Christmas At Sea

 Robert Louis Stevenson, 1888

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;

The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;

The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;

And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;

But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.

We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,

And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;

All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;

All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,

For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;

But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:

So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,

And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;

The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;

The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;

And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;

For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)

This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,

And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,

My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;

And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,

Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,

Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;

And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,

To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.

"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.

"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate Jackson, cried.

..."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,

And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.

As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,

We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,

As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;

But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,

Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

Me & My Kitties

 (with apologies to John Philips)

Me and my kitties went riding down

South Hudson Valley, West New York bound

We stopped over in Ithacay

That being the point just about halfway

And you know it was the hottest part of the day

I took the horses up to the stall

Went to the bar-room, ordered drinks for all

Three days in the saddle, you know my body hurt

It being summer, I took off my shirt

And I tried to wash off some of that dusty dirt

West New York doggies, they's all around

With kibbles and money, they're loaded down

So soon after pay day, you know it seemed a shame

You know my kitties, they start a friendly game

High-Low Jacks and the winner take the hand

My kitties start winning, doggies got sore

One of them called them, and then two more

Accused them of cheating, well no it couldn't be

I know my kitties, they’re as honest as me

And I'm as honest as a Sedgwick man can be

One of them doggies, he starts to growl

Hilo jumped right up, smacked him in the jowls

Kona clawed another, never seen her so bold

Kitties grabbed the kibbles, and I grabbed the gold

And we high-tailed it down to Mexico

Now I love those doggies, God rest their soul

I love my kitties, but they don’t care for gold

They taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know

Taught me so well, I pitched that gold

And we chowed down on kibbles by the side of the road

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway Go Back To School

Molly Tuttle announced another tour and we were in!  The good news was that she was playing the Berklee Performance Center on November 17th, back at her old school.  But the bad news was that, though tickets for most of the tour were announced, the BPC was not selling tickets until we weren't looking, apparently.  I checked regularly, but when they finally were available to the general public, the best we could get was second balcony.  Oh well, it's a great venue anyway and we've seen them up close.

Met Dave at Bukowski's in the middle of the construction zone that that part of the city is becoming.  What is going on that there's so much construction in Boston and no affordable housing?  We had a beer there and then a nice dinner across the "street" over at Dillon's, and then wandered around the area for a bit before descending on the BPC, along with the (mostly older) crowd.

Jobi Riccio opened and entertained with a great set of originals, including one called Green Flash that I really liked.  Then Molly and band came on and tore the house down.  She was in cowboy boots, shoulder-length brown hair, and a wide-brimmed hat, looking a bit like Jesse from Toy Story (she discarded the hat after a few songs).  But the long set they played was totally serious bluegrass and just fantastic.  In my mind I was comparing it with some of the best bluegrass concerts I've seen, like Hot Rise at the Somerville Theater or Laurie Lewis at the hall in Lexington.

Can't believe the whole setlist hasn't been posted, but here's what I remember:

• Next Rodeo
• El Dorado
• Down Home Dispensary
• Over the Line
• Yosemite
• Dooley's Farm
• Stranger Things
• Alice in the Bluegrass
• White Rabbit
• Castilleja
• The First Time I Fell In Love
• Sleepy-Eyed John
• Crooked Tree

And there were definitely some other songs I can't remember.  This just blew us away.  El Dorado is such an excellent song it's not fair, and her finger picking is so fast, so ringing, and of such quality.  And she was not shy about directing her excellent band, including having Bronwyn do a fiddle tune she'd written and doing a duet with Dominick.

But the amazing thing was that they crept closer and closer and then let 'er rip with an incredible psycho-bluegrass interlude in the middle of the set, including Alice In the Bluegrass into a move-the-earth, explosive performance of White Rabbit, and an extended jam into Castilleja.

They came back to earth finally and went back to the source with Sleepy-Eyed John.  Molly sprinkled in many references to going to school and living in Boston throughout, and then she introduced the last song of the set with adages about being true to yourself.  What the hell, she took off her wig to great applause and sang to us all about being a Crooked Tree.  What a set of great songs and some exquisite bluegrass!

Most of us thought that was the end of the show and were getting ready to leave, but some people noticed they were setting up a ribbon mike.  And Molly and crew came back out and played the fantastic Take the Journey, which IMO features some unparalleled guitar playing.  We saw her do this up close at the Bull Run and it was just as amazing from the second balcony of the BPC.  Her right hand technique on this is like she's playing a banjo, a cello, and a mandolin all at once.

Molly brought out Jobi for the closer, a sing-along of Dylan's You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, which meant there were 4 ex-Berklee people on stage, though only Bronwyn had graduated.  Kyle told us all that he expected quality crowd participation from the BPC, and we all tried to oblige.

Fantastic show and I can't wait to see this band again., they should not be missed.

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!

Outlaw Music 2023 in Mansfield

It's been a long Summer of great outdoor concerts, and the capper was the Outlaw Music Festival stopping by the amphitheater in Mansfield MA on one more Saturday night, September 16.  The big attraction for us was that the tour this year included Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, as well as Los Lobos, String Cheese Incident, and of course that 90-year old legend, Willie Nelson.

We had great seats, just to the right of center and about 15 rows back, and the weather was fantastic.  We were determined to not spend hours fuming in traffic, though that's hard to avoid at that place.  After a morning at Wakefield Subaru we packed sandwiches and concert stuff and headed down there, getting off the highway with no backup but then getting waved *past* the entrance by a mean-faced parking attendant, having to do a U-turn to get back to the venue, and then waiting in a long line to get waved into a crowded spot.  They are remarkably inefficient at parking there, and helpful signs are apparently forbidden.

Anyway, had a nice time eating sandwiches and drinking beer in lawn chairs while the Shakedown Street scene exploded around us.  Weir wasn't the headliner, but the Dead shirts outnumbered anything else 99 to 1, and people were selling everything from Jerry idols to beer from coolers.  Folded up the lawn chairs and went on in in plenty of time for the opening act, which was scheduled to come on at 4:30.  The good thing about Mansfield is that once you get in there it's a nice place, with a good array of vendors around an amphitheater with good sight lines and sound.  They also had a nest of weird port-a-potties which were vacuum powered and seemed like Dr. Who monsters.  I can imagine someone getting stuck in one and/or vacuumed away.

The opener was Waylon Payne in a not-quite-a-tenth full arena, and he hadn't been on the bill but was a great start to the evening.  He opened with Desperados Waiting For a Train and I commented to Dave that anyone who opened with a Guy Clark song was ok with me.  Waylon did a couple of originals and mixed in the classic Ring of Fire and Sunday, which he apparently wrote with Lee Ann Womack.  I'd never heard of him but thoroughly enjoyed his set, and he then dropped the fact that he'd be playing guitar with Willie later on.  Here's the short setlist:

• Desperados Waiting for a Train
• All the Trouble
• Ring of Fire
• Born to Lose
• Sins of the Father
• Nobody's Home On A Sunday

Up next was Los Lobos while the crowd really filled in, and they were just fantastic.  I've seen them a good number of times and they've often exceeded my expectations, but this set was amazing.  They're a good band to get up front for and they all turned in exceptional performances.  Perhaps the best that night was Steve Berlin on sax and keyboards, but they all shone, most of all Cesar Rosas on vocals, new drummer Alfredo Ortiz, and of course David Hidalgo on rocking lead guitar.  They were joined for a few tunes by Mickey Raphael, Willie's long time harmonica player, and he shone too.  They were perhaps the best band of the day, and we were just starting!  Here's their setlist:

• Dream in Blue
• One Time One Night
• Love Special Delivery
• Evangeline
• Chuco's Cumbia
• Is This All There Is?
• Three Hundred Pounds of Joy (Howling Wolf)

OK, next up was The String Cheese Incident, whom I'd never seen live in person and was really looking forward to.  Unfortunately, I found their set a bit of a let down.  I'd seen them live on video from Lockn' and other big festivals, and had been way impressed with Michael Kang and Bill Nershi.  But for this set at least I found them too driven by the loud and simplistic bass lines of Keith Mosely and an over-amplified kick drum.  I also had my first experience of rudeness from our neighbors, who were apparently upset with people standing up at a rock concert and decided to take it out on Dave and me.  Oh well.

