Fare Thee Well buildup, part 2!!

After the big fail for Chicago tickets (see my earlier post), the expected ways in which humans rationalize setbacks started up in our minds and conversation:

• Well, we saved a lot of money by not going!
• It probably would have been a real hassle with crowds of entitled-feeling people, the heat, and stuff.
• We’ll have almost as good a time if they broadcast it over the web, at Port Chester, or something.
• Hey, maybe a miracle will happen and we’ll suddenly get the tickets we hoped for!

And then a miracle kind of did happen.

As mentioned in the earlier post, there was a LOT of talk and wailing about how the tickets had been distributed, that this hadn’t been thought out well and so a lot of deserving people were shut out, and that the band should be playing more “farewell” concerts.  In my opinion it’s non-realistic to say that an artist “should” do anything, but I was very glad when rumors started up that they were considering adding concerts before the July 4th weekend, in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.  In fact, super-fan Bill Walton tweeted the dates, before his tweet was removed.

People in discussion groups and ones I talked to advocated for playing lots of additional concerts in other parts of the country and claimed that the band would eventually cave and schedule additional concerts after July 4th.  But I feel they won’t since this has been such a difficult thing to schedule, open stadium dates are hard to get with this amount of notice, and in our litigious society (and seeing the prices being charged for Chicago), if the band now announces dates after Chicago I wouldn’t be surprised if they get sued by idiots who claim they spent thousands on the “last” concerts and that value has been taken away!

So we had a pretty good idea that two concerts would be scheduled for Santa Clara in late June, and I’m very sure that those 5 concerts will be it.  But we had no idea when tickets for Santa Clara would be going on sale.  In fact, I (for one) wasn’t thinking at all about going to those concerts.  I’d internalized the disappointment from the Chicago brouhaha and in my mind it would be even more impossible to get tickets and/or hotel packages for the new concerts than it had been for Soldier’s Field.

And then it happened, I was struck by the fickle finger of fate (cue the Supremes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrajELQjXpA)!  I was working away in the middle of the afternoon on Friday April 10 and was just about at a breaking spot between tasks, when an email from CID Entertainment popped up at the bottom of my screen, announcing the Santa Clara concerts.  “Yeah, yeah,” I thought.  I texted Dave (he was on the road to Ithaca) that Santa Clara had been announced.  Then I clicked on the email.  It was fortunate that that email came in first (I had signed up for the CID mailing list), because if the email right after it from Dead.net had come in first I would have wasted precious time reading and navigating through that.

The CID email said “Travel packages on sale now!” in large letters (something the Dead.net email did not say), and this was a hotlink when I hovered over it.  “What?” I said.  But I didn’t bother answering my carefully-worded question, I just started fucking clicking!  The travel packages page was arranged just like the one I had spent hours obsessing about for Chicago, and before I knew it I was at a screen that [I thought] said I had a 15-minute wait.  “Well that’s better than I got before,” I thought, and then I realized that what it was actually saying was that I had 15 minutes to complete the page!  You can probably believe I entered my credit card info in record time, and before I knew it I had bought hotel-ticket packages for 4 people to see the Grateful Dead in California!!!

AND … I was still breathing.  I texted Dave that we got tickets to see the Dead in CA and he texted back, “Uh??”  I called Sarah and told her, and Dave called me and I verified that I wasn’t kidding and he had to contact Ricky immediately.  We were all very excited.

Then I went back to my desk and wondered where in the stadium the seats I had bought were located, and then thought, “Wait, I blew it!”  I had clicked so quickly that I bought a package with cheaper seats, like the one in Chicago we first had our eyes on, and forgot to look at the slightly more expensive packages with better seats that we had ultimately decided to go for back in February.  I wondered if the more expensive packages were still available, and they were!  Apparently this “sneak up on people and tell them on sale now, not later!” approach had caught a lot of people off-guard.

This was much a much different experience from the failed Chicago venture, where people had had the time to get ready, had swamped the server with their requests, and had bought out all the tickets in 30 seconds.  There were probably some people in the Pacific Time Zone who didn’t even hear about the packages being on sale until several hours later, let alone have time to make the decision to spend money on them before the packages they wanted were gone.  I was fortunate enough to have enough credit on my card to do it, and so went ahead and bought the better seats also, feeling confident that I’d be able to pass on the first package I had bought to friends.

The deal for most people, those who elected not to buy hotel packages, was that Dead50 had a ticketing system that would accept requests from that moment on Friday until midnight the next Wednesday.  Then they would randomly select ticket requests to fulfill.  This was designed as a way to prevent scalping and/or complaints about unfair ticketing procedures.  This was designed to give everyone an equal chance.  Perhaps it was an unfair loophole that the hotel packages were on sale immediately, first-come first-served, and that I could buy two of them.  But perhaps it was just the fickle finger of fate!

Went home that night and we were very happy!  In fact, I’m still buzzing and smiling from the experience, a few days later.  We got a good price on airplane tickets, though there will be some late-night/early-morning travel.  I had the fun of offering the tickets to some very good, long-term friends and have them accept.  They’re equally as excited!  It’s not going to be a cheap experience and I’m sure there will be some hassles and some of those crowds and heat I mentioned above.  But this should be a fantastic time.  I hope everybody involved has a blast!

Pine Hill Project in Cambridge

Richard Shindell is an all-star and a triple-threat folk musician: songwriting, guitar, and voice.  Some of his best work has been with accompaniment by another all-star, Lucy Kaplansky.  I heard that those two had finally united for a project, and then heard that the two of them were playing in Cambridge with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, who are way up on my list of all-stars themselves.

Club Passim was hosting them, but the concert was at the historic First Parish Church in Cambridge, right on the corner of Church Street in Harvard Square.  Another case of getting tickets as soon as possible of course.

The Pine Hill Project's record came out in the meantime, produced by Larry naturally, and with him all over it.  I heard Shindell interviewed on WUMB a few days before the concert.  Dave Palmatier asked him where the name came from, and Shindell talked about Thoreau saying that he "Needed to climb up on the Pine Hill" to clear his mind.  Thoreau meant this metaphorically.  He went on to say that as an individual, he felt he should be able to "find a Pine Hill within myself."  Shindell also said that he (not Thoreau) was a Deadhead (when asked about their cover of I Know You Rider).

Anyway, we had an early Saturday dinner at Russell House Tavern in HSq and then sauntered over to the church well before the doors opened, only to find 50 people already in line!  Made it in eventually and went right up to the front, where there were unaccounted-for seats in the first pew ... which we grabbed.  Campbell and Williams came out for a first set with Jeffrey Hill, who was filling in for the AWOL Byron Isaacs.

They were fantastic.  Larry had several acoustic guitars on stage and stuck to them, while Teresa played some fine rhythm.  They did If I Had My Way, Lamps Trimmed and Burning, several originals we hadn't heard (they have an album coming out in June), a Louvin Brothers song, Big River, and were just absolutely excellent.  We talked to Kate and Mager at the break and they were gobstruck, especially by Teresa's emoting on Lamps, which we'd seen on display at the Lesh and Friends concerts last year.

Then the break and finally Richard and Lucy came on and I have to say their set did not meet expectations.  There were some great moments, like Larry playing some fantastic mandolin on Wichita (the Welch song), Lucy's new song Reunion, Richard's re-imagined Are You Happy Now, the beautiful Rain Just Falls, etc.  But there was lots of boring tuning, slow song after slow song, Richard practicing his electric guitar licks on stage instead of sticking to what he does well, a laborious Next Best Western, and more tuning.

Don't get me wrong, the set was delightful, though it was below my expectations.  Richard and Lucy sound so good together it's criminal, and Larry is just a marvel, taking over Wichita and many other songs on mandolin, rocking out on guitar, and playing some of the best, most ethereal pedal steel I've ever heard.  Another highlight was Lucy's Ten Year Night, which is a fabulous song ... those two have written some of the best modern folk songs.  But this was another slow dirge and what we needed was some pep, especially in a hot and stuffy church on a Saturday night with our pews getting more and more uncomfortable.

