It’s a novelty tune, capturing the wide-eyed darlingness of the group in one go. We clap when they’re done, drawing Alex and Amber back to the stage, and we clap more when Vienna Teng is invited to join them for the encore, a sweet and communicative tune from before they were The Paper Raincoat. From my perspective, the show begins and ends with their famous friend. Although she brings deeper virtuosity with her piano skills, The Paper Raincoat gives us a complete experience on their own.

You Fall In

The band Photographers was, for me, a period of impatient waiting before Breathe Owl Breathe walked on stage. For all that, it's impossible to say something about this show without saying anything about the Photographers as the opener.

With four bodies on stage, we only saw the faces of two, Maren Celeste and John Hanson. She's the only one facing the audience head-on, but her microphone covered her face and her nervous hands told more of a story than the phrases falling from her mouth. Her vowels sat high-tongued in her mouth; her wobbly vibrato blended each word into the next. We saw Hanson too, a sideways profile facing Maren Celeste; a sapling voice lost in the electronic sounds of the band. Hidden behind them, a girl tapped out continuous vibraphone patterns, and a man worked his way around what looked like it was some kind of electric piano. Everything was electronically driven, including the vocals, creating a sound-scape of effects and instruments. Very frustratingly, this made any natural sounds indistinguishable from their machines. I don't go to the Ark to hear machines. I go to hear music, and the stories behind them.

Which isn't to say that machines are useless. Breathe Owl Breathe combined electronics and traditional instruments to great effect. Andrea Moreno-Beals played her cello or the drums, Micah Middaugh switched from guitar to his “keyboard calculator,” and Trevor Hobbs sat behind his drumset with a stick in one hand and the other fiddling around with some kind of equipment. The sound was constantly changing in intriguing ways. All valid reasons why Breathe Owl Breathe is great to listen to on CD.

What's missing from a CD, though, is the infinite humor that comes with a live show. More than the moments when the audience was invited to join in by clapping or singing, more than Andrea's gorgeous cello lines that the tunes were so often built on, what drew me to this performance was the promise the stories so evident in their music. Add to that the quirky little dances—like the one for Saber Tooth Tiger—and the hats and other props the group likes to use...well, I just want to squee about it, loudly, all over the internets. I'm told that it would entirely un-objective, but I have to say that objectivity here isn't exactly the point. The point is—they danced! they had props! the music was inventive and well-played!

And the stories were like bottomless pits: you fall in, and you fall in, and you fall in.

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.

Things That Matter

This is a confession: I know Mike Ball, of a local trio going by the tag Dr. Mike and the Sea Monkeys. I know Mike pretty darn well. I've watched fireworks from his back deck, cruised the lake in his boat, and I blush every time he tells people how fantastic I am. I've heard nearly all the songs he'll be playing tonight with the Sea Monkeys, Scott Clauser and Bert Franco.

He's the only person who has ever written a song for me. Well, sortof for me. Granted, it's called the Slushnugget Blues, and it's not about me at all—it's about the things you find when the snow melts. Like boxer shorts and lipsticked phone numbers. Still—I have my own song, and Mike promised to play it for me tonight.

So I might be a little bit biased when I say that Mike puts on a good gig. Here’s the trick, though—what I’m writing isn't about Dr. Mike and the Sea Monkeys being extraordinary musicians, or impossibly funny. It's not about Mike's column, 'What I've Learned So Far,' which inspired a number of his tunes.

It's about kids.

Incarcerated kids, actually, and a program called Lost Voices. Lost Voices takes roots music to incarcerated kids—kids who have done some truly horrendous things—and by having them examine what's on their minds and putting it to music—hey presto! we’ve got personal growth and healing. It’s not as simple as that, but changes in a body’s life and direction never are.

Mike’s telling the audience about Lost Voices as an introduction to a song that was written by the kids he’s worked with, a blues tune that turns his voice growly and broad. It’s a change from the light John Prine tune he started with—something about peaches and level-headed dancers. He’s moved into a unified vision of a what-happens-next world, where kids that have spent time lined up in yellow shirts are stepping out and thinking,

In and out of locked doors
Same old song and dance
This time’s gotta be different;
Ain’t gonna be another chance.

It’s a story—the story, maybe—that a lot of the incarcerated kids live. It’s scruffy and painful—it’s the story that should bring you to the Concert for Lost Voices next week on August 27th, because before the ending of a story can change, there has to be someone that sees another way out.