Anyway, screwed out of there early to be sure to have time to hit the weird bathrooms and get a beer for the Wolf Bros set.  We'd seen them once a few years ago when they were just the trio of Weir, Was, and Lane.  But this was the whole enchilada, including Jeff Chimenti, Barry Sless on pedal steel, and the entire Wolfpack, their horns and strings section.  Here's their setlist:

• Hell in a Bucket
• Mama Tried
• Big Boss Man
• Peggy-O
• Althea
• Playing in the Band
• Dark Star
• Cassidy
• Stella Blue
• One More Saturday Night

Great jam to start into a totally unexpected but great Bucket.  Don Was is solid but kind of a liability to good psychedelic music IMO, and it was strange that their setup had Sless right in the middle, where he played solidly too but did not contribute anything smoking.  I've seen him play some great stuff with Phil Lesh and think he might be better on guitar than on steel.  And Bobby could use a smoking lead guitar, though even so the band was miles better than when we saw them as just a trio.

And they had very plus contributions from Chimenti of course, from Mickey Raphael sitting in on Big Boss Man, and from Mads Tolling on fiddle.  And what a setlist!  Weir was in fine voice and they meandered from PITB into Dark Star, which we had anticipated as a reprise since they had done the first verse the night before.  But they were a little confused and did the entire song, while exchanging some quizzical looks.  In the middle of it we were interrupted by rude neighbors again.  Jeez, stand up and listen to Dark Star or go get stuck in a port-a-pottie until Willie comes on!  The set-closer was of course a rocking Saturday Night, and the whole stadium, except for a few rude people, danced and roared.

OK, time for Willie, and they didn't take long to set up for his act.  The stage hands did some crack work all night long, and though it was strange that Los Lobos played earlier than we had expected, I think that was because it was most efficient to go from Waylon to them, the SCI, to WolfBros, to Willie.  He was sitting down and had Waylon on another stool at his right, a doghouse bass player, a snare, and Mickey (who's a big guy) off to his left.  It was sad that his sister Bobbie had passed away and was not there, he'd been playing with her for probably most of his 90 years.

And he looked at least 90 years old, but was as magical on stage as ever.  Waylon was a fantastic back-up player and filled in excellently when Willie wandered, but his old guitar was as ringing as ever when he focused on it (which was often) and his voice rose above everything else.  He gave us that Willie smile a few times too, though you could tell this was a bit of a struggle for an old guy like him.  And this was another classic setlist, with songs from Kristofferson, Shaver, Haggard (Payne did an excellent vocal on Workin' Man Blues), Waylon, Bob Wills, and of course, Willie Nelson.

• Whiskey River
• Stay All Night
• Still Is Still Moving to Me
• Bloody Mary Morning
• I Never Cared for You
• Workin' Man Blues
• Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
• Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
• On the Road Again
• You Were Always on My Mind
• Good Hearted Woman
• Help Me Make It Through the Night
• Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die / Still Not Dead
• Georgia (On My Mind)
• I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train
• Write Your Own Songs
• Move It on Over
• Me and Bobby McGee
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken / I'll Fly Away
• It's Hard to Be Humble

Willie had to wipe his face often between songs and seemed tired all through it, though as I say he played excellently and kept up a furious pace.  Some of the songs were a bit truncated but he got them all in.  And this was fantastic, I loved every second.  He was just magical on the tear-jerkers, like Too Close To the Ground, Help Me Make It Through the Night, and of course Georgia.  He rocked on the Billie Joe Shaver song, led sing-alongs on Cowboys, Good Hearted Woman, and Roll Me Up and Smoke Me, and his voice got more and more golden as the set went on.

The player of the evening may have been Raphael, who after his excellent sit-ins with Los Lobos and Weir continued his wonderful playing with Willie.  Weir came out to join in on guitar on Will the Circle, and then most of SCI came out for the last song, It's Hard To Be Humble.  Willie put down his guitar and threw some bandannas to the crowd on this, and then walked slowly off stage as the others wrapped up the song, secure in his status as a living legend.

Back at the car we set up the lawn chairs again and waited for the traffic to die down, which it did in about half an hour.  There were plenty of  remnants of Shakedown Street still there though, including a couple who'd set up their wares in front of our car and told us they just had to sell a few more things before they followed the tour to Queens.  Long drive home, but we made it and got right to bed at about 2:00. 

Another JRAD Show in Boston

JRAD hasn't been touring anywhere near as much as we'd like, but we're really glad that when they do tour, they almost always seem to stop in Boston (and had been in Bangor the week before).  They played the waterfront pavilion in Boston on August 12th and we got great tickets and were psyched, though our fingers were crossed that we wouldn't have the bad weather luck we'd had with Phil Lesh back in July.

Dave had been on vacation in Maine with us, and so we had a fun day of croquet and board games before heading into the city through surprisingly light traffic, down to a parking garage on Drydock Avenue so we could eat dinner at Lord Hobo's Seaport restaurant.

And what a sight when we walked out of the garage.  We were a block away from the cruise ship terminal and the Caribbean Princess (hailing from Bermuda) was docked there.  OMG, I'd never seen boat that big!  It towered over us and over the huge office building next to it.  We shuddered at the thought of taking a cruise on a ship like that, you'd be surrounded by people, stuffed into an expensive and tiny state room, and expected to enjoy mainstream entertainment.  Not for us.

And speaking of non-mainstream entertainment, we headed up to the Leader Bank Pavilion (current name) after a fine meal at Lord Hobo.  There they gave me a brimful cup of Harpoon IPA (well, I had to pay for it) and we had a fine time hanging out on their patio over the harbor while waiting for the show to start.  We've got to kayak into the Inner Harbor someday and see the venue from there, though I plan to give a wide berth to the Black Falcon Terminal, especially if they've got one of those monsters docked there.

Not a bad crowd experience, but this was not like Bangor to say the least.  The place was packed and there was Saturday-night-out-to-a-rock-show crowd noise going on around us all through it, as well as lots of people who really weren't paying attention to the music pushing past us to their seats for a few minutes and then back out, and repeat.  But the weather stayed great all night and there were also lots of people there who were dancing (the guy in front of us was dancing so hard he almost fell over a few times), smoking good pot (as opposed to Fenway), and raving along.  Many people agree with me that this is one of the best bands around.

The crowd was slow to fill in and the start was a little delayed, but then they straggled out like a good GD band, this time with Dave Dreiwitz back on bass.  And he had no problem letting us know of his presence, Dave had taken his vitamins, as well as the other guys on stage.  Here's the first set:

• Stagger Lee
• Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line
• Eyes of the World
• Me and My Uncle
• Mission in the Rain
• Uncle John's Band
• Ophelia

We'd talked about them doing Stagger Lee, and here it was!  This is such a great, character-driven song and I love that, and Tommy sang it perfectly.  His teleprompter was working fine that night.  And then they totally reversed again, and Scott riveted us with one of the original, quintessential Outlaw Country songs.  Besides growling and singing the hell out of this, he played a space-country lead all through it that had me jumping up and down (figuratively).  I was kind of surprised when several people around me were asking, "What's that song??"  They claimed to have never heard it before, which I could understand for many people, but not the guys my age.