They finally concluded with what we'd been waiting all night to hear: their cover of I Know You Rider.  Again, done very well, featuring some technically fantastic leads from Larry, but done slowly.  Larry tried to get a jam going and did for a while; Lucy almost had to push him out of the way so she could get back to the mike and sing another verse when what this needed was some freelancing.  Oh well.

They brought Teresa out with them for the encore: Greg Brown's Oh Lord I Have Made You a Place In My Heart.  More excellence here: Teresa fit incredibly tastefully between Richard and Lucy, possibly channeling Dar Williams from the Cry Cry Cry record.  But this wasn't quite the rocker we were hoping for ... oh well again.  They were done and left the stage to a fitting standing ovation, this was a band of all-stars after all and though I may grouse, there was a ton of excellence shown.

Long walk back up Mass Ave. to our parking spot, but there are signs that another brutal New England winter may be on its last legs, and it was Saturday night!

Dave and Phil Alvin in Cambridge

Dave and Phil Alvin were so off-the-charts fantastic at GRF last summer, and when we saw they were playing Sinclair in Cambridge, we grabbed tickets immediately.  Made it to busy Harvard Square on the first full day of Spring and were able to squeeze into the parking lot on Church Street, then get in line at the club.  We looked around when we got inside but finally figured what the heck, we were going to stand in front of the stage, right between the brothers.

The Far West opened and played a rocking, tight set that warmed up our eardrums, including a Hank Williams song.  Dave came out to join them for the last number, Townes' White Freightliner, which they killed!

Then one more beer and the place was suddenly packed, squishing us a bit up against the stage.  Dave and Phil came out with Dave's ace band of Lisa Pancratz, Brad Fordham, and Chris Miller, and they proceeded to tear the place up.  The band was on like you wouldn't believe, Phil was doing his jaw-dropping vocals, and Dave was as supreme as ever on the blues-rock guitar.

We were so close to Dave (basically 2 feet when he was at his mike), that we could see details of his guitar style.  He had a thumbpick that he plucked with his forefinger, and used two other fingers to pick the higher notes.  He had three tight rings on his right hand that looked functional (as well as stylistic), helping him keep his fingers stiff.  The nails on his left hand were all polished and cut short, helping with his quick precision on the fretboard.

Phil played acoustic guitar on most numbers, but pulled the harps out of jacket and jeans pockets and wailed away, trying to make as much noise as his younger brother.  At some points when he was really blowing you could see the glands on his lean neck puffing up bigger and bigger.

And the band was having such a great night, this was incredible stuff.  Lisa for one was having a fantastic night, and actually smiled and bowed to the crowd, as opposed to the stiff manner she had shown when we'd seen her before.  I think they really appreciated to reception they got from the full room of people.  Kate came up front for a few numbers and we all heckled Dave ... he loved it.

We picked up a setlist from the stage after the show, but they digressed a bit here and there.  I think this one is accurate:

All By Myself
I Feel So Good
Key To The Highway
You've Changed
How You Want It Done?
Southern Flood Blues
Border Radio
Out of Control
The Stuff They Call Money
Truckin' Little Woman
What's Up With Your Brother?
Please, Please, Please
Dry River
One Bad Stud

Encore:
Johnny Ace Is Dead
Marie, Marie
Break On Through To The Other Side
So Long Baby Goodbye

I was glad to hear so many old Blasters songs, in particular Border Radio, and One Bad Stud from the Streets of Fire soundtrack (actually a Leiber-Stoller song).  Phil just killed the James Brown song Please Please Please ... possibly the highlight of the night.  They of course rocked out on Dry River and gave Lisa a break for an excellent drum solo.

We were pleased with the long encore.  I called Marie Marie, which was not tough to do :) ... a classic case of Dave writing a song for his older brother's excellent vocal instrument.  Break On Through was actually just a band-introduction interlude, interspersed with a few Doors lyrics.  Then they rocked out one more time and Dave and Phil posed for the crowd and then left while the band went on and on, finally finishing with a flourish.  They're off to the Iron Horse tonight and then to Australia and New Zealand, which I hope is ready for them!

Fare Thee Well buildup, part 1??

As mentioned, the Grateful Dead (or at least Phil, Bobby, Billy, and Mickey) announced in January that they will be doing a 50th anniversary, final three concerts over the 4th of July weekend in Soldier Field, Chicago, with Trey Anastasio, Bruce Hornsby, and Jeff Chimenti.  The event is being billed as "Fare Thee Well."  But of course, this announcement immediately raised a number of questions such as:

• only three shows??
• only Chicago?
• only Anastasio?  why??
• what about Tom Constanten and Donna Godchaux (who are also surviving members)?
• will there be special guests?
• how much do I have to pay?
• do they realize what a big deal this is and how many people will do ridiculous things to attend?

Answers to some of these questions have been forthcoming.  They claim these 3 shows in Chicago are it, though people continue to doubt that.  They’ve mentioned that any choice of guitarist would be second-guessed and this is as good as any.  BUT, they seem not to have been prepared for the incredible ticket frenzy this announcement has created.

Their first round of tickets was offered through mail order and they got over 400K requests.  The Dead ticket office has expressed dumbfoundedness at this, saying that this is “many, many times the number we expected.”  I think most people in Deaddom would have anticipated this, but not them??

In the meantime, we decided that even though the price would be high, we wanted to go and would try for a couple of the hotel/ticket packages they were offering.  We planned to drive and Ricky planned to fly from Denver.  The subsequent swamping of the GD TOO with mail orders caused them to delay both the internet sales of the packages and the “general public” internet sale, and so we had to wait on the edge of our seats, counting down the days until February 27th.

I worked at home that morning and was set up with three computers with 7 open browser sessions as the 10AM CST on-sale time approached.  5 of my sessions crashed with server errors up to 15 minutes *before* the sale opened.  2 sessions were able to get through to their index page and I could click through to the individual pages offering room/ticket choices.  However, every choice I made returned a “no rooms available” message, which I interpreted as a database-too-busy error.  I kept on clicking and clicking, hoping to get a request accepted, but no such luck.  Eventually most of the pages returned “sold out.”

Finally after 50 minutes or so, the organizers (CID Entertainment) sent an email with direct links to the room selection forms for those who had been unable to get through at all.  But by that point everything was sold out, including the VERY expensive super-vip packages.  I read later that the available packages had sold out in 1 minute!

Originally we’d said that we were only interested in going if we could get a hotel package.  But we talked and agreed that we should try for any tickets in the general public sale the next morning, and worry about where to stay if we could get them.

On Saturday morning (2/28), Dave, Sarah, and I were each at our computers with a 4th open on my desk.  We were ready when the sale started, and were hoping to get 4 tickets for each day.  Dave tried to get Friday tickets, Sarah Saturday, and me Sunday and also 3-day passes on the other computer.  This sale was handled by Ticketmaster and they have a robust queuing system for frantic ticket sales.  But when we submitted our requests as fast as we could, we still got “over 15 minute wait” messages right away.

Dave and Sarah’s requests for Friday and Saturday never went through … their pages must have timed out and died though they never got error messages.  My Sunday requests were denied a few times (“no tickets available at this time, try again”) after long waits and I eventually gave up.

My 3-day requests on 2 browser sessions did finally get through!  But the tickets we were offered both times were in section 356, way up in the stratosphere to the back left of the stage, and were listed with a “these seats have no view of the stage” warning.  The organizers had decided to sell seats in the whole stadium instead of just seats with a view (“go 360”) and even these seats were around $60 plus fees.

We agonized about it for a few minutes while the “you have ?? seconds left to buy these tickets or you will lose them” ticker counted down.  But we finally decided to decline.  We were so psyched to go see the concert, but when we visualized showing up with that level of psych for three days in Chicago and then getting such disappointing seats in the far reaches of a football stadium where we’d just have to sit and watch the TV screens, we decided to stay home and hope for a more local option for watching it remotely.  We were ready to spend a lot of money on going, but the worth of it with just those tickets plummeted in our minds.  We’d been very excited about the experience, but realized that without the payoff of seeing the stage we might be very disappointed.  And we did not want to spend that much money/effort for an ultimately disappointing/frustrating experience, even though I’m sure it would have featured plenty of positive moments too.  Sure, we could have left the seats and tried to hang out in the concourse, but we realized thousands of others would be trying this and it would not be a mellow experience … in fact it might get nasty.