It’s a point Mike returns to throughout his concert—but not where he stays. With Bert Franco standing solidly on the bass line, and Scott Clauser on mandolin or second guitar, Mike works his way through classic tunes like ‘The Weight’ from The Band, and ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ from Muddy Waters. He throws in tunes he’s written, about still having most of his hair, or about dogs and husbands being there to stay. The favorite—or the most offensive—is a tune he wrote about getting a colonoscopy (“It’s a polyp, not a trollop!”). His voice switches between the gravely tone he took with the first Lost Voices tune and a clown-y, higher-hanging voice that twangs.

I’m laughing and clapping and mouthing along with the words (remember, I’ve heard these all before). That is, until Mike is saying, “Here’s the last tune, thanks for coming out tonight, I hope I’ll see you at the Concert for Lost Voices next Friday,” and he hasn’t played Slushnugget Blues for me. People are folding up their chairs and leaving, or shoving their pontoon boats away from the shoreline, and I’m still waiting for that song. I’m giving Mike a look that makes him reach for his guitar and sing me a song. Everything around us is being packed up, but Bert picks up a second guitar to slide out some chords behind Mike—we’re standing on our own square footage of music, and it’s being played just for me.

Rooted Deeply

I’m up in Whitmore Lake tonight, catching a performance of Cats and the Fiddler at the Northfield Township Area Library. It’s an always favorite place, spiced up tonight by a spot of bluegrass music on the lawn. Cats and the Fiddler is an unexpected group—a trio of fifteen-year old musicians.

Fifteen-year old musicians playing bluegrass—bluegrass!—and playing it with skill. They’re rooted deeply into an older America, evoked by their instrumentals and traditional folk tunes. Even their own tunes, where a man might spend his life shoveling coal, or Jezebel is sinning again, have a feeling of being older than the years these musicians can lay claim to.



Photo courtesy of Mike Ball.

I'm watching Carmen Gibes. Her fingers are flicking out over the instantly recognizable sound of the banjo—pausing for a moment to let Shaun Richardson's guitar rest up against the sound of his twin brother James’s upright bass—the upright bass pulling the music along through the basic, constant patterns of chord changes—then her fingers are moving again, and her voice is rising over the sound of the instruments, joined in close harmony by both boys. They’re playing tunes with the tricky tumbling of the mandolin instead of a guitar, guitar instead of banjo, fiddle instead of mandolin, each instrument counterbalanced against the other. The licks pass quickly, but with space enough for a finger-flying solo, a change in color and tone and texture, a patch of walking bass from James instead of simple chord foundations.

And then—besides the mesmerizing, busy fingers plucking music from too many strings—James is singing lead, his voice loose and young against the crisp twang of the mandolin, Shaun and Carmen vining their voices around his. The tune ends—pause for a moment—here is Shaun with his fiddle. He’s got a clear toe-tapping sound for a train-whistle tune—and then again, faster!

We slow down for the story of the band told through the tune ‘Road to Nashville.’ It’s instantly relatable, sweet and singable (if only I knew the words!). They’ve told us their story between tunes, how they began playing music, making the switch to bluegrass at age six…how they’ve been a band ever since (the math on that puts Cats and the Fiddler at nine years old). Here, they’ve put the words to the tune, invited us to step closer and watch them grow.

They’ve got a few last tunes for us, including one of my favorite traditional folk-tunes, ‘The Fox’ (otherwise known as ‘The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night’) and a gospel tune or two. Shaun is whispering to James and Carmen, and I’m surprised when they finish up with an instrumental—but with improvisation. The high, bright sounds of the mandolin spill from Shaun’s hands—Carmen goes at it with her three-finger picking style on the banjo while he switches out to guitar—James gives us a straightforward bass solo—and then suddenly, unexpectedly, the show is over. The air is bluegrass-less. I am holding on to my inner echoes, and my feet are taking me home.

This performance took place August 6, 2010.

Part II: Pretty Boys & Noise

The Macpodz are setting up on stage, empty minutes after Groove Spoon's set. I am remembering walking through Top of the Park a few years ago during a performance of theirs—but their music escapes me. My memory of that night is taken over by My Dear Disco and a view of those multi-colored lights thrown against Rackham Hall as seen from the top of a parking structure. There’s another dim-lit memory, too, of band-member Ross Huff playing some very sweet trumpet for Charlene Kaye at The Ark. And of course, the far more recent memory of bassist Brennan Andes pulling strings next to Groove Spoon’s Joe Dart. So here’s tonight, only I’m going to tell you this story in flashes.

