Billy & the Kids in Port Chester, part 2

 A very windy and rainy night led to a cold morning, and naturally I hadn't gotten a good night's sleep.  But it was a great morning anyway and we had room enough to set up a game of Trains after "breakfast."  The forecast was for the day to clear up and it really did clear up nicely, though a chilly wind from the Northwest continued.

We debated our options and then drove down to the Boat Yard BBQ and Grill for a nice lunch.  From there we continued down to Cove Island Park on the Sound, as far West as you can go in Stamford.  Stamford is such a strange city, with a crazy mix of huge office buildings, train infrastructure, private homes, exclusive marinas, and some public spaces.  We found this park very nice and had a great walk on the low-tide beach and around a few rocky points.  One can imagine that in the Summer this place would be mobbed.

Back to the hotel for another Parks game and a short nap, and then it was time to saddle up for Port Chester again.  Another fine meal at Kiosko, which was about as crowded as it gets.  Again, was this the last time we'd be eating there?  Could this be the last time?  Maybe, I don't know.

Up into the balcony at the Cap and we were a bit to the left and one row back from where we were on Friday, not bad at all.  Though Friday may not have been sold out, Saturday sure was and the crowd was very late arriving and then filled in with a vengeance.  The band was set up exactly the same, and they came out a little late to let the crowd settle in.  Here's the first set:

• Join Together
• Help on the Way
• Slipknot!
• Franklin's Tower
• Peggy-O
• Brown-Eyed Women
• Baby Don't You Do It
• Sugaree
• It Hurts Me Too
• The Last Time

I had called three songs on Friday, and Dave called the Help/Slip/Frank's trio on Saturday, after they opened with another great The Who song.  They did nice covers of Peggy-O and BEW before surprising us with Don't Do It.  Who knows how much should be credited to Billy for Sugaree (or The Wheel), as he was in the room and part of the creative process with Garcia and Hunter when it was put together?  Then Brad followed with another eclectic vocal on Hurts Me Too, and they closed with yet another Stones song, similar to how the long first set had been structured the night before.

Set break, and I tried to time my last bathroom trip well, but this was a remarkably short break (20 minutes?) and they'd already gone into Drums by the time I got back to the seats.  Here's their last set:

• Drums
• Space
• Morning Dew
• Uncle John's Band
• The Wheel
• Crazy Fingers
• Cassidy
• Love the One You're With
• I Know You Rider

After that they went into an unusual take on Dew, featuring Brad Barr's atmospheric guitar sounds more than the building crescendo we've often heard.  This was really great, though perhaps more perfunctory than it could have been.  But it was followed by great covers of UJB and then the expected The Wheel, with the expected crowd participation of course.

They threw us a curve ball next, with a long, spaced out introduction to a weird Crazy Fingers, with Reed singing to a syncopated beat of his own imagination.  Again, lots of fun and Reed Mathis can do no wrong in my book!  And next up was another song that snuck up on most of the people around us, Tommy covering Steven Still's great Love the One You're With.

The band finished with a balls-out sing-along of I Know You Rider, and the clapping did not stop.  They focused the lights on Billy, sitting at his drum set, and he waved and waved to us all, then got up and did his old man walk to the wings.  I'd seen Billy sneak a toke or two behind his drums earlier, but when he came back out he had an obvious doobie with him, and he puffed and puffed on it, while grinning at the crowd before the encore.  People went nuts.

They opened the encore with a lovely Brokedown Palace.  Tommy, Reed, and Brad had been singing well together at times all weekend, but on this the harmonies shone.  If they practice a bit they could get really good!  And then they closed with Touch, which was a) a great sing-along again, b) a tribute to Billy the old guy on perhaps the last time we'll see him live, and c) perhaps a tribute to James Casey, the recently deceased musician and band-mate of Billy's, whom we'd seen sing this song at that same theater.

Loud applause and the minions told Billy that he had to get the band together for a bow, which he obviously thought was a little corny.  Yes it is Billy, but it's expected and brought a smile to everyone's face.  Bye bye!

Waited a bit in the seats again.  Not quite as good a show as Friday's but whatever, it was still great.  Pushed our way out past wandering people and then up Westchester Avenue to the lot behind Kiosko.  Will we be back there again?  Maybe!  Easy drive back to Stamford this night and then up to our large room and soon to bed. 

Billy & the Kids in Port Chester, part 1

As mentioned, Bill Kreutzmann was not healthy enough to participate in the Dead & Company tour this past Summer, and that was a real loss.  But of course I'm all in favor of him taking his foot off the pedal when he needs to, and Jay Lane was a great substitute.  Billy has played a few shows since then, and we were very psyched when he announced a couple of shows in Port Chester, October 20 and 21, and even more so that it would be with his "Kids" band.

We'd seen Tommy Hamilton often with JRAD, but had only seen Reed Mathis a couple of times (and loved him both times), and never seen Aron Magner live, though we've been impressed with him on video.  And they announced that the Barr Brothers would play too, and we had never heard of them.  Wikipedia told us that Brad and Andrew Barr had an "indie-folk" band based out of Montreal.  I had no idea that Montreal was near Hawaii, but whatever.

Picked up Dave in Quincy on a beautiful Fall day and had a relatively nice drive down to the Amsterdam Hotel in Stamford CT.  The colors were popping when we started, but the day became overcast as we got into the Deep South of New England, and rain showers started up.  And the traffic was about normal, which meant that it was brutal.  We got stuck in a series of backups starting in New Haven, but made it to Stamford finally.  We'd stayed in the [Great] Amsterdam Hotel before and weren't too impressed, but we decided to give it another shot.  Our large 5th-floor room was entirely acceptable and though the place had some faults, like a shitty breakfast and clunky elevators, it gets good marks.