The sale ended and the reports about what had just happened (and the aftermath) started.  Not only had the hotel packages sold out in a minute, according to Ticketmaster the queue when the sales opened on Saturday had reached 500,000 requests, a new Ticketmaster record.  Since then the secondary market has been going crazy.  Reliable sources have reported that a ticket package was on sale for $1 million, and are currently reporting that 3-day tickets (for good seats) are going for as much as $116,000, and cheap individual tickets are averaging $1,350.

This means I could have bought those tickets and resold them at minimal hassle (at this date, Ticketmaster for one makes it very easy … just log in to your account and click “resell my tickets” and name your price … they get 10% of the price).  I could have easily sold the 24 tickets (8 tickets for 3 days) for $1000 each, even though they were “no view.”  When I log on to secondary sale sites now I see tickets in section 356 going for that price.  But I’m very glad I didn’t do that.  We decided that we would have been disappointed with those seats for this marvelous event, and we did the right thing to let other people snap them up.  This was not the time to enter the rip-off culture … though a profit of $22.5K for an hour’s work is pretty good (the 3-day tickets for 4 seats were @$755)!

So we’re going through stages of shock and rationalization, as are many, many other Deadheads all over the world.  Billboard reports that they would estimate ticket demand “in the millions.”  I think it’s clear that the Dead could have gone on a lengthy farewell tour and sold out football stadia all over the country.  But this isn’t happening.

People at the Dead50 site are in shock too, as I say.  But their last update says, “If you do not have tickets, please know that we are working on various ways to help everyone experience these shows in a way that will help you share this special moment with us.”  We think it possible that they will offer closed-circuit simulcasts at select theaters throughout the country, possibly in Boston, but more likely in Port Chester NY, where we’ve been recently to see P&F.  So we’re staying tuned!

JRAD Paradise

In my mind at this point, Joe Russo is perhaps the best rock drummer I've ever heard.  And I've had the privilege of seeing him a good number of times, sitting in with the Levon Helm Band, with Furthur, and with Phil and Friends.  Lately he's formed his own band, Joe Russo's Almost Dead (a.k.a. JRAD) with long-time keyboard companion Marco Benevento, guitarists Tom Hamilton and Scott Metzger, and bassist Dave Dreiwitz.

We saw them over New Year's on webcast, playing at the Capitol in Port Chester with Phil Lesh substituting for Dreiwitz, (billed as PhilRAD) and we were VERY impressed.  At that point we knew they were coming to the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on February 6th, and after seeing the webcast there was no question but that we were going.

A huge development in the Dead world happened in the meantime too, the original group announcing a last series of concerts in July ... hopefully we can get tickets and there'll be more on that later.  But Dead-dom is operating at fever pitch these days, and the Paradise show sold out, as had numerous other dates on the tour, such as Higher Ground (Burlington VT) the night before.

We've been inundated by snow in New England this winter, and I knew there was next to no chance of finding a parking space in Allston on a Friday night with the streets so clogged, so met Sarah and Dave at their building and parked there.  We had dinner at Scollay Square and took the B branch of the Green Line from Park Street up to the Pleasant Street stop, along with hordes of people much closer to Dave's age than ours.

And to set the scene even more I need to say how brutal this winter has been so far and how fresh our memories were of going to Alston for a concert last winter and freezing to death.  We were all wearing extra clothes but knew that we were likely in for a very cold experience, especially waiting for the T in the middle of the night.  Winter was trying to scare us into staying inside and was almost succeeding!

But when we got off at Pleasant Street the hordes did not follow us, the weather seemed less threatening than it had out the windows of the train, and on the entrance to the club it said "open door," though nobody was there.  So we did, and walked right in to a deserted Paradise ... deserted that is except for a few guys schlepping cases of beverages to stock the bars, and the band doing sound check!!!!!  We walked right in to hear them kill The Wheel in that weird, empty room, and then practice a couple of other things, like a bit of Terrapin.  An assistant passed out cheat sheets to them all for what was apparently an original, but they had their problems with it and didn't play it in the show.

Geez, were we allowed there?  The beverage guys were smiling at us and the band was not bothered by us, so we hung out for a while wondering what was going on, but enjoying the moment.  Then a big bouncer guy yelled at us (though he knew it was his fault for leaving the door unattended), and ushered us into the bar to hang out for official doors-open.  The website had indicated the show started at 8 and the doors were open an hour before that, so we had shown up right around 7.  Actually the website apparently meant that doors were at 8 ... the show started at 9.  But that mixup was OK, especially since we'd had such a magical moment.  We hung out at the bar and had a couple of beers.

We were some of the first people in at 8, and we moved immediately to find a good spot upstairs.  They'd marked off a couple of areas as reserved near the soundboard, but we still got a very good spot up there and watched the crowd pour in.  Soon the place was packed and rocking.  People eventually showed up for the reserved corral in front of us, and some of them spent a lot of the evening talking and giggling, but some of them were obviously there for the music and were distressed by their silly companions.  In all, the crowd was definitely dominated by serious Deadheads, as proved by conversations between sets and in the men's room.  People were familiar with what they had played the night before, what opinions about they might/should play next, and everybody had their mind on Chicago in July.  One guy in the men's room confessed that his mail order ticket request had just been turned down, and we were all chilled by that.  Hope that doesn't happen to us!

So how was the show?  It was awesome!!  Russo was playing a larger kit than I've ever seen him play, with all the trimmings.  He had eight drums including one small one that was almost a conga, four cymbals including a HUGE one that actually made kind of a tinny noise, a couple of electronic pads, a cowbell array, a tambourine stand, and of course his assortment of things to shake and then throw behind him, sticks, mallets, and brushes, and a overhead mike he could pull forward to sing into and then shove out of the way when he wanted to get down to some serious percussion.  And he was leading the band of course, counting off the changes into the in-ear-monitor system, holding up his sticks and/or pointing to get the interludes when he wanted them, and grinning like a banshee!

Besides Russo, the player of the night was Benevento, who as I say had impressed us mightily in the New Year's shows.  He only had two electric keyboards rather than the B3/Leslie setup we'd seen before, and he stood in front of it all evening.  And he ripped off some of the funkiest and rocking-est and spaciest keyboard leads we'd heard.  His technique was incredible too, sometimes crossing over hands for extended stretches, and often dancing between both keyboards and playing them at once.

And I don't mean to slight the strings players.  Tom Hamilton was incredibly impressive himself and contributed hot, jazzy lead after lead.  Metzger was the surprise of the night for me, as he took some fine leads himself, contributed rocking rhythm, and did some fine vocals.  I hadn't seen Dreiwitz before (remember Phil?), but he was solid.  Actually the vocals could have been better, but everyone contributed and they were not bad, interspersed with some good moments.

Here's the first set, with notes from their FB page:

China Cat Sunflower * (TH) >
I Know You Rider (All)
Easy Wind (SM) >
Viola Lee Blues # (All)
Althea $ (TH) >
Let It Grow (SM)

* With "Truckin'" Tease (SM)
# With "Cumberland Blues" & "China Cat Sunflower" Teases / Jams (TH)
$ With "All of My Love" (Led Zep) Teases (MB)

This was fantastic.  Easy Wind had some incredible funk to it, especially Metzger's leads.  Viola Lee was loud and long and had the whole building throbbing.  The note is correct to our ears, they seemed to be trying to decide whether to play Cumberland or Viola Lee and settled on the latter.  And then the Let It Grow was beyond epic ... this must have been a half hour itself, and had us all enthralled.

Lots of joy, long piss lines, crowd confusion in a packed house, and gushing at the set break, and then the second set:

Bird Song % (TH) >
Playing In The Band (SM) >
Eyes Of The World (TH) >
The Wheel (All) >
Uncle John's Band (All) >
Terrapin Station Suite (TH)

% With "China Cat Sunflower" & "Dark Star" Teases / Jams (TH)
Uncle John's Band & Not Fade Away were not on the set list as written.
Entire 2nd set was seamlessly played from beginning to end, with numerous extended segues.