Well, toweled off after that and then realized that the long, mellow jam they had started into had taken form and they were playing Eyes.  Joe has gotten more and more involved in the singing since we first saw his band back in 2015, and harmony singing has gradually become one of their strengths.  He backs up Tommy with a lower line, and Scott joins in with a higher one, a bunch of angels, especially on an uplifting song like Eyes.  And then Scott brought us right back out to the country with a rollicking MAMU.

After that a fantastic Mission In the Rain that many people talked through, a great UJB, and then a tribute to the recently deceased Robbie Robertson with their Levon-esque cover of Ophelia.  Again, wow that was a great set.

Yup, it had been such a great set that I was already kind of worn out.  I could have gone home at that point and been satisfied, but there was still another set to go.  The crowd was milling about like it was Saturday night at a rock concert, but that's part of the price of admission.  Not too long a break though, and then the band came straggling back out.

Again, I have to gush about Marco, who is just an incredible technical player as well as having a truly warped musical imagination.  How he can command those keyboards the way he does is amazing.  His standard white t-shirt read, "Dear Earth, thanks for the flowers."  And Joe Russo is a talent that everyone should experience.  Who doesn't like a good drummer?  And besides the energy and dynamism he brings, he's an amazing technical player too, who never misses a beat and who conducts his band with facial expressions, sticking out his tongue(!), and a few hand gestures.

Here's the second set:

• New Speedway Boogie
• Crazy Fingers
• Playing In the Band
• I Second That Emotion
• Let It Grow
• Stella Blue

Highlights were a long, jammed out Crazy Fingers and a crowd-pleasing Second That Emotion, that had everyone dancing and singing along.  After that though, Joe was taken over again by the dragons and started playing louder and faster and louder and faster until you thought something had to bust.  And then Scott jumped up to his mike and started screaming about the young girl singing her way down to the river and gathering her water.  I wonder if she knows the little school girl?  This was a cathartic Let It Grow, and after that Tommy took over and sang a beautiful but dark Stella Blue to cap it off.

OMG, do these guys never quit?  I'd been a little worn out but that second set packed so much energy that I had no choice but to stand and dance all through it, especially when the guy in front of us was dancing so hard you thought his spine must be made of rubber.

Joe is always a gracious host and thanked us as profusely as ever.  But after a break they came back out for an encore of Saturday Night.  Scott really hammed it up on this, calling out one more Saturday night in Boston.  I guess they like it here and I'm glad they do.

We sat back down and let the crowd filter out a bit before we took off.  Not a long walk back to the garage and luckily not a long line to exit.  We twisted around to the ramp down to the tunnels, and then made it back home without any traffic delays.  Another great night with JRAD and I can't wait to see them again!

JRAD Rock Bangor

They booked a great Summer of shows in the riverside pavilion in Bangor, and we were on board for TTB in July, and then for JRAD on August 6th.  We asked friends S&M if they'd be interested and the timing of the JRAD show was perfect for a weekend visit.  They and we three headed up there in their new car on a beautiful and mellow Sunday after a river kayak earlier that day.

We had an early dinner at a sports bar near there in Bangor (Seasons), and then approached the venue from the Main Street side, though we had tickets up front and they want you to use the Northeast entrance for those sections.  They waved us in though, barely checking our tickets, and we found ourselves a bit confused as we passed through the lobby.  Were we in the right place?  Were they having a JRAD concert here?  They were selling JRAD gear in the merch stand, but besides us and the many venue staff who were all friendly and trying to assist us, there was no one there!

We kept on going toward the front sections, and realized there were a few people.  Dave and I stopped for the bathroom and to fill water bottles, but where was everyone?  The bathroom didn't have a line, in fact it was deserted.  We walked into the front section and saw what the story was, though it still mystifies us.  The front section was only about a third full.  The rear section and the lawn were closed as they had been for TTB in July, but the front section had been packed for that.  We had great seats, dead center (maybe a row or two behind where we were for TTB) but had so much room around us we could sit and see everything on stage.  At one point the seats in six rows in front of me were empty.

Really, really strange.  This band sells out places in Boston, and that's what we'd been expecting, but I guess they're not big enough ("just a Dead cover band") to attract the casual fan in Maine??  That's too bad, but the good news is that this meant it was one of the most mellow concert crowd scenes we've been in in a while.  It was really fun to just have a casual evening and to see such a great band.  And another great thing was that everyone there wanted to see and hear JRAD, this wasn't a "let's go to a rock show, who's playing?" crowd.  Everyone was in their Grateful Dead gear of course, including an uber-cute father and young daughter, dancing in front of us.  One guy was wearing a "Fat People Are Harder to Kidnap" t-shirt.

Anyway, the band came out right on time (why wait?) and they had Jon Shaw playing bass instead of Dave Dreiwitz, who was touring with Ween.  Details of JRAD's setup change, though they generally keep the same positions (Marco far left, Scott far right, etc.).  This time they lined up close together, though it's a large stage and they could have spread out.  Joe was not set up as far front as usual, but he had a huge set, including a second, smaller bass drum, and the sound was excellent.  I was afraid they'd be uninspired by the small crowd, but these guys don't worry about being stars.  They turned in one of the best shows I've seen from them.  Here's the first set:

• Good Morning Little School Girl
• Reuben and Cherise
• China Cat Sunflower
• Feel Like a Stranger
• West L.A. Fadeaway
• The Other One

But as you might expect if you've ever seen JRAD, this was not a textbook set.  They opened with a long blues jam and then Scott started singing in such a funky style you almost couldn't recognize School Girl, it wasn't done like Pigpen did it.  They stopped and reversed direction with the story song of Reuben and Cherise, on which Tommy usually excels except on this one he totally blew the words.  He seemed to be having a tough set with glitches in his teleprompter, his monitor, and his guitar going out of tune.  But he persisted and next sang a strange, little China Cat ... they may not have broken the three-minute mark with this one before going into a deep jam that ended with Scott suddenly springing to the mike and singing about everything flashing.

But after Stranger and West L.A. they went back into deep jam territory and got louder and louder until Joe was absolutely hammering his kit at an unsustainable pace, and then he really went crazy.  And we realized we'd ended up in The Other One.  Jon may not have been as dynamic as a Phil or an Oteil here, but the rest of the band made up for it.  Besides Joe, Scott (on his old guitar), and Tommy having great nights, perhaps the performer of the evening was Marco.  He had (at least) 4 keyboards set up, including a baby grand, and as we said in the car on the way home, it was just mind-boggling some of the dual parts he played with his right hand on the piano and his left on the organ.

Wow, that was a great set, and it was still early evening on a great Summer day, with plenty of room to spread out.  Pretty standard set break and then they came back out with:

• Catfish John
• Good Lovin'
• Shakedown Street
• The Wheel
• Dark Star
• Tennessee Jed
• Greatest Story Ever Told
• Fire on the Mountain

Well, this set may have been even better.  They started off with a wonderful, lazy, sunny, and mellow version of Catfish John that could melt in your mouth.  And then they went right back to rocking.  At the end of The Wheel Joe started taking off again, breaking sticks and pounding the bejeezus out of everything in sight ... the twin bass drums are a great addition to his rig.  But then he calmed down and we realized we were adrift in space and there was a Dark Star right over there.

I was afraid they'd mail in the Bangor show, but they did a great, long, loud second set, ending with a fantastic GSET (which I love) and then an incendiary Fire.  Great stuff!  It was so amazing not being jammed into a small space to see this band, and we all spread out and relaxed a bit before they came out for a tidy encore of Ripple, with Tommy singing.  His equipment luck had been much better in the second set than in the first.