There’s something here—I’m searching for the underlying beat, bass line, rhythm only to realize that my feet have caught it before the rest of me. There’s my friend Adam on one side and his twenty-month old son on the other (the ultimate excuse to dance, no matter what the music, is a small child) and we are in a whirling, hand-holding circle—and somehow there has to be less noise and more rhythm closer to the ground because our feet are lifting and falling, we’re speeding along without stumbling—

—I’m watching the keyboard player, a neatly-kept boy by the name of Jesse Clayton, watching his fingers following the patterns of broken chords, over and over and over. He draws it on, two hands and so many keyboards, changing the chord but still in the same outline until I lose the sense of any chords. There’s repeated noise but I can’t hear what it means to the music, where it fits against the drums and the bass and the lonely overcome trumpet. All of these instruments are up against each other and covering up the sound—I can’t tell if these boys are forgetting what is important or if they are just too caught up in the space of the stage, in their own individual places, to find a balance—

—and then—there’s a bit of quiet. For the flute—which, by the way, would be way easier to hear through a bunch of noise than a trumpet due to its higher frequency—the flute in the hands of Nick Ayers. He’s beat-boxing and fluting at the same time, a neat little trick that brings the rest of the band down. It’s a touch of relaxation, a spot away from the tense, obsessive rocking out.

The end of the night—there is an end of the night, where I am exhausted and pulling my arms against the dark skies and bright lights of Top of the Park—comes with a tired-sounding Ross Huff and a bassist promising to jam until they get kicked off the stage. Andes is still wildly energetic, playing his bass with half a sneer (he must practice that too, I am thinking) and pulling the Macpodz into a messy, extended jam session. My boundaries are breaking apart; I leave. The pretty boys are staying on stage (despite the long hair and attempts at grunge, yes, they are a bunch of pretty pretty boys). I’m staggering away and I can hear Andes’ voice going flat as he sings the only recognizable lyrics of the performance: “Up on High Street…”

This performance took place July 9th at Top of the Park.

Part I: Did I Mention We're In Space?

Groove Spoon.

Say it out loud.

Say it again.

Grooooove Spooooon.

Listen to that lovely assonance, the way each word centers around the same vowel sound. The way it suggests something smooth and funky. Something fruity-flavored and fun to dance to. Something a little—I shouldn’t say it—groovy.

There’s no help for it. That’s the proper word. Groove Spoon is a funk band finding something a little behind the times, a little chunky and outdated, and making it part of today. Not ten feet from me is a couple wearing matching shirts, colored by hand to say ‘The Bump Is Back’. They are touching hip to hip every other beat, changing angles, never out of step, thinking back to a dance and a time before me. The rest of us—too young or uncoordinated to remember a dance with identifiable 'moves'—we shake our hips and shimmy and swing our arms about. We get lost in a transition between the past and present.

We're listening for the voice of Antwaun Stanley, and the something about it that says, 'This is the music and this is the love. It's yours and mine together.' It’s a side effect of Stanley’s on-stage magnetism and charm, bolstered by back-up singers Emily Berman and Hannah Winkler. They discreetly pull his presence away from the edge of narcissism while adding their own impressive style. Behind them in a purple Lakers jersey, drummer Jack Stratton holds my attention with the wacky, seemingly-panicked faces and strange extra vocals while simultaneously playing the drums without loosing his rhythm or overwhelming the other parts of the band.

In this ten-piece band, there’s also a little section standing off to the side at the front. There’s a sax, a trombone, and a trumpet (borrowed, I hear, for this performance) collectively known as The Corporate Brass. They’re in shirt and tie, conspicuously straight-laced compared to the rest of the band. They’re making good sounds, adding that brassy element that brings an element of brightness to the group. The sax player is making his mark on the musical landscape—but despite their nice tones, the two brass players are taking a back-shelf approach. They’re not loosening themselves from the black and white of the page to make themselves part of the performance. But, you ask, isn’t that why they’re The Corporate Brass? Maybe. I just want them to be more like the bass player, Joe Dart.