Again, the notes were correct to our ear.  They came out and jammed and seemed to be deciding whether they really wanted to play Dark Star or Bird Song.  I thought they had just settled on Dark Star when the bass dropped into Bird Song and they were off.  Great stuff!!!  And then to go into a hot PITB dominated by Russo, then an Eyes where Benevento took us to another planet and beyond, then the song we'd heard them practicing when we showed up.  We just loved it.

And then they found themselves in UJB when they apparently hadn't anticipated it and shrugged as a band and went at it!  This was beautiful and heartfelt.  We thought they were going to then finish The Wheel, which they never did [later note: they finished it in Portland the next night], though they did finish UJB eventually.  But then they went into Terrapin and no prisoners were taken.  This was where they wanted to be and they stayed in the Terrapin world for a long, long time while the room rocked and reeled and melted around them.

The band was billed as Joe's band, and it sure was.  As mentioned over and over, I think he's one of the best musicians playing, and he proceeded to take Terrapin into a drum zone where we'd never been before.  When we finally got to Tom and band singing the "spiral light of Venus" verse there was not a person in the house who wasn't riveted on Joe and following his every move.  And then another change ... and then he grabbed the mike, beat the drums, and went into Terrapin Flyer!!  As mentioned, the place was packed with knowledgeable Deadheads and this development was greeted with the enthusiasm it warranted.  The three of us were in ecstasy I can tell you.

They left the stage after that and after a bit came back for the encore: Not Fade Away (see note above).  They did the cheesy crowd-participation bit and to a purist might have seemed to have gotten a bit big for their britches to finish like they *were* the Dead or Furthur.  But what the heck, this was another great vehicle to show off Joe's prowess on the drums, and a great way to send us into the night.  Joe was a great bandleader to the end and thanked the band by name and the crowd for a brilliant night.  They must be so excited to be selling out shows ... on to the State Theater in Portland tonight!!!

We gathered ourselves and took last bathroom visits before going out into the cold night.  And we realized it was already after 1AM!  We had to thread through a gauntlet of people doing nitrous out of huge, colorful balloons on the Comm Ave sidewalk; a couple of guys had tanks out there and were passing out balloons, probably for a price ... they must have been dentists trying to drum up business.

The T took forever to show up and we were pretty numb by then.  The cars were packed with people a third my age, going somewhere. Half the jammed and slow train got off at Boylston and the rest at Park, and we managed to make it up the hill and over to the garage, and then drive home.  Got to bed by a little after 2:30, which was extreme but what a fucking concert we'd just seen!

Patriots Win 2015 Super Bowl!

I haven't been blogging about another of my great interests: spectator sports.  I'm an across-the-board New England fan of course.  But I have to type a note about my reaction yesterday when the Patriots won the Super Bowl.

The heroic Patriots took the lead, the first team in history to come back from 10 points down in the second half of a Super Bowl.  But then Seattle was driving back, and there was an incredible circus catch from Jermaine Kearse.  My intent isn't to describe what happened ... I'm sure you can look it up.  But my reaction was studied from years and years of suffering as a sports fan, that the fates were conspiring against us and that this was just like what had happened with Tyree Davis in the 2008 Super Bowl, etc., etc.  Marshawn Lynch, the beast who could not be stopped in that game, as beasts had dominated so many games before, took it to the 18-inch line.

But then Seattle threw and Malcolm Butler, a rookie from a Division 2 school, stepped up and intercepted it.  "I had a vision," he said.  I jumped out of my chair and shouted, "INTERCEPTED!!!"  The Patriots won the Super Bowl.

Is there a lesson in this?  I don't think so.  The point is that sports can be incredibly, incredibly dramatic.  And that that drama can be incredibly addictive.

Junior Brown at Johnny D's

I'd wanted to see Junior Brown for years, and won tickets from Cousin Kate to go see him at Johnny D's on January 17th!  We usually try to get a table when we go there, but they were all taken ... Junior has a devoted following. So we showed up right before show time and were able to grab a good piece of floor, leaning back against the wall across from the ticket table.

Lyle Brewer was the first opener and did some great Chet Atkins channeling (including one Atkins song) on solo guitar.  Tony Savarino was up next with a full band (the Savtones, keys, bass, and drums), and thrilled us with some fantastic blues/rock guitar, wonderful leads.

Junior was up next with his wife on rhythm of course, and a solid rockabilly bass and drums backbone.  He did a long set, naturally highlighted by Highway Patrol ("I'm just doing my job"), and closing with Hang Up and Drive.

As mentioned, Johnny D's was pretty full, but the strangest part of the crowd scene was that the dance floor was packed, but these people were not dancing.  There were about 30 large middle-aged (and older) guys with flannel shirts just standing on the floor.  The only movement from them was every once in a while one would bob his head to the beat.  I figured the story was that they were technical music fans.  Junior plays a homemade instrument, his "guit-steel," which is a telecaster-style on top and a lap steel on the bottom, and he's a wizard with it.  These guys were there to watch that.

Had a great time but then left before the late night act, through a rocking Davis Square and back up College Avenue to where we had managed to snag a parking place on the street.

Tedeschi Trucks Tear Down HOB Boston

When we heard that Tedeschi Trucks Band would be playing the House Of Blues, we started salivating, knowing that this would be a heaping helping of wonderful sound.  I guess a lot of people thought so, because both nights sold out quickly and resale tickets were hard to come by.  We resold an extra we had, and it went in a matter of minutes.

Met Sarah at the HOB restaurant after cruising around the block and not finding a legal space (there were plenty of illegal ones), and ending up in the same old lot at the corner of Van Ness.  Sarah was able to get perhaps the last table in the restaurant and it was already a madhouse two hours before the Friday show, December 12th.  We got food and beer somehow, then got in what was already a long line for the people who had gotten entrees (and so early admission) at 6:45 or so ... the line for real admission was already almost up to Brookline Ave.

They let us in right at 7 and we were able to grab our customary place to the left of the stage ... and another beer/cider.  The HOB filled up really quickly and we were all totally pumped, some more juiced than others but what the hell, it was Friday night!

Soulive opened and really blew me away with some excellent blues-funk.  The band is drums, guitar, and keys, and they played a loud, spacey, bluesy, colorful set of instrumentals, including a riff on McCartney's Eleanor Rigby.  I was hanging on their every note and the crowd was too for their first number or so, then started gabbing and by the end of their set was almost as loud as they were.  Such is the fate for opening acts at HOB.

Then they changed the set to the traditional Tedeschi Trucks setup, and soon Derek, Susan, and the guys came out and proceeded to exceed my expectations.

I'd never seen Derek from so close and he was riveting, displaying mastery of technique and inspiration from both hands, particularly his right,  He played the top string-and-a-half with his thumb and the rest with his fingers, striking and caressing and plucking them like he was defusing a bomb or holding hands with a child or giving the other driver a few hand signals.  A musician can exude mastery of his instrument, and his mastery was comparable to what I'd seen from Garcia.

Susan was worth the price of admission herself and shone on several vocal parts.  Not to mention the other 9 people in the band, who all took their chances to prove that they were excellent musicians too.  It's amazing that a band that large has stuck together for so long ... I think their personnel is what it was when we first saw them in 2011.  I think they all know that they can do magic together and they like to do that.  Here's the set list:

Are You Ready
Made Up Mind
Do I Look Worried
Midnight in Harlem
Let Me Get By
Part of Me
Don't Miss Me
Idle Wind
Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning
Shelter
Break In The Road
Anyhow
I Pity the Fool
Keep on Growing
The Storm

Encore:
Night Time Is the Right Time
Palace of the King

The first four songs just blew the crowd away and we were putty in their hands after that.  Idle Wind was another highlight for me, and then they reconfigured for a couple of acoustic songs, starting with Derek doing acoustic slide and Susan wailing away on a fantastic arrangement of Lamps Trimmed and Burning.