Had time for a game of Parks and a few beers when we arrived, then jumped back into the mess on the Turnpike and crawled over to Port Chester, where we had a nice meal at Kiosko (though both the salsa music and the TV were blaring).  Strolled down to the theater after that and settled down in our center balcony seats, a few rows up.

The band was set up nicely, with Magner and Hamilton on the required Oriental carpet off to the left (looking at the stage), Andrew Barr's and then Billy's drum kits at center stage, and then Mathis and Brad Barr on another carpet to the right.  They came out soon after the announced showtime of 8:00 and were excellent!  Here's the first set:

• The Kids Are Alright
• St. Stephen
• Eyes Of the World
• She Belongs To Me
• Beat It On Down the Line
• Mama Tried
• Jack Straw
• Row Jimmy
• Let's Spend the Night Together

Where do I start?  Magner had an extensive keyboards setup (7 of them as I recall) and did some great stuff all weekend long.  He wasn't quite mixed right to start but they soon corrected this.  He's a bit of a dramatic player but he has the chops to back it up and was delightfully tasteful and a great band member.

Tommy was on his white guitar with the rainbow sticker, and he sure knows how to play that thing.  He took the role of band leader, introducing the guys, playing the rhythm (as well as many leads), and letting Brad or Andrew know when it was their turn to take over the song.

Andrew was a great complementary player on drums.  Though he had a trap kit and pounded out a forceful "Mickey" part on the tom-toms when he and Billy went crazy, he also had lots of effects, shakers, and weird things to whack on the quieter songs.

I was really eager to see Reed Mathis again, and he did not disappoint.  He had knocked me over with his Dylan covers when I'd seen him before and this time did several at perhaps an even higher level.  When done properly, Dylan's songs are incredibly emotional and Reed is an emotional singer and amazingly colorful bassist, though he played it straight and did not feature the effects and filters we'd seen from him before.

Brad Barr was phenomenal.  His mike wasn't working at some key times and he forgot a lot of words (as did Tommy of course), but he got the key ones in there.  And screw the words, his reason for being on the stage was his guitar and his incredible range of filters.  They should have given him a console, he spent a third of his time huddled over his vast array of knobs and pedals.  Again, the word is tasteful.  He could go from ethereal to raunchy to countrified to acidified, and back to ethereal in one song, though it took a lot of twisting of knobs to do it.

And the old guy was as good as ever.  All the times I'd seen Billy before this he'd been upstaged, literally and figuratively, by guys like ... oh, Garcia or Weir or Lesh, etc.  But the view from the Capitol balcony is so great and the sound is so pure, and they had him lit and miked so well, that just watching and listening to Billy was remarkably similar to watching Phil on that same stage (and in almost the exact same spot) while a great band raged around him.  Billy has an effortless style and doesn't favor any of his drums or cymbals, he's a democratic and remarkably smooth player and seems to be enjoying himself completely on every song he plays.  I was really glad to get this up-close-and-personal weekend with him.

And what a setlist!  We'd seen Willie Nelson recently and he played a great setlist, covering everybody.  On this occasion, Billy covered some greats too.  He opened with a The Who song, and also covered Dylan, Jesse Fuller, Haggard, Jagger/Richards, Clapton, Dozier/Holland, and of course lots of Garcia/Hunter/Kreutzmann.  I was in heaven seeing Reed sing She Belongs To Me ("for Halloween give her a trumpet") and their cover of Row Jimmy was incredible.  A surprising St. Stephen, a beautiful Eyes, Reed again on Mama Tried ... that set went on and on and was delightful.  Again, though it's such a hassle to get down to Port Chester, that first set alone made up for it.

Average length set break and perhaps one of my last trips ever to the Cap's beyond-funky bathrooms.  One guy complained at the cramped urinal setup and everybody told him he should see the ones downstairs!  Got a Dogfish Head for me and a strong g&t for Sarah and then back to our excellent seats.  Pete Shapiro came out and feted the Cap's head usher, Brian Lynch, for his 1000th show (though the balloons they rigged up were ambiguous).  He then gave Billy a bowling trophy too, or tried to at least.

Anyway, here's the second set:

Drums

Space

Scarlet Begonias

Friend of the Devil

Ramble On Rose

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Fire on the Mountain

This set was perhaps a little shorter.  Billy seemed a bit tired towards the end and huddled with band leader Tommy before they cut it a bit short.  Pace yourself, Billy!  But they sure kept up the quality.  They opened with a Drums/Space segment as Billy often does with his band, and then did some of the greatest Garcia/Hunter songs.

But the song of the set was Reed letting it all hang out on one of Dylan's best songs.  As seems to be the case more and more often, one wonders if the world is falling apart, and the brutality and violence going on right now in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and right in our back yards is devastating.  Reed seemed to be singing about all that and everyone in the theater was hanging on his words.  This led to a thundering ovation, to which he gave us an "aw shucks."  Reed was really great and unassuming too; at times he stood up on the small riser next to Billy so he wouldn't overshadow any of the other guys.

Woo, that was quite a concert!  But it wasn't done yet.  The band came back out and did a great mellow cover of Lay Down Sally, and then a lovely Ripple, sung by Brad Barr.  He's quite a musician and besides all his pedals he had a large rack of guitars and used them all.  On some songs he played slide on his acoustic, which was an incredible sound.  At one point I turned to Dave and said, "If that's 'indie-folk,' sign me up!"

Usual confused exit from the Cap after letting the crowd die down a bit, and then a traffic-y journey back to Stamford and our 5th-floor eyrie at the Great Amsterdam.  Soon to bed after that!