What a fun concert, it was wonderful to hang out a bit, have a leisurely walk the few blocks back to where we had parked for free, and then have totally empty roads for the 50-minute drive back home.  I'm looking forward to seeing more great acts in Bangor.

Phil & Friends In a Summer Storm

We were delighted to hear that Phil Lesh was going to be playing in Boston on July 21st.  He hadn't played anywhere in town since Bobby & Phil in 2018, and before that since playing the Bank Of Boston Pavilion with Furthur in 2013!  And this time he was playing the same venue, though it's now called the Leader Bank Pavilion.

I've had mixed experiences at the waterfront pavilion in Boston, but I've enjoyed it immensely the last few times, because if you have good seats some of the negative aspects are mitigated.  And we got good seats again, this time almost exactly one row in front of where we'd sat for JRAD last year.  One funky thing about our seats though, under our feet was a channel carrying power to the soundboard, capped with a metal grill.  We weren't too worried about it at first...

Dave was over and we ate at home, and then drove down to the Seaport, where we parked in an underground garage and moseyed on in.  As mentioned, it's been a very rainy Summer, but the weather was looking great at that point, and we had a fun time hanging out next to the low-tide harbor with some new friends before the show.  Got to our seats but as often happens on Friday nights, the crowd was very late-arriving and the band didn't come on for a while.

Phil's band didn't have any great surprises this time, including the core of Grahame Lesh on rhythm and John Molo on drums.  Frequent keyboardist Jason Crosby was also there, recent contributors Jennifer Hartswick and James Casey were on board to handle the horns and the superlative vocals, and Eric Krasno was on lead guitar.  I'd seen Krasno with Soulive, opening for TTB in 2014 at Boston's House Of Blues, but never seen him with Phil.

We were psyched!  Here's the first set:

• The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
• Brown-Eyed Women
• Candyman
• He's Gone
• That's What Love Will Make You Do
• Althea

What an opener, and what a lead from Grahame on it, they were crackling with electricity, which as it turns out was the theme of the evening.  This was followed by an excellent BEW and then a very trippy and heartfelt Candyman.  Very good sound and some excellent playing, though Crosby was not as involved as we've seen him, except for when he soloed.  Krasno was not a plus on guitar, though he had a few good vocal turns, especially his timing on BEW.

They did a very good He's Gone, though we missed Natalie Cressman on that, and then it was Jen's turn to shine.  She'd already contributed a mind-bending trumpet solo on BEW, but she was just getting started.  Our new friends mentioned that they'd done a couple of JGB songs in soundcheck ... Eric started off the first verse of What Love Will Make You Do, and then traded a few lines with Jen, and then she took it over and left Eric in the dust.  She belted out that vocal with the amazing power and surprising intimacy we've come to expect from her and she had the crowd on their feet!  This alone was more than worth the price of admission.

They finished the short set with another repeat from DeadCo earlier this Summer, this one not as noteworthy.  And we should have suspected that something was up by the way they cut that set short and then came back out after just a 15-minute or so intermission.  Here's the second set:

• Jack Straw
• Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
• Eyes of the World
• Terrapin Station

Jack Straw was fantastic, and Phil took the "Jack Straw" lead part to reply to Eric's "Shannon."  Phil was really playing and singing at his best.  This was my 50th time (by my count) seeing Phil, and he was as good as ever.  As with other times, he grabbed my attention and I was concentrating on him all night.  He's somehow gotten very old and was moving slowly, but he was on his game and though he's seemingly granted the bandleader role to his son, he doesn't show any sign of coasting.  He's playing that music and we're there to hear it.  As mentioned, the Friday night crowd was very rowdy, though very Deadicated (everyone there was a fan, not like it had been at Fenway for DeadCo), and we all gave numerous ovations to Phil.  The band had had to interrupt our loudest ovation with The Golden Road!

Great Half-Step, one of my favorite songs, and then it was James's turn.  He may have been a little under the weather (no pun intended), and was not very involved with the first set and retreated to the wings or sat for several numbers.  But he'd turned in a great sax solo on Half-Step and then took the vocal on Eyes, to great affect!  He sometimes sings like he hasn't really read the song all the way through, he's just singing what's on the teleprompter and emoting based on the few words he sees.  But with this he gave us a whole-song performance.

We knew that there thunderstorms and (I think) some tornados in Eastern Mass that evening, but thought we had lucked out and missed them.  Then during the short set break it started raining, and by the time we got into Eyes it was absolutely pouring.  We were under a big tent, but the wind picked up and the thunder and lightning got closer and louder and brighter by the second.  We were starting to worry about the electrical conduit under our feet.  Was this really safe?  The wind was whipping and we got hit with some moisture from the Biblical sheets of rain, though we were in the center of the tent.  We began to worry that the equipment in the soundboard enclosure right next to us was getting wet, and it looked like some of the guys on stage were getting wetter than they'd like.

The band launched into a great Terrapin and we were rocking again, though we were getting more and more concerned while the water just poured down outside the tent.  And then the venue crew called off the concert.  Phil seemed heartbroken and apologized to the crowd while they tried to hustle him offstage.  What a bummer!

The venue put the message up on their video boards and on their FB page that we should shelter in place, and everybody was fine hanging out under the tent.  We didn't want to go out into that storm.  But then finally the venue changed their messages to "we are closing, leave now!"  Most people still didn't budge, but we saw that there was a small break in the rain and so we left, and got drenched on our way back to the car.

Some confusion getting out of the garage and before we knew it we were on the Turnpike heading West.  The storm returned in full force, complete with thunder and lightning, and we were sure there was going to be street flooding, so we stayed on the highway and slowly made our way out to 128 and then back around to home.  Quite a stressful drive and we were a little depressed about the show having been cut short.  But what a show it had been, and we made it home safely.

TTB On the Bangor Waterfront

We've seen the Tedeschi Trucks Band many times and just love them.  They're unquestionably one of the best bands in the world and keep playing in new places.  We saw them in Waterville ME in April last year, and this year they were up in Maine again, playing the waterfront pavilion in Bangor on July 5 with Ziggy Marley opening.  Didn't take much for us to get tickets as soon as we could, and we got great seats in the 11th row, dead center.

An incredible stretch of rain swamped mid-coast Maine in June and continued into July, but cleared up right in time for the concert.  L went with us when David couldn't make it, and she had a good time, though she found it kind of loud, especially when Derek would turn up the volume.  It was a sunny drive up route 15 to get there, parked in the Pickering Square Garage on Broad Street, and then had a nice walk down the river, pausing for an early dinner of sandwiches and chips on a bench by some old cannons.

They wouldn't let us bring our plastic water bottles into the venue, even empty, but there was no line to get in and everybody was smiling.  And wow, have they re-done the venue since the last time we were there, in 2019 for the Willie Tour.  Back then it seemed like an amphitheater cobbled together in front of a big stage.  This time they still had the big stage, but had enclosed the seating area with nice, wood pavilions hosting luxury boxes up top and new bathrooms down below (it had been all porta-potties before).  The "lawn" had been a patch of dirt before, but now was lovely green turf.  The concessions seemed better laid out, Dave had had to wait in line 45 minutes the last time!

They had a VIP pavilion and a lounge area for us regular people.  And they were selling excellent beer, I got a Baxter Coastal Storm from the stand up in front where nobody else was going.  Funny that they didn't have the whole pavilion open though, the third section of seats and the lawn were empty and closed off, though they had apparently sold out the first two sections.  Must be supply chain difficulties.