He’s cached in with the rest of the rhythm section, the meaty, bony structure of the band, hidden under the skin. He’s not making himself obvious or moving in flashy ways—he’s just playing his bass with a nonchalant, good-natured enjoyment. That, and playing a bass-line I can’t stop listening to, even with its often-repetitive nature. It might just be funk, or talent, or a combination thereof; but he’s holding the band to the ground with the ever-present, underlying swagger of his bass. His moment to show us what he can comes when the bass player from the Macpodz came up for a bass-off. It’s a moment replete with high-energy bass licks that rarely get have a chance to get aired—and then he’s right back to jamming in the basement of the funk house that is Groove Spoon. (Did I really just write that sentence? Yes I did.)

So say it: Groove Spoon. They have flash and solidity; they've got a bass line I could listen to over and over. They're a part of today and a time when people thought the song 'September' by Earth, Wind and Fire was more than just a bad pep band cover. It's a band that I enjoyed, and as their t-shirt states, “would recommend listening to in most situations.”

This performance took place July 9th.

We Live In The Same Town...

The crowd at Top of the Park tonight is small, straggling in from places that are safely roofed and away from the rain. There are college students emerging from the beer tent, and some stodgier types wiping off the chairs to sit down. Erin Zindle has maracas in her hands and her voice is pulling people from the damp folding chairs to the open space in front of the stage. The Ragbirds are a band with a lot of rhythm, and 'Jump In The Line' (more familiarly, perhaps, as 'Shake Sonora' from the end of the movie Beetlejuice) is a tune that makes a body want to dance. The two sets of drums—one very African looking, the other a traditional drum-set—are full of propulsion; with the bass, they produce the rhythmic pulse that is the underlying structure of the tune. Around me there are loose limbs, arms and legs and hips moving in response.

There are other songs, other moments in this performance where I am unable to escape the rhythm and the dusky sound of Erin Zindle’s voice. She is the catalyst here, a presence full of verve and joy, lighting up the unadorned but serviceable lyrics. Singing with a violin under her chin or a mandolin in her hands, her voice is bouyant, balanced, and touched with fluff. A butterscotch smile up on stage, she is supported vocally by the harmonies of guitar player T.J. Zindle and bassist Dan Hildebrandt. She's the recognizable face of the Ragbirds, with a seemingly endless supply of energy and enthusiasm spilling into her performances, which is especially noticeable when it's live.

There's an explanation for the Tarantella, offered up by Erin Zindle before the song is begun. It's a folk dance originating in Italy, meant to rid oneself from a spider's poison by a fast and wild dance. The Ragbirds, drawing on one of their many cultural influences from around the world, created their own version that begins with a draggingly slow introduction—but I can feel the moment approaching when the tempo will pick up. Erin caught the attention of the listeners with her short explanation, and they are swaying in close attention, waiting for that faster tempo. When it comes, the whirl of dancers starts to move. The tempo speeds up, and control of my body is given over to the experience of the music coming frantically off the stage.

At Top of the Park, the Ragbirds are in their home territory. Despite an apparent propensity to travel, Ann Arbor is their base. With Ypsilanti only a few steps to the east, it’s only natural to hear their ‘Ypsilanti Song’ at this performance. It’s catchy, with repeating rhythms and words; but what makes it near and dear to me is the silly reason that Ypsilanti is my current hometown. It’s not as charming if I’m hearing it via video or performance—the human element is missing, and the beat doesn’t fall as insistently against my collarbones—but who doesn’t want to be sung a song about their hometown by a cutely-pigtailed woman with that blend of rhythm behind her?

This performance was July 8th, 2010.

Give Up The Fight: In Memory of Thad Bawkon

“You wake up to a thousand lights”—my sleeping consciousness hears instead the words, 'a thousand lies'. It doesn't matter; her voice pulls me into the morning, past alarm clocks and my arms flailing at my electronics. I'm listening to the Ultrasounds, and Sara Griffin is singing the tune 'After You Close Your Eyes'. She's playing drums too, balancing the possibilities of noise and subtleties against Patrick Betzold on guitar and Christopher Smith on bass and piano. They're driving me out of bed with the words, “we are all we are,” and something that feels like energy is traveling up my arms in spikes.