No Anyday (I'd love to hear them do that again), but they covered Keep On Growing and the place was rocking so hard it was threatening to burst at the seams for that.  Short break before the encore, and then they brought out the Soulive guys for the second encore.  They were delighted, as were we!

Took a while for the place to empty out and we just mellowed a bit, being Friday night.  Then a convoluted ride home as Storrow Drive was jammed and we reversed direction.  Great night!

DSO In Lowell!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, going to see Dark Star Orchestra is wonderful fun!  We’ve been to see them every time they’ve come to the Northeast over the past few years and this time they were playing in the big old Lowell Memorial Auditorium, Saturday December 6th.

We met Scott and Michelle at a just-opened bar in Lowell on a rainy evening after the first place we tried to meet was found to be packed.  Things were going on in Lowell that night (Riverhawks game?), and it was bustling.  After a quick burger we took off for the Auditorium, only to find that our print-at-home tickets had to be exchanged at the box office for “real” tickets instead of actually letting us in the door.  They need to join the 21^st century.

Only missed the first few bars of the opening song though by the time we got in the third-full hall: “Well, well, well, you can never tell.”  They had taken all the seats from the floor, which was not what I’d been expecting.  But this meant that Dave and I could sidle up towards the stage (especially since the place was just beginning to fill up), while the three shorter people were content to stand behind the few rows of mezzanine seats.

The question at DSO shows is always what Dead/Garcia show are they reproducing … or are they doing an elective set?  Shakedown Street instantly knocked the early 70s (and 60s) out of contention (we’d been hoping for a 1974 show), but the rest of the first set was very satisfactory and by the end of it we had it narrowed down to later ’78 or (very) early ’79.  This was definitely Shakedown Street era:

1. Shakedown Street
2. Me and My Uncle >
3. Big River
4. Peggy-O
5. Beat It On Down the Line
6. Stagger Lee
7. New Minglewood Blues
8. Brown-Eyed Women
9. From the Heart Of Me
10. I Need a Miracle

The downstairs part of the Auditorium was filled by this point, and the balcony (that they opened at some point) was about half full.  Their bathrooms weren’t quite as funky as at the Capitol Theater, but were not modern!  There was some speculation as to the show in the men’s room and at the beer line, though several people I talked to called From the Heart Of Me, “France.”  Donna gets no respect from some people, even though Lisa had done a fine job with her best song.

Skip was playing that loping bass style from the late 70s, RobE was frailing away at the rhythm guitar like his life depended on it, and Jeff was almost literally exploding above everything when it came time to take the lead.  RobK and Dino were pounding the drums in incredible synchronization; they might have been my favorite part of the show except for RobB, who was just a delight.  He stuck to the electric piano, but played it with such panache and color it’s hard to believe that even on a good night, that the 1978/79 Keith could have come close.

Pretty long set break, but that had been a longer-than-expected first set.  They lined up for the second set and we were still a bit unsure as to whether this was an elective or not.  But then I called Scarlet and they ripped into that, and the rest of the set clinched the era:

1. Scarlet Begonias >
2. Fire On the Mountain
3. Estimated Prophet >
4. Eyes Of the World >
5. Drums >
6. Jam >
7. Not Fade Away >
8. Black Peter >
9. Around and Around >
10. Good Lovin’

This was great stuff, such fun!  Dave and I were back on the floor for the second set after visiting with the others at the break, and we got up to the fifth row or so from the stage, right in front of Skip (they were lined up with Jeff, RobE, Lisa, Skip, and RobB from left to right, true to that time period).

There’d been some pot-smoking on the floor during the first set, but the second set was just amazing.  It seemed like everyone around me had a pipe or pocket vaporizer out and the smoke almost obscured the stage a few times.  And all of this indoors!  Pretty extraordinary … and the most extraordinary thing about it was that I wasn’t knocked out by being around it.

The finished up with a crackling Good Lovin’ in the disco style, then came out soon for the encore.  RobB revealed to us in that the show was New Haven Coliseum, 1979-01-17, and RobE added a personal note, that he was there and it was a rescheduling of one originally scheduled for the previous Fall which had been cancelled because of Garcia having pneumonia … Dave had gotten the right month!  They then finished up with the proper encore, Casey Jones, and a filler of Sisters and Brothers (which the Dead never did, though the Garcia Band had of course).

What a rocking good time and what a great mellow song to send us off into the night!

Signature Sounds 20th, Sunday

They actually had two shows scheduled for Sunday and we would have loved to see both (Miss Tess and Lake Street Dive were closing), but we had to get back to work the next morning after a long Thanksgiving weekend and so had only gotten tickets for the Sunday afternoon show ... but this was not a bad lineup itself, to say the least!

We hung around the Quality Inn until they gently kicked us out at about 11:00, and then meandered into downtown Northampton, where we got a fine parking spot across from the theater on a sunny Sunday and proceeded to wander around a bit.  We edged past a line of young adults waiting for a seat at the Green Beans ... and noticed that one of the groups was Aoife, Brittany, Greg, and a manager from Crooked Still.  I did not disturb them, though Brittany and Greg looked fine about being recognized (Aoife was busy texting).

Had a fine lunch at the Toasted Owl, and then made it back to the theater right on time to see ... Twisted Pine again!  They set up on their plank of plywood and only did one song for us this time, but they are really good.  I asked Jim's wife at the merch table (Jim Olsen is the guru of Signature Sounds and was complimented by all the bands, as he should be) how they managed to sign them right under the noses of Compass Records (who sponsored Freshgrass)?

OK, first up was a band Sarah and I have seen many times and have an unreasoned devotion to, Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem.  They're all oozing talent, they're really mellow and eclectic, they play whatever they want and don't make a big deal of it, and they produce excellent music.  Mark Erelli joined them on lap steel.  They did their usual set, with Rani's new song about dropping her son off at school, a few sing-alongs, and then closed with I Want To Be Ready When Love Comes Back To Me.  This just cannot be beat.

Next up was the Sacred Shakers, and this was a very entertaining set too.  As I'm sure you know, the band consists of Eilen's 4-piece band and 4 other pieces: Daniel Kellar on fiddle, Greg Glassman on guitar and vocals, Daniel Fram on guitar and vocals, and Eric Royer on banjo.  One of the amusing things about their set was that they cover the gamut from light gospel to heavy gospel, and some of the artsy-fartsy types who were in attendance because this was an arts thing in Northampton were a bit confused by all this ... weren't they going to play something about peace and love rather than just Old Testament stories?  Luckily, they did not!  Eilen continued to move the bar up and up, as she had started to the night before, and she was just shimmying with gospel soul.  Jerry was not bad either, ripping off some great dark rock and roll leads between Royer's and Kellar's bluegrass parts.  And Jason Beek was marvelous on vocals.

Next up was the pièce de résistance, a Crooked Still reunion.  This world-class band had broken up for the individuals to pursue various projects back in 2012, and they'd been very successful.  We'd seen Aiofe O'Donovan play at Freshgrass, as well as seen fiddler Brittany Haas in her incredible trio with Kowert and Tice, and seen banjoist Greg Liszt leading his band at GRF, the Deadly Gentlemen.  But with the addition of Tristan Claridge on cello and Corey DiMario on double-bass they are so far over the top with talent it's incredible.  They did songs from throughout their career as well, including a funky Come On In My Kitchen, a note-perfect cover of Gillian's Orphan Girl, a beyond-soulful Look On and Cry, and a beautiful My Captain.  They closed with The Golden Vanity and then came back out with the crowd and led us all in Shady Grove.

Whoah!!!  What a (short and sweet) 24 hours of music it had been, and we only had a few hours of driving in the sudden late-November dark before we were back home.  Can't wait for the 25th!

Signature Sounds 20th, Saturday

Years ago I started noticing that I liked everything released on the new label Signature Sounds, and I started seeking out their stuff.  I remember one year going to the Signature Sounds tent at the Boston Folk Festival and asking them whom they'd just signed that I should hear.  They said, "Well, we've just signed a woman named Eilen Jewell."