Anyway, got to our great seats and it wasn't long before Ziggy Marley came on with a ten-piece band and played a great set.  He had a drummer and a percussionist, two electric guitarists, a bassist, two keyboard players, two backup singers, and he alternated between an electric in gaudy Jamaican colors and an acoustic.  He's Bob Marley's son and stuck to the reggae, though he's done a lot of children's music over his pretty long career.  Here's his setlist:

• Rebellion Rises
• Beach in Hawaii
• The Lucky One
• Be Free
• Personal Revolution
• Wild and Free
• Circle of Peace
• See Dem Fake Leaders
• Justice / Get Up, Stand Up / War
• We Are the People
• Love Is My Religion
• Is This Love
• Look Who's Dancing

It was a nice, long set, and the band was really excellent.  His backup singers, in Jamaican colors themselves, had some great dance moves, some smooth harmonies, and some great rap breaks.  The lead guitarist stood out for me, and they did the accomplished thing of making it seem like Ziggy was the one strumming the reggae beat through most of the songs, but it was actually the other guitarist, who was the funkiest one on stage.  Ziggy (and his impossibly long dreadlocks, they're down to his knees) concentrated on the vocals and was excellent himself.  It was all his songs with a few by his father mixed in.  I especially liked Wild and Free and the closing Look Who's Dancing.

I knew it was going to take a while to take down their set and to set up TTB, with their two drummers, risers for the vocalists and horn players, etc.  But they've been on tour together for a while and did this incredibly efficiently.  There had been room for dancing in our seats during the opening set, but the crowd (including customers of L's) filled in and the front two sections were packed ... I saw no empty seats.  Susan and Derek came out to wild applause, by now the fact that they are the band to see is out far and wide.

OMG, this was fantastic!  It was possibly the best TTB concert I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them.  Our seats were excellent and the sound was highest quality, though perhaps a little too trebly up front where we were.  All of the qualities that make this such a great band were there, and they played a long, long set:

• Hear My Dear
• Ain't That Something
• I Am the Moon
• Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
• Part of Me
• Bell Bottom Blues
• Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?
• Anyhow
• I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
• Do I Look Worried
• Midnight in Harlem
• Gravity
• Angel From Montgomery / Sugaree
• That Did It
• I Want More
• Beck's Bolero

This was a great mix of their own songs, opening with the exceptional Hear My Dear from their latest record.  They played two Derek and the Dominoes songs in succession, and some of the amazing blues covers they pick up, including the Stones' Heartbreaker and the closing instrumental from Jeff Beck.

At one point Susan forgot the words to the song she was singing (I forget which one).  Derek looked anxious and tried to prompt her with hand signals, which made her laugh.  But I swear it was less than 30 seconds before a roadie had printed out the words and laid them next to Susan's mike.  What efficiency!  She resumed.  On several songs, Susan switched from her normal teal guitar to a blonde Les Paul, which sounded excellent.

Perhaps the song of the set was Billy Taylor's revered I Wish I Knew, opened by Mike Mattison up front, and then batted around between Susan and the other vocalists.  The intro to Midnight In Harlem wasn't the one we've come to expect.  It went way into outer space, but you could tell what it was leading up to, and that song is so mellow, soulful, and lyrical when they get there.

I have to mention Alicia Chakour, who was as subtly powerful as ever.  And the musician of the night was ... no surprise ... Derek Trucks, who is one of the best and most consistent guitarists I've ever seen.  And as I've mentioned other times I've seen them, he conducts the band so well with little nods of his head, turns of his body, and movements of his eyes.  Susan can do this too, at one time she and Gabe were holding  a note together and without being obvious, he had his eye on her.  She had her eye on him too, and on a quick cut with her hand they transitioned seamlessly into the chorus.

And the set list was even more adventurous that you might think, because they mixed in a few bring-down-the-house horn breaks.  Not only did Kebbie Williams get his thing on, but Ephraim Owens took a great early break on trumpet, and near the end of the set Elizabeth Lea got out her mute and the three of them traded bars back and forth.  Great stuff!

I think the band may have been a little mixed up about where they were, understandable in the middle of a long tour.  There was a shoutout to "Boston Mass" somewhere in the middle, and at the end I swear Susan said that they always loved playing in Massachusetts.  Oh well.  They came back out after a long stretch of whoops and hollers and encored with Show Me.  As I say, it was a long, long set.  We all had a great time, we could have been in Oklahoma.

Not too much problem getting out of there and walking the quarter-mile or so back to the parking garage.  And believe it or not the traffic died out quickly and the roads were deserted almost all the way home.  Not like seeing a concert in the big city!

Dead & Company Final Tour, Fenway part 2

The Saturday concert had been so good, and we wondered what surprises were in store for us on Sunday.  Samson and Delilah for sure, but besides that most of our predictions were incorrect.  But whatever, that was fine with us!

The big topic was how and when we were going to get in to Fenway.  As bad as our crowd experience had been, we knew that it would be even worse if we didn't head in there sooner rather than later, and we decided to brave Yard House once more.  Couldn't be as noisy and crowded as yesterday, huh?

We parked in the same garage on Ross Way and were about to get to the restaurant, where Andrew (who hadn't been at Saturday's show) was already waiting.  But who were those two hippies right in front of us?  It was Paul and Diane!  They're some of our Green River Festival friends and had been there for Friday and Saturday, but had just arrived back in Boston for the DeadCo show.  What serendipity, this was amazing!

We got a big, relatively quiet table, and all six of us had a great meal, with some fine beers, salads, and conversation.  Time to head in and we broke up with them to find our way in.  Amazingly, the merch stand outside had no line and we were able to pick up a few t-shirts and sweatshirts, which we dumped back at the car.  Then we walked all the way down Van Ness to the bleacher entrance and hooked back around up to our right-field grandstand seats, under the overhang and not far from where we'd sat for the Thanksgiving Woburn-Winchester game in 2021.  Luckily the evening sun didn't quite shine in our eyes, and the sight lines were almost as good as they had been the night before, though the sound was understandably not quite as good.

We were able to hit the bathrooms and beer line before it got too crazy, and then make it back to our seats.  But the talkers and pot chain-smokers were again ubiquitous!  Two guys behind us in the second set were engaged in a long conversation and during Drums one of them (a loud talker) commented that this was what he'd come for.  I whirled around and said, "Excuse me, I have to interrupt.  If you came for Drums how come you're not listening to it?"  He got the point and quieted down a bit.

Anyway, this was another excellent concert, perhaps not as dynamic as Saturday's had been.

• Samson and Delilah
• Cold Rain and Snow
• Jack Straw
• Althea
• Comes a Time
• Mr. Charlie
• He's Gone
• Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad

I just love CR&S, and the timeless Jack Straw was another magical first set song, setting the tone for another great Summer.  Comes a Time was a surprise ... tour debut ... and Oteil was in excellent voice on it.  John took the blues intensity up with Mr. Charlie, and the whole band took it ever farther up with great ensemble singing on He's Gone.  And then GDTRFB was a rocking sing-along for all of Fenway.  What fun!

Longer set break than Saturday, but we stayed in our seats.  We knew that just getting to the bathroom would be insane, and getting back would be even worse.  And no way we were going to brave the beer lines.  We'd gotten some outrageously priced bottles of water when we got beer before the first set, and these helped us get through.  We were up and dancing for most of the show of course, but by the end of the night we were getting pretty exhausted.  Anyway, time for the second set, where the dragons come out.