This is a CD to wake up to. The second nine-track album for this Ann Arbor-based band, Give Up The Fight has a number of bold, almost distorted tunes that still hold a clear solidity at their center. 'For Elliott', a tribute song to Elliott Smith, is dark and brooding. Written about, and to, a man whose image fits into the mood of this song, 'For Elliott' shimmers with Christopher Smith on vocals, piano, and bass. It invites stillness, the kind where I sit down with my shoes halfway on and forget to tie the laces while inadvertently memorizing the lyrics.

Then there's another one of Sara's songs, called 'I'm Always Right,' moving along in an easy, almost rustic style. There's a certain innocence about her voice, and the way she sings the first lines, “Eighteen on the dot—you think that's a lot,” that puzzle-pieces right into the old, jangly piano and the violin provided by Mark Wallace. The simplicity of this short tune makes it instantly familiar, an old friend saying hello.

The album finishes off with the bonus track, 'All The Things We Did Today.' This is the last song—the song to leave on—the song that makes me late to work because I can't make my feet walk out the door before it ends. The drum-beat is electronic, but don't worry, Sara's still there, adding her voice to Smith's. They're sounding a little wistful, a little nostalgic—at odds with some of the earlier, more brazen tunes on the album, like 'Life On The Wire' and '1974'. The song isn't happy or sad, exactly—when it finishes I am moody and thoughtful, and wanting more.

The half-hour length of this album makes it perfect for my morning routine—or it would if I could refrain from stopping the process so I can listen to the next line, the next stanza, the next song. All of the tracks are worth taking the three or five minutes to hear them—but why not go listen for yourself?

Orpheum Bell

Lights illuminate the faces, the stage, and the building behind the stage in new colors. Music hums in the airspace between one body and the next. The crowd shifts constantly, people catching up against each other, their words flowing above and below the music coming from the stage. Children wobble and dance through the crowd, with parents following after. This is Orpheum Bell’s night to play at Top of the Park, part of Ann Arbor’s Summer Festival.

They’re introducing a new voice tonight, a young woman by the name of Katie Lee, but not with the first song. I am standing close to the stage with a friend, and we are left waiting to hear how she compares to Orpheum Bell’s recently retired female singer, Merrill Hodnefield, a woman with a distinctively lilting voice. The first song is all about the smoky, rumpled voice of Aaron Klein, sung through a horn that may have been borrowed from an old gramophone. The sound is rhythmic, rich, almost primeval. Katie Lee is drawing out the haunting sounds of the musical saw; it is not until the second and third tunes that we are given a taste of her voice. Even then, she is harmonizing with Klein, veiling herself within his darker tone.



She doesn’t hide forever—Klein takes a step back and she sings the next tune on her own. Her voice is ranged differently than Hodnefield’s, with a sharp tang in the lower range and a breathy, sweet quality when her voice winds its way higher. She sings tunes from Orpheum Bell’s previously released albums. There’s a sliding twang that slips in, catching up against the ends of phrases. She sings new tunes, too, one in French that showcases the gentle airiness off her higher register. Singing isn’t her only purpose, though, and she plays a number of instruments, from singing saw to violin, with aplomb.

There’s a throwback quality brought on by the variety of instrumentation: this isn’t a six-person group with six kinds of guitars, it’s a six-person group with one guitar-player. From the other five members, we are confronted with the resonance of the double bass and the violin, the musical saw, ukuleles, strange horned violins, the banjo, and more. A red-headed young man spends the entire set hunched over a microphone, switching between two mallet percussion instruments, the accordion, a very small trombone, and a trumpet. This he plunges into a bowl of water on one tune for that bubbly, underwater sound. These are unfamiliar instruments, each of them pulling a new thread of sound into this night, binding together tunes that carry a glorious, multi-layered sound.

The lyrics too, are overflowing with images and words that go flowingly—if unexpectedly—together. There’s nothing easy about Orpheum Bell. The words pull me in as much as the music makes me listen, trying to separate out the individual sounds that twine around each other. The music never gets in the way of the words. It intensifies, it focuses, and it builds a textured picture.

Merrill Hodnefield makes an appearance with the third and last tune of ‘Hard Money Suite’, staying onstage for nearly half an hour, through the three-part female harmonies of ‘Local Boy’ and a pretty cover of the topical ‘Burn On, Big River.’ She’s a woman whose voice hangs forward in her nose—nasal, but it catches the ear and is well-fitted to the varied sounds of the group. Listening to her voice against Katie Lee’s is a sort of passing on into new places, a handing off of a relay baton. I think I’ll like these new places Orpheum Bell is headed to.