And so when we heard at the Green River Festival this year that they'd be having a set of 20th anniversary concerts (we'd been to their 10th in the Somerville Theater), we were psyched.  We got tickets to two of the 4 shows, even though they were on Thanksgiving weekend, and arranged to stay in a hotel near Northampton in between.  Then Thanksgiving came and went and we headed out there on a beautiful late Fall Saturday, November 29th.

Went this way and that and checked into our hotel in Hadley, then found a quick Applebee's (the Comfort Inn didn't have the game!) and watched the Revolution beat the Red Bulls in the Eastern Conference final.  That was done, and so we headed across the river into Northampton, found a parking place on the street, and then strolled over to the Academy of Music, a sweet old hall where Harry Houdini once entertained the crowds.

Here's who played that night:

Zoe Muth was up first and had a new guitar player and new bassist.  Pretty much all of her set was from her World of Strangers record, including the bittersweet Mama Needs a Margarita and the sublimely mellow Waltz Of the Wayward Wind.  Her guitarist tried to rock out a bit and I guess she's trying to be a bit of a show-person, but she's as down home as ever and as great.  For pure musicianship, this was possibly the best we'd seen her.

Next was the Sweetback Sisters and they were on fire as well.  Ryan Hommel opened on pedal steel and I wished he'd done a few more numbers on it.  Emily was being her hyper self and was dominant, quite a good night for her.  Zara knocked us over with a torch song, but it was Emily and their usual sly sense of humor that thrilled us.  And their costumes were just awful.

Barnstar! was up next and possibly put on the best show of the night.  They're a super-group of local bluegrass, including Mark Erelli, Taylor Amerding, and Jake Amerding, and they just filled the hall with powerful harmony.  We'd seen them at the GRF this past summer, and they were easily twice as good this time, they just nailed it.

It was break-time next and they dropped the ornate purple curtain, and we settled down for a bit.  BUT ... then they set up a plywood plank or something over the orchestra pit and Twisted Pine came out!  We'd seen this band of Berklee students at Freshgrass over the summer, and they are mightily impressive.  They squeezed in a 4-song set at the break on Saturday and showed that a) all 5 of them can balance around one mike on a piece of plywood better than you'd expect and b) they just keep getting better and better.

Break over, Heather Maloney came out and played a fantastic set herself, mostly solo but also with some of the other artists joining her at times.  Of course the highlight was her take on Joni's Woodstock, which you have to hear if you haven't.  She keeps getting better too, and switched between three very different-sounding acoustic guitars and a whole layer of filters.  Very technical and very entertaining stuff.

Winterpills was up next and they're just not at the same level as these other bands.  I took a stroll around during their set and bought a few CDs.

The final act was Eilen Jewell and she was a delight.  We'd last seen her back in February, when she was very pregnant and just playing one quick gig before retiring to Idaho to be a mother for a while.  Now she's ready to go back on the road, and the rest of her band is very ready too.  They played a flat opener and then Sea Of Tears, which is one of my favorites of theirs, and which Eilen didn't rip the way she has in the past.  But then she stepped to the mike and apologized!!!  I guess she thought herself that she'd been not that hot, and she said, "My mind is on a little face with a pacifier in it and probably a very wet diaper by now."  How sweet of her to apologize, and any parent could sympathize.  Then she got her act together and played a great set, delightfully getting better and better as the night went along.

They have a new studio record (as well as a new live one that I picked up at the merch table) which will be released in the Spring.  But they only played one song from it and for the rest cruised through all of her catalog, including several songs from her first, Boundary County.  I guess I've seen them better, but they're still getting back together and it was really great to see them.  They called everybody back out for their encore and did a Hank Williams hymn.

Quite a show!  Back to the car on a cold Fall night with the dregs of a Thanksgiving snowstorm piled up all around us, and then back to the hotel not too late.

Dan Hicks Finally!

We got tickets to Dan Hicks at the Bull Run a while ago, front table of course.  Then he had to cancel twice(!), one time because he was being treated for cancer, which is a good excuse.  He finally showed up on November 14th and we were there waiting, as were a lot of other people.  I don't think I've ever seen that many tables squeezed into the Sawtelle Room, and they were all full.

Dan had his excellent backup Lickettes with him, Roberta and Daria, his excellent fiddler, Benito Cortez, and a new guitarist.  The show was as wonderful as ever, with the whole band doing their stuff.  Probably the high point of the show was a totally grooved-out Evening Wind, and then a totally spooky and weird Scare Myself, and later a rollicking Payday.  The low point was when Dan did Porter's Satisfied Mind solo and crashed and burned ... at this age his voice isn't really strong enough for him to do a ballad by himself ... but it was a good try.

We had a great time and I think the band did too ... and so did a lot of other people!

Bromberg and Campbell At the Bull Run

This seemed like an odd (but intriguing) combination when we saw it advertised: David Bromberg and Larry (F.) Campbell at the Bull Run.  But then we realized that David Bromberg can play with anyone, and that this wasn't odd, it was exciting!  Tickets procured in the front row, we got more and more psyched for this, apparently along with a lot of other people, who sold the place out early.

So on Friday the 24th we headed over there after work, had another nice Bull Run dinner and beers, didn't run into Larry in the bathroom (though Dave had a sighting), and watched the place get packed.  Larry and David came on 30 minutes or so past advertised starting time, but this was understandable seeing as how frantic the place had gotten.

David was in a fine, talkative mood.  Who wouldn't be tickled playing with Larry?  And he told us about having played with Larry for years in backstage sessions between Dylan shows, etc.  He said that Bob had complained once that his band had more fun and played better with Bromberg than with him.  Oh well oh well!

And then Larry produced the tracks that David had done with Levon on his recent record, and they were determined after that to put out a whole record together and maybe get in some touring.  We're glad they did!

It's hard to characterize what they played beyond saying it was like a Bromberg record, a little of this and a little of that.  Larry was doing the multi-instrumentalist thing, alternating between two guitars (one of which had a large sound hole and a wonderful, low and rich sound), a mandolin, and a fiddle.  David picked his guitar like the world was ending and did the same to his mandolin once in a while.

And did Bromberg pick!  Larry is incredible, but his best runs only served to egg on David, whose fingers were absolutely dancing on the fretboard.  A big difference between them is that David is one of those players who hunkers down over his instrument and melds into it.  Larry holds his instruments like he's in a classroom so they can resonate with a pure sound.  David's sound is personal.

One of the early highlights of the show for me was when they slid into Willie's How Time Slips Away.  This is one of my all-time favorite songs and they just pulled it out of nowhere.  Of course David had to give it the Chicago blues ending, hitting the "in time you're going to pay" line that
Willie downplays, like that was the whole point of the song.  Well, maybe it is.

They played reels, blues, airs, and everything they could think of.  Far from having a setlist, they wrangled between each song about what they were going to tackle next, ending up alternating with songs they each chose.  Could either of them pick a song that the other one didn't know?  Maybe if we stayed about 10 times as long as we did.

After a long, long set (extended by Larry when David was ready to quit), they came out for an encore and played goddamn Turkey In the Straw!  Wonderful to end the night with such an old chestnut.

Geoff Muldaur In the Ballroom

As soon as we saw that Geoff Muldaur was playing the Ballroom at the Bull Run on Saturday 9/27, we got tickets.  This is such a nice room and we were really looking forward to seeing such a classic act (both in age and style) in that intimate setting.  No disappointment here.

Dad and Andrew were visiting, but we got out of the house at 6:00 and headed out to Shirley.  The place was mobbed when we got there, and there were drunk people dancing all over the place.  We parked across the bridge and headed in, finally escaping the mob and climbing upstairs where it was peaceful.

Muldaur started slowly (he had sound problems and we told him to just unplug dammit ... it's a small room) but ended up playing a great concert for all 25 of us in the Ballroom.  It was a madhouse there that night: a wedding, two concerts (a Beatles cover band was in the Sawtelle Room), and Saturday night bar/restaurant crowd.

Muldaur played a "Geoff Muldaur" model Martin excellently, except for two songs on which he plunked on a banjo with considerably less excellence but still assurance.  He did the stuff we wanted to hear, like Kitchen Door Blues (opener), My Tears Came Rolling, Drop Down Mama, Bobby Charles's (and Rick Danko co-writing, which I didn't know) Small Town Talk, and Find Blind Lemon, and also played lots of old blues tunes we'd never heard, introducing each with when he'd first heard it, often on Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.