• They Love Each Other
• Playing In the Band
• Help On the Way
• Slipknot!
• Fire On the Mountain
• Drums
• Space
• Playing In the Band
• The Other One
• Standing On the Moon
• Not Fade Away

More individual excellence and more tight, accomplished takes on these songs.  They reprised PITB after another mind-bending Space segment and then went into a dark and meaty reprise of TOO, finally finishing up the second verse.  Sarah loves SOTM and this was a great cover with Bob singing as well as ever.

It's in their contract that they have to throw NFA to the crowds so they can chant endlessly, but this was luckily a short and sweet one and the band came back out for an encore before things really got out of hand.  They had meant to encore with The Weight Saturday night before getting distracted by the dark star on the big river, but they did it Sunday night (with Jeff taking a verse of course), and then finished off with Ripple.

Geez, will I ever see these guys again?  Probably not in that configuration at least, though I knew I'd be seeing more streams of this tour.  But it was sad to have them leave Fenway ... wait a minute, will I ever be inside Fenway again?  Probably, but again, nothing is forever.

Anyway, we were close to our limit with the scene.  Successfully exited out the bleacher entrance but then knew that it would take hours to get all the way up Van Ness, so we detoured around up Boylston, which was pretty packed too.  Made it back to the garage, but the luck we'd had with lights on Saturday didn't hold, dentists were dashing across the street with balloons, and we were delayed forever just exiting up to Storrow.  And when we made it to 93 North, there were three lanes closed and it took forever just to get up to Roosevelt Circle, where we opted for cross-country back home.

But what a weekend it had been!  We've been blessed by Dead & Company, and we've taken the opportunities we could to go see them live.  It's been worth every second. 

Dead & Company Final Tour, Fenway part 1

We've been blessed to have one of the finest bands ever, Dead & Company, touring for the last few years and visiting New England frequently.  But nothing is forever, especially bands.  Original Dead drummer, Bill Kreutzmann, has had to sit out stretches of their last couple of tours and announced early that he wouldn't be on this one at all.  Bob Weir's other band, Wolf Bros (which includes Kreutzmann's replacement, Jay Lane, and sometimes keyboardist Jeff Chimenti), has been taking a lot of his time, and the other members of the band, especially John Mayer, have many irons in the fire themselves.

Probably for these and other reasons, Dead & Company announced that their Summer 2023 tour would be their last, and more than the usual frenzy for tickets ensued.  There are rumors that actually the "end" of this band is mostly motivated by contractual issues, and that a "next Dead band" will appear soon under a different name.  We'll see about that, I hope so.

In any event, the last gasp of this band has been riveting.  We'd managed to stream about half the shows on the tour in advance of their June 24th and 25th appearances in Fenway Park.  And we'd been very impressed.  Not to knock Kreutzmann at all, but their rhythm was key to the band approaching another level from their last few tours.  The adventure they brought to GD music had increased steadily with each tour, but this time around they seemed a little more crisp and assured in addition to that.  Being their last tour probably helped also, they seemed more ready to push the envelope and try new things.

And Mayer and Chimenti have been playing flawlessly.  I remember Garcia taking over entire theaters with his guitar playing, and Mayer has been reaching that level.  He starts into a lead on his blues guitar (that he's been been playing almost all the time) and your whole soul just follows along with him.  Then Jeff takes a lead and you trust him to take you to a higher place.  Bobby had been showing some wear and tear in his voice lately, but his guitar playing was as right on as ever ... he's been mostly sticking to his green D'Angelico.  And the bottom end has been remarkable (again, not knocking Kreutzmann), filled with drum pyrotechnics and fast bass passages.

Dave had gotten tickets to the shows at Citi Field (New York) preceding the Boston shows, but decided that the physical and psychological cost of going down there was probably not worth it.  We agreed, we shuddered a bit at the thought of the intense crowd scenes and all that goes along with them.  But we'd be damned before we'd skip the Fenway shows (even though this meant missing the Green River Festival this year!), and we lined up online for tickets to them.  Even this was an intense hassle but we got seats to both shows and got very psyched for them.

Dave was over for the weekend and we headed into the Fens early on the 24th, hoping that the incredible rains of this late Spring/early Summer would hold off.  We got a table at oppressively noisy and crowded Yard House.  Can't believe that our waitress could put up with that level of noise for her whole shift.  We had to shout in her ear to place our orders.  But we like the beer and food there, it's very conveniently located, and we didn't have to wait for a table for that long.

Off to the ballpark after that and we managed to find our way to our pretty good seats in a box just to the left of the visitor dugout, five or so rows from the field.  I considered getting a beer, but the lines were long and the crowd was oppressive with people clogging the aisles and wandering around in dazes.  It looked worse out on the field, especially when they wheeled out a stretcher for a medical emergency and closed off one of the pressure valves holding those fans in.  Anyway, we were ready for the madness and pretty much stuck to our seats.

Another thing we were prepared for but exceeded our expectations was talking in the crowd.  Some people carried on conversations throughout the whole concert, like they were sitting (stoned) in their living rooms.  The guy to my right had done lighting at Fenway and so got a lot of tickets for friends.  Most of them were Deadicated concert goers like him and were there to listen.  But some weren't.  One couple in particular shoved their way up to talk to him and kept on talking, with their backs to the band.  I finally asked them to keep it down and the friend was outraged at that.  He and his partner left in a huff and soon after that the guy to my right touched my shoulder.  When I turned around he and his girlfriend offered me a handshake and a fist-bump, smiled, and said thanks for that.  They were there to listen, not to talk!

And some people were there to smoke pot, and smoke more pot, and keep on smoking pot.  I'm used to clouds of smoke at concerts, but this was extreme, especially the couple who sat in front of us for the second set and smoked doobie after doobie of ditchweed, like they'd better smoke as much as they could before they had to leave. We were choking from the smell ... hadn't they heard of edibles?

Anyway, just trying to set the bad part of the scene.  The good part of the scene was fantastic!  The rain held off and we even got some blue sky and brilliant sunshine reflecting off the right field stands.  Our sight lines were pretty good, being a few rows up we could see all of the stage very well.  And the sound was as great as you'd expect from such an experienced band.  They were scheduled to start at 6:30 and came on late (supposedly, John, Oteil, and Jeff were stuck in traffic and had to get out of the limo and run).  Here's the first set:

• Cassidy
• Brown-Eyed Women
• I Need a Miracle
• Here Comes Sunshine
• Tennessee Jed
• China Doll
• Viola Lee Blues
• The Music Never Stopped

Even to critics like us, who had seen much of the tour and were even pickier because of that, this just bowled us over.  Bobby's voice was not shaky at all, it was as strong as ever.  They were so tight and well-rehearsed and the sound was so good.  And they brought that extra panache we'd noticed with this tour, ready to jam and be experimental, but doing it as a group rather than a bunch of individuals.

And the experience was beautiful, I almost forgot about all the madness.  Seagulls whirled above Fenway in the slowly setting sun as they sang about the flight of the seabirds.  We'd predicted that they'd play Here Comes Sunshine, and we'd recently heard covers of that song by Phil's bands that we considered hard to equal, but this was just as magical an experience, if not better.  We were outside, the rain was holding off, and the early evening summer sun was streaking through the venerable ballpark, while on stage John and Bobby and Oteil and Jeff (who's vocal contributions were key) sang their hearts out.

Wow, that was great.  The bathroom was not that far away,  but the beer lines were still impossible and I fled back to my seat while the rock crowd in Fenway whirled around us.  I knew I would be going back there the next night, but my future plans do not include many concerts at Fenway!

Anyway, it was an unusually short set break and then the guys came back out and wowed us some more.

