Grahame Lesh announced another set of "Unbroken Chain" concerts this year in the classic Capitol Theatre venue in Port Chester, and then elsewhere in the country, centering on California. How lucky we are that this tradition continues in the Northeast. We've been doing a more or less annual pilgrimage to Port Chester for years and it's gotta stop sometime, but not this year. We got tickets (to nights 2-4 of the four dates he announced) as soon as they went on sale, booked a suite at the hotel in Harrison where we'd stayed last year, and waited through a long, cold Winter.
Finally beginning to hint at Spring and we hit the road, picking up Dave at his place, and then heading down the Pike, 84, 91, and the parkways over the line into New York ... a less painful trip than some other times for sure. Grahame had announced an extensive array of musicians, and they'd added a few "special guests" also. We were really looking forward to seeing Bill Payne particularly on that Friday the 13th, as we'd never seen his before.
Trying to keep this short. We hung out in our ground floor suite and played a game of cribbage, then headed down Westchester Ave to Kiosko, where we had another great Mexican meal and a few drinks. We've done this before. Over to the theatre for the 8:00 show, checked out the merch table but nothing caught our eyes this time, and up to our left balcony seats to time the squirrel.
This was a sellout, but some seats around us were not occupied and we had room to spread out a little and dance. And the sight lines and sound at the Capitol are jut amazingly good. It's a great rock theater and if we lived nearby we're go there more often. The band came out about 15 minutes after the hour and lined up across the whole stage like this: Bill Payne on organ and pianos, Jason Crosby on organ, piano, and violin, Daniel Donato on guitar, Tony Leone on drums, Amy Helm on vocals, Maggie Rose on vocals, Grahame Lesh on guitar, Adam Minkoff on drums, Oteil Burbridge on electric bass, Laura Cwass on guitar, and Mikaela Davis on harp. Phew, what a band! Cwass was only out for the second set, Amy played mandolin on Atlantic City, and she and Maggie were not out for all songs. Here's the setlist:
- Jam >
- Cosmic Charlie
- Sugaree
- Brown-Eyed Women
- High Time
- Passenger
- Atlantic City
- Samson & Delilah
- Born Cross Eyed
The "and Friends" bands assembled by Phil and these days by Grahame can be a mixed blessing. Fantastic talent on stage but sometimes not enough space to let everyone excel, sometimes a lack of practice, and sometimes less then excellent parts. On these nights I was never that impressed by the male vocalists (with the exception of Oteil), though the female ones turned in some great stuff, particularly Helm and later Kanika Moore. But the instrumental arrangements were uniformly great, there were some fantastic individual performances, and the set lists were far from repetitious.
Highlights of this set were opening (after the Jam) with one of my favorite songs, Maggie Rose's vocal on Sugaree, Oteil's on High Time, and Amy's on Atlantic City, the electricity of Passenger, great combo drumming on Samson, and the totally unexpected excitement of the closing Born Cross-Eyed.
Whew, again just the first set was worth all the planning and the treacherous drive down there. Hit up the funky men's room and it was not a long break before the band came back on. Here's the second set:
- Jam >
- Uncle John's Band >
- Playing In The Band >
- Morning Dew
- It Must Have Been The Roses
- Saint Stephen >
- William Tell Bridge >
- The Eleven >
- Casey Jones
More incredible quality from such a large band! Morning Dew was of course a highlight, with Grahame singing the "male" part and Amy and Maggie Rose duetting on the "female" part. Great chemistry between those two, and they followed it up with more ensemble vocals, including Mikaela Davis, on It Must Have Been the Roses. After that tune, Grahame called over stage manager Brian Rashap for a panicked request, after which they started into a majestic St. Stephen ... and then Rashap came running back out with a piece of paper which he put on Grahame's music stand. We realized it was an emergency printout of the complicated lyrics to The Eleven, on which Davis did an excellent backing vocal.
Great playing by Payne and Donato (and maybe Davis, but she was not miked well), great fiddle from Crosby on UJB, crackling lead on Casey Jones from Donato, but perhaps the most amazing parts of the set were the totally unexpected electric guitar leads from Cwass ... got to hear more from her.
Again, wow! We had paced ourselves well and sat down for some water during the short break, and then Grahame came out for a nice donor rap and band introductions, after which they encored with a fine Truckin', which delightfully broke down into an extended Feedback exercise.
Great first night for us and not a long journey back to the car and up the Avenue to the Hyatt House in Harrison. That had been a long two sets and we had to decompress some before bed, but lights off by 1:00 or so.