He played two 40-minute sets with a short break in between.  He's got such a wonderful voice, a one-of-a-kind.  Dave was by far the youngest one there (except for the sound guy), probably by at least 30 years.

Freshgrass 2014

You'd think that people who like to see music as much as we do would go to a lot of festivals.  But we don't.  But last year's Freshgrass had an awesome lineup and we almost went.  And when we saw the lineup for this year we were pushovers to go when MattW revealed that he had a timeshare condo 30 minutes South of North Adams.

They took their sweet time revealing what band would be playing what stage when.  And when they finally finished revealing, Rodney Crowell was missing, who was one of the top names IMO (he begged out to work on a movie or something).  They also had a lot stricter rules than other festivals, since they're on the grounds of an art museum.

But whatever, we were really psyched!  We took Friday Sept. 19 off from work and left home around 10.  We stopped at Shelburne Falls for a delicious lunch next to the sunny Bridge of Flowers, then continued to trundle out to North Adams, through Williamstown, and down South to Hancock.  There we met M&J just as they were coming out of the clubhouse with the keys, and trucked back down the hill to our pair of suites.  He had scored an "A" unit and a "B" unit and we had lots of room, balconies, TVs all over the place, fireplaces (they had a jacuzzi in in their bedroom), fully equipped kitchens, large bathrooms, and stuff.

We had a beer or two, drove back up to the clubhouse for a soak in the outdoor spa in the slightly chilly but beautiful Berkshire air, and then drove on back and prepped for the concert.  We were off!

And what an exhausting weekend it was!  Here's what I saw, not including the minor-league bands at the Courtyard C stage and the popup stages:

Friday

Michael Daves & Tony Trischka

• They featured special guests Brittany Haas and Aoife O'Donovan.
• They had us riveted at the first song, and then tore into "a murder ballad," Cold Rain and Snow; I didn't know this was a murder ballad (though I'd been hearing it for years) until they sang a verse I'd never heard ... that explained a lot.
• It was the first act and already the surprise of the festival: Michael Daves is a phenom; you could count the fillings in his back teeth when he opened his mouth to sing, he took no prisoners.

Aoife O'Donovan

• The soundboard guys had some problems all weekend, and they started with Aoife.
• She wanted to open with a ballad from her album and feedback had to make her change plans on the fly; so she went into a Crooked Still rocker, and this worked out great!
• She did her soft songs later and had the packed Courtyard D crowd in the palm of her hand, a great performance.
• The sun was way set by the end of it and the temperature was dropping fast.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops

• They're just not the same without Dom Flemons, not to mention original Drop, Justin Robinson.
• And I also liked Layla McAlla and Adam Matta, who had brief stints with the band.
• But Rhiannon Giddens and Hubby Jenkins are still great, and they had added a new cello player and a bass and drums.
• But ... this meant they weren't the ace band I expected them to be, especially when the cello and bass stepped on each other.
• Oh well, the crowd in the courtyard (*beyond* packed now, it was almost frightening, and very cold by this point!) loved them and we left a bit early so we could grab places inside for...

The Duhks

• The "late night" set is inside in a weird auditorium they have, and the Duhks were eagerly anticipated by everybody.
• Again, I was disappointed that they were missing a key original member: Tanya Elizabeth.
• They had filled her spot with a fine fiddler but Tanya had added so much to their vocal style and their funk.
• But it was a fun show anyway, and they're a great addition to the eclectic lineup we realized they were going for; there are so many different kinds of bluegrass/roots and the festival ended up covering many of them.
• We headed out before they quite finished, dodged some emergency vehicles convening on a crash on route 43 on the way back, and finally got to bed sometime between 12 and 1AM.

Woke up Saturday around 8 and were just about ready when D&T showed up and we all had an incredible breakfast of "everything" omelets prepared by Matt.  Then we scrambled to get all the stuff in the cars.  S&D and I left first, a little after 10, and grabbed a fine parking space and only had to wait in line for a minute before entering the venue.  It was another fine day and Andrew was at the Courtyard stage when I showed up!

Saturday

The Deedle Deedle Dees

• They were the first band up, at Courtyard D at 12:15.
• They definitely played a distinctive style: children's bluegrass.
• This meant they were kind of boring, unless you were into songs about Amelia Earhart, etc.
• The highlight was when they did a song about the molasses flood in Boston and their lead singer jumped out into the crowd to lead the kids in a fun molasses simulation.
• You had to see it to see it you know, but the most fun thing about their act was watching the kids respond ... really a great start to the day.

The Novel Ideas

• They were up next at the field stage, where we'd set up a camp next to the soundboard.
• They're a young, soft, country-folk, band with some nice sounds.
• Talented people but not great songs ... I was beginning to think that the festival was starting slowly.
• And then we gathered at the car for "gnoshes;" but I was dying to get back and soon did because next up was ...

Claire Lynch

• Dave saw most of this too and was blown away.  Claire is a world class bluegrass musician and had a note-perfect band.
• Her second song was her killer Dear Sister, which is one of the best folk-bluegrasss-oldtimey songs I've ever heard.
• The estimable Mark Schatz was her bassist/multi-instrumentalist, and he delighted us all with a classic hambone.
• For a climax of the set she did what everyone wanted: Jesse Winchester's That's What Makes You Strong, which had the field hanging on every note and got some handkerchiefs out for sure.

Haas Kowert Tice

• Next up I ran back to the Courtyard and caught a bunch of the set from Brittany Haas (fiddle, Crooked Still alumna), Paul Kowert (bass, Punch Brothers alumnus), and Jordan Tice (guitar, Tony Trischka alumnus).
• This was chamber bluegrass with a black belt ... perfect stuff.
• As good as Haas is, the delight of the set was Kowert finger-picking and bowing the bass on what had suddenly become a brilliant summer day.
• They did classics, new songs, and improvised jams ... one of those bands you could have watched all day; but...

Berklee All Stars

• Ran back to the main stage (ok, there were beer and food breaks interspersed with all this) to see the Berklee bands.
• They had three student bands do short sets, and I managed to catch all of them: Ellie Buckland and Isa Burke, High Rock Mountain, and then Twisted Pine.
• They all showed incredible talent, but really playing bluegrass well as an ensemble can take a lot of practice.
• Possibly the band of the festival (they won the talent competition, so will be back next year), was Twisted Pine, which is fronted by the majestic Adam Moore on bass and had some outstanding players, like an Asian mandolin player whom we wanted to hear more of.
• But then it was *back* to the Courtyard for...

The Gibson Brothers

• Yet another sub-genre of bluegrass: traditional bluegrass with brother harmonies.
• These guys knew what they were doing and the crowd here was the older people who wanted to hear the trad stuff.
• Their singing together is sublime and they were wearing matching suits ... just what you want.
• Their set was fantastic, but just as they launched into their recent IBMA song of the year, Andrew and I scooped up our chairs and screwed for the main stage to see...

Alison Brown

• Dave joined me up front for this one and he was still gushing about Claire, until he saw Alison that is.
• She had a great band also, including her husband on bass and an excellent electric piano player; they played the finest jazz bluegrass and blew Dave's mind again ... this was possibly the band of the festival for him, he had never heard (let alone seen) a banjo played with such fluidity and perfection and producing such dynamic tones.
• Alison brought out guests Darol Anger and Claire Lynch and later her road managers, who were kids about 11 and 7 and who brought the house down.
• A train came by during her set, with classic Pullmans and people standing between cars to wave at us ... quite unexpected.
• I ran into her husband/bass player on Sunday and thanked him profusely for that set, he was very gracious.
• By then the sun was setting fast and it was time for ...

Sam Bush

• Wait, how many different styles of bluegrass are there?  This was the best newgrass ... though "newgrass" is almost traditional by now.
• Sam stuck to the mandolin and to his style, which meant he roamed around the stage and egged on the different players, then took the lead himself and out-did the fantastic run they'd just played.
• The crowd loved this and was roaring with every new wave of frenetic sound to come up the hill from the stage in the suddenly dark evening.
• They ended and we toweled off and realized we were exhausted already; but now it was time for ...