• New Speedway Boogie
• Dark Star
• The Other One
• Terrapin Station
• Drums
• Space
• Dark Star On the Big River
• Black Peter
• Casey Jones
• One More Saturday Night

This was a mind-bending set!  We were hoping for a Dark Star and boy did we get one.  They went far out there, but this was a solid, booming outer space experience, and they kept teasing TOO and then went into it, one of Dave's and my favorite songs.  And then they held up after the first verse and shifted gear smoothly into Terrapin.  Excellent stuff.

Oteil had been doing a duet with Mickey at the beginning of some Drums segments on the tour, but this night they went right onto the meat of Drums, and then Mickey had an extended time on The Beam.  He took it way down low and got Fenway shaking while the lights played over the press box.  Dave thinks he actually saw him lick The Beam, as he sometimes does in the throes of ecstasy.

And then something totally unexpected happened.  We were thinking that they'd go back into TOO and/or back into Dark Star, both of which had only been the first verses.  But were they going to break into Big River?  Were they going to go back into Space?  What was happening?  Oteil and John found a groove and Bobby and Jeff jumped right in and they followed that groove down the rabbit hole and back out and we all were suddenly parsecs away.  In the band's later notes they scribbled a name for this jam, "Dark Star On the Big River."  And that's what it was.  You have to hear this.

Bobby always sings me Black Peter, and this one was fine.  And Casey Jones is a little overplayed, but this was such an excellent one!  John's vocal lead was great, and Oteil was a monster, hopping around the stage and playing a loud, strong, inventive bass line.

The finished with OMSN, being Saturday, and then waved goodbye.  No encore tonight, as it was already pretty late and they were pressing up against Fenway's curfew.

We had to wait a bit before the lines out started moving and sat quietly in our seats while others clambered over us.  The couple in front of us had been some of the first to "leave," though they had to be staggering after power-smoking ditchweed all night.  Finally the crowd started moving and we made it out to Jersey Street, where we found ourselves in another crowd, pushing out to Van Ness and beyond, barely able to take steps without trampling each other.  Finally made it back to our parking garage, got some good luck with lights down Boylston, and then were on the road back home.

What a horror show but what a great concert!

Iris Dement at City Winery

By the time we saw that Iris Dement was playing at City Winery, the front of the room was sold already.  But we got acceptable tickets about a third of the way back in that long, long room and were psyched.

Iris has recently released another staggering record, Workin' On a World, her second release since her last staggering record, Sing the Delta, which was released in 2012.  Iris is so self-effacing, you have to think there must be a little humor in it.  She says her husband (Greg Brown) is retired but still writes and sings songs around the house.  She was doing the same thing and realized she might as well stop by the studio once in a while and record some stuff, since who knew when she was going to die (this is her sense of humor)?

She told us that she wrote the song, Workin' On a World, in November 2016 as a way of dealing with depression about the state of the world (she cited a quote I can't place, something like, "you must carve a path through the jungle of despair").  She said writing the song really helped her and she hoped it helped us.  Well, that song sure does help, and there was a room full of people who would agree.  And you should hear the rest of her album too, which gets very political and very personal.  As I say, it's a staggering artistic achievement.

So anyway, we were eager to hear her sing songs from it, and they had City Winery's excellent grand piano out waiting for her when we arrived after meeting our friend L for dinner at Tavern In the Square.  They also had a couple of mikes set up, and Ana Egge came out right at 7:00 for the opening act.

City Winery has lots of drawbacks as a music venue, the main one being it's so crowded and busy with food and drink at small tables.  But Ana was not phased by the noise and played a great set.  She had a wonderful sounding steel-stringed guitar and has written some nice songs.  Perhaps the highlight of her set though, was her cover of Dolly Parton's Wildflowers.  And Ana wasn't afraid to reach for the high notes.

After a short break, Iris came on with her guitar with an accompanist, Elizabeth something, on bass (which sounded great, but looked like it might have had a little viola in its ancestry).  I've seen perhaps more non-professionally paced concerts (Grateful Dead?) than I have professionally-paced ones (Asleep At the Wheel?), but Iris can sometimes take "pace" to another level.  She dithers about whether she should stay on guitar or switch to the piano, or back again.  And her monologues that start off directed to the audience often become conversations with herself that don't really have a point.  But this is all great, and we know that after she settles down she'll start back into one of those excellent songs. 

Can't remember the setlist exactly, but she started with a few early songs, then switched to her recent songs, introduced by Workin' On a World.  She did Morning Glory, Let Me Be Your Jesus, Sing the Delta, Warriors Of Love, The Cherry Orchard, and several other tunes, showcasing her strong piano playing and her vocal range.  Elizabeth was excellent on bass and took a few solos, though they perhaps had her mixed a little high.

Egge came back out for a few numbers with her ringing lead guitar, including a great version of Iris's Mama's Opry, in which Ana took the Mama lines.  The funny thing is that Elizabeth is a bit short and Ana is very tall, so they had to make major adjustments to the mike stand when swapping, while trying to look cool.

Over too soon ... but they came back out for an encore.  How about Iris on guitar singing Let the Mystery Be and then Our Town?  Can't get much better than that.  She didn't sing Down To Sing In Texas, which is what we were all waiting for.  But perhaps we're a little too concerned in NE about songs and art pushing the boundaries.  She was great and we all had a great time, and perhaps we had a better time in hearing her technical songs versus her heart-on-a-sleeve ones.  Perhaps.

Got back to the car without a trip to the dispensary, and then an adventurous ride back up North on 93, skirting road work.  So glad to see Iris!

13 States - Sound Crossing, Back Home

Monday, May 22

Woke up relatively early, and had a nice breakfast at the hotel.  We had left plenty of time to make our reservations on the 10:00 ferry out of Orient Point, but we saw no reason not to hit the road as soon as we could.  Long Island showed a different character that bright but hazy morning as we drove North, then East, past farms, nice rural homes, and several boutique hotels.

We didn’t hurry (we were actually stuck behind some slow-pokes so couldn’t have hurried if we’d wanted to) and had a mellow drive as the end of the Earth got closer and closer.  We caught glimpses of the ocean to the left and to the right and finally made it all the way out to Orient Point.

I’d been watching the clock all along (as well as the scenery) and we were thinking that we could kill an hour at the State and County parks out at Orient Point while we waited for the 10:00 ferry.  But it was just a minute before 9:00 when we pulled up to the ticket kiosk at the ferry dock, and when I told the guy that we had reservations on the 10:00 boat he said, “I can fit you on the 9:00 boat if you want.”  I told him ok (we can see those parks later!), he quickly gave us our tickets, and I floored it out through their parking lot, bee-lining for the ferry, which blew its horn as we approached.  They motioned us into the last spot on the automobile deck, and the Susan Anne had left the dock by the time Sarah and I got out of the car.

We hurried up two flights to the open passenger deck, and the trip over to New London CT was as fun as I’d hoped it would be.  It was a beautiful but hazy day, still marred by Canadian wildfires but with acceptable visibility.  The Orient Point harbor faces South, and the ferry had nosed into the dock, so we had to turn around and then motor around the tip of Long Island, between it and Plum Island.  I had my windbreaker on and long pants, and most of the less prepared people went into the enclosed cabin after a short time.  But I stayed on deck and just reveled in the sights.  We only saw two other boats, both sailboats lazily running down the Sound to the West.

Plum Island has a lighthouse, and beyond it is Gull Island, which has a lighthouse too.  When we passed that I could see South to Gardiners Island, and beyond that could just make out Montauk Point, the other Eastern fork of Long Island.  The Susan Anne had to fight a stiffening Northeast wind and the incoming tide, but made pretty good time.  We passed over the line into Connecticut, with yet another lighthouse, Race Rock, to our starboard and beyond it seemingly huge Fishers Island.

We turned into New London harbor with the historic New London Harbor Light to our port side, and New London Ledge Lighthouse to starboard.  The wind had gotten pretty stiff by then, but we were now in the lee of the shore as we motored up the Thames River a bit, past the U.S. Navy submarine base in Groton.

The announcement came over the PA to get back to our cars, but we waited until we were almost docked, since we knew we’d be the last car off anyway.  What a fun boat ride and now we were back in New England!  One more state to go however.  We wound uphill from the harbor a bit and then up the ramp onto 95 by 10:30, over the Thames toward Rhode Island.

We were on the home stretch and it was a lovely day, but we were not stopping until we got back to Woburn.  Stayed on 95 up through Providence, passed back into Massachusetts, and took 128 clockwise because we were not at all anxious to get caught in city traffic again.  Back to the roads we knew, and soon home to Woburn, not long after noon.  The cats were very, very happy to see us and we were just as happy to see them.  148.4 miles on the road that day, and 18 by sea.

So was this a successful vacation or not?  It sure was.  We’d pretty much hit every part of our ambitious itinerary, though it took a lot of driving.  More of the driving than I’d anticipated was harrowing … in all we’d done over 3000 miles, and lots of it was hard traveling through rain, traffic, and trucks.  But this was part of the experience.  I hadn’t really been out on the road in years, and I had been itching to get out there in 2023, see the road, the country, and perhaps the traffic and the bad sides of cities.  And that itch sure was scratched!  I’m not anxious to get out on the road again for a while.

And many of the places we saw were delightful and touched my intellect and my spirit.  That was what we’d hoped for and we succeeded in remaining open to wonder all trip.  We got hotels where and when we wanted, had quite a variety of meals (we went to a Cracker Barrel!), and didn’t get lost, catch COVID, or get shot by rednecks.  There are beautiful sights and nice people everywhere and we’d just been lucky enough to experience two weeks of them.  Now we could go back into our cocoon for a while!

13 States - Back Up North

Sunday, May 21

OK, this was going to be a tough driving day.  Had a surprisingly good sleep, not small or weird beds and not loud AC.  Took a quick shower, got some nutrition and calories in their small breakfast room, we packed up like pros, and then hit the road pretty early.

The first highlight (and maybe the best of the day) was immediate as we crossed the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  The day had “dawned” under a severe overcast, mixed with smoke from Canadian wildfires, and our trek over the bridge out into the ocean was set in a low, streaky sky.  This was where the Battle of Yorktown was really won … the French navy kept the English navy from entering Chesapeake Bay in this huge strait.

We could see out into the Atlantic itself, and on our left into the Bay, but not more than a few miles in each direction.  Container ships moved faster than I would have thought possible out to sea through the Thimble Shoal Channel and into the Bay via the Chesapeake Channel, as we motored along at the speed limit across the bridge and down through the tunnels in the middle of the water, 18 miles over to Fisher’s Island and then onto the Delmarva Peninsula.

We traveled on and on, North on the Delmarva Peninsula and finally out of Virginia into Maryland, and then at long last into Delaware (our 12th state).  This was miles and miles of rural driving like we’d seen all through the South, with billboards every few hundred yards for personal injury lawyers and with dollar stores to the left and right.  But this was straighter, there were no curves in the road.

How to describe the rest of the day?  The traffic slowly picked up and picked up as we got into Delaware, and the far-between stoplights on the highway got more and more frequent.  By the time we got up to Dover DE, the rural highway was getting close to the “character” of route 1 in Saugus.  But it mercifully morphed into a superhighway (strangely called “route 1”) and we were soon in a pack of cars doing 80.  We stopped at a rest area, but the only exit from that sent us in the wrong direction!?!  I was not impressed with Delaware.

Finally made it to the North end of the state, and then over the bridge to the New Jersey Turnpike.  Trying to keep this short, but the NJ Turnpike was as forbidding as ever.  It split into the “car” and “truck” parts, and many cars went on the truck part since it was Sunday, relieving congestion some.  We never really jammed up in New Jersey, but we could feel the New York gravity well dragging us inexorably forward into its maw.

A number of highway rest areas were closed for renovation(?), and we targeted the Woodrow Wilson rest area for a needed pee and lunch break.  Unfortunately, everyone else felt that same way.  The parking lot was more than a madhouse, I can’t believe we lucked into a space, and when I got inside there was a line for the men’s room stretching around the lobby.  The woman’s room line was twice as long.

Ack!  We had hoped to find a quiet picnic table or something to eat lunch there, but no chance.  It was a maelstrom of angry people and honking cars.  I made it back into the searing sun in the crazed parking lot, and luckily Sarah was jumping up and down with an alternative.  We screwed out of there immediately (SUVs faced off over who would get our vacated spot), headed up the highway for a few miles, exited, and then followed suburban roads to the Etra Lake State Park, a wonderful oasis for us in the middle of New Jersey.

There was a cluster of people around their skate park and a few scattered groups using their vast network of soccer fields, but there was no one else at their picnic tables, where we had our last, leisurely PB&J lunch (we were now out of bread!).  The lake was blue and peaceful, though small, and they actually had real rest rooms.  This was a great interlude in the long day of driving, and was another small, hidden gem.

OK, it was time for some serious driving, like we hadn’t been doing any before!  The rest of NJ featured thicker and thicker traffic.  We’d experienced New York on a Tuesday going South, and it was packed.  Maybe going North on a mid-afternoon Sunday would be better?  Not a chance, we were in a 5MPH traffic jam starting at the Goethals Bridge onto Staten Island, continuing over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge over the straits of New York Bay into Brooklyn, and it didn’t thin out until far, far East on Long Island.

This was a problem, but was not totally unexpected, and the good part of it was that we had plenty of time to look around and see the spectacular urban/natural landscape over the ocean entrance to New York and Jersey City.  Manhattan dominated the view to the North, and piers and huge ships were underneath us.  We finally got off the bridge onto the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, and the traffic there was even worse.

We pulled over at a “rest stop” in Brooklyn where we got a miraculous parking spot.  This was Plumb Beach in the Gateway National Recreation Area.  We only stopped there for a bit, and our impressions were that a) they had the grossest port-a-potties I’ve ever seen and b) people were really enjoying themselves there.  It had turned into a hazy (wildfires probably), warm Spring afternoon with a strong Easterly wind and thoroughly wrapped South Asian families were rolling in the sun on the sand.

Back into the slow-moving traffic and it went on and on as we crawled through miles out East on Long Island, wondering if it would ever end.  At some point we were close to another classic GD venue, the Nassau Coliseum, but we were surrounded by cars who all wanted to go fast.  There wasn’t much open space to be found, but a few NY cowboys in sports cars and motorcycles tried to make some, roaring up the littered breakdown lanes and cutting in and out.

We had gotten off early that morning, but it was already late afternoon before the traffic started easing and we could get up to a decent speed.  There were still many miles to go, up to the Long Island Expressway itself and then way, way out to the Eastern parts of the island.  At long last we got to the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Riverhead NY, where we got a nice first floor room.

We weren’t about to get adventurous for dinner after that long day, and just walked across the parking lot to Buffalo Wild Wings.  For a sports fan, they were very well-appointed.  They featured an array of flags from local professional and college teams, an evocative picture of Mike Bossy holding the Cup at some point in the Islanders’ early-80’s dynasty, and the classic picture of Walt Frazier winning the NBA championship with a jump shot over Jerry West in the early 70s.

They also had a good beer list and I had a Blue Point Hoptical Illusion from an LI brewery.  I could see 17 TVs!  Nice dinner, back to the hotel, and we actually got in a last Parks game before bed.  We’d traveled 437.6 tough miles that day.