Railroad Earth

• This is the finest jamgrass, another distinctive style.
• They mellowed out perhaps a little too much at this point of the evening, but were all excellent players.
• They were spread out over the stage, as far apart as possible, and each took a signal role in the sound, which was fascinating.
• Would have loved to see their whole set, but we realized we had to pack up the chairs and bring them back to the cars (Andrew and D&T were long gone by this point) so we could grab places inside for the late show, which was...

The Infamous Stringdusters

• OMG, yet another style: flashgrass!
• They're great players but had a schtick, which was to play as fast and flashy as they could.
• It was just a cascading series of instrumental breaks, each longer, louder, and more of a crescendo than the last, interrupted by a few tight vocal interludes.
• One of the fun things was the curtain of lights they had, which focused around one player or the other when it was their turn to GO!
• I was really exhausted by this point, almost asleep on my feet.  About halfway through the set I told the others I had to go and they agreed that they wouldn't mind getting out of there either.
• It was a long, slow drive back to the condo, and we all staggered into bed again, some time between 12 and 1.

Couldn't believe it, but after a lousy sleep in a stifling room with a lumpy bed (ok, the condo wasn't perfect), I got up at 8AM again, ready for another day of music!  As is always the case, after settling into a place for two days it was a pain to get everything together and get out of there on short notice.  But we did and ended up hitting the road for the festival just a little after 10.

We had to park a bit farther away and were a bit later getting in the gates (there seemed to be a bigger crowd on Sunday), but we still had the chance to grab a great spot at the main stage.

And this meant I had a chance to tour the galleries!  I had seen their "boiler room" installation on Saturday, which is a literal boiler room, back from the days when coal and steam powered the mills that the Mass Museum of Contemporary Art currently occupies.  On Sunday I had time to see some of their other exhibits too, including massive installations by Teresita Fernández (and also some more intimate gold chrome paintings she'd done), and a panoply of spacey, runny oils by Darren Waterston.  Then the show started!

Sunday

Salvation Alley String Band

• The Courtyard D stage was first up again at 12:15 with a pretty much straight-ahead country act.
• I caught a few numbers of their's; might have enjoyed them more but had to get out of there quickly for...

Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper

• This was yet another kind of bluegrass, where there's one virtuoso and everything is centered on getting to the point in the song where he plays the bejeezus out of his instrument.
• The virtuoso here was Michael Cleveland, a blind fiddler whom we've seen play with the best bands around and outshine them all, and who's a perennial contender for fiddler of the year.
• Dave was again up front with me for this, he had bought into the gospel of bluegrass and believed me when I told him he would be blown away again by this guy.  He was.

Darol Anger

• Next up was some more academic bluegrass, from current Berklee faculty member, Darol Anger.
• He had his family on stage with him for several numbers and proved to be an excellent band leader.
• He's also a fantastic fiddler and his glue was essential ... in all, a great mid-afternoon, mellow set.

Hurray For the Riff Raff

• Wandered around a bit and then found myself back in the Courtyard for a few tunes by Alynda Lee Segarra's band, which had been at the GRF this year.
• Yet another style: folk/Americana bluegrass!
• She's got a strong voice and was rocking the enthusiastic crowd in the courtyard, almost packed again at this point.
• But I got out of there and back to the field for ...

Martha Redbone Roots Project

• Martha's got a unique mix of blues, soul, and American Indian music.
• You might call this "roots-grass" if looking for another name for the style.
• The high point of her set was a long, throbbing cover of Johnny Cash's Drums, from his Bitter Tears record (recently re-recorded by Welch, Rawlings, etc.).
• This had the crowd going wild; but back to the Courtyard now for...

Liam Ó Maonlaí

• Hadn't heard this guy, who sang some excellent Irish folk.
• The highlight of his set was a beautiful, ringing cover of the traditional Lakes of Pontchartrain, naturally done in a Paul Brady style.
• The packed Courtyard became even more full as I stuck around for the next set.  What we were all waiting for was one of the real name acts of the festival...

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn

• Béla and Abigail were delayed by the sound gremlins that had been around all weekend, but soldiered on.
• They both had banjos of course, his with a huge body that was as resonant as Ó Maonlaí's bodhrán had been and her's as highly tuned as a banjo can get.
• They played Béla's take on jazz bluegrass and Abigail's take on Chinese bluegrass, and then mixed the two and twisted us all around, and ended up somewhere totally delightful.
• This had the absolutely jammed-in crowd gaping and roaring, but we (Sarah and Matt were with me) had to grab our chairs and struggle out of there suddenly in the middle of the set because we didn't want to miss...

The David Grisman Sextet (sometimes 7)

• They were rocking on the field stage by the time we got there, and I eventually got down front and joined Dave, who was enthralled.
• This was dawg-grass of the highest style, with covers of traditional songs, totally random jams, and Grisman songs from all eras, including Grateful Dawg!
• Grisman brought out guests Darol Anger, Alison Brown and a guitar player from an earlier act who's name we missed.
• This was music of the highest degree, purveyed by a musician of the highest pedigree, and up next was...

Emmylou Harris

• She was the last act of the weekend and we were anticipating an incredible finale, but Emmylou unfortunately had a cold.
• I was really disappointed because Matt had never seen her and was very, very psyched (we were both up front for the start of the set).
• Emmy the veteran could not be faulted however, and several reviews I've read gushed about how great she was.
• The fact was that though she was lacking in energy she laid down some great stuff, including One Of These Days (I've been lucky enough to see her do that song many times throughout the years), Luxury Liner, and of course Jesse's My Songbird.
• Her old stand-by Byron House was on bass, and young Australian Jedd Hughes, was on lead and he shone as ever, including a lead on Luxury Liner that almost had Emmylou smiling ... she was obviously not feeling well.
• The crowd shouted her back on stage for an encore, and she did a quick cover of Wheels.
• Oh well, I've seen her many times and will see her again, I hope!

WOW ... time to get our things together and leave.  That had been 25 bands in the course of 2.5 days, plus food stalls, intense art, amateur pickers running all over the place, incredibly friendly staff (in all a great job by Freshgrass making us all feel welcome and happy), beer (Goose Island was my customary selection), and lots of happy people.  We had a few raindrops on Sunday and had suffered the cold on Friday evening, but there were also lengthy periods of blue sky and fantastic sunshine.  The weather generally held and it was as great as you'd want for a end-of-summer Berkshire weekend.

We made it back to the car and left by 8:00 or so with a long drive in front of us to get back East.  But it had been a wonderful weekend and we're already looking forward to doing it again next year!

Jack White in the Bleacher Theater

We've all been very impressed by Jack White's last few records, and we were just saying that we had to go see him next time he came to town when ... we found out he was coming to town.  And not only that, but he was going to play the "Bleacher Theater" at Fenway.  For this they set up a stage on the visitor bullpen and open 6 or so sections of the bleachers and the grandstand.  We got tickets in row 40 of section 42 ... great angle but we would have liked to be about half that many rows up.  Oh well ... we were going to see Jack White at Fenway and were very excited!

The environs of Fenway were a madhouse as soon as I pulled off of Park Drive at about 5:15 and I was just able to get a spot in a corner of a closed-off Van Ness Street and a grid-locked Ipswich Street.  We met for dinner at Yard House on Brookline; good salads and great beer selection.  Then we boogied down to entrance C, paid an outrageous price for ballpark beer, and climbed up to our seats.  I was three rows directly behind the Ted Williams seat.

Olivia Jean opened at 6:30 and played some incredibly gnarly guitar and some great songs (including a cover of Shocking Blue's I'm Your Venus).  He band was fantastic too, and it was a beautiful setting, with the huge stage almost covering the vistor bullpen and the home bullpen invisible under all the trailers and out-buildings a real rock show requires.  The sun had about set by the time Olivia's act ended, and the bleachers were almost full soon after that.

It was such a fun concert for so many reasons, the drama, the song selection, the setting, the musical performances, the crowd, the stage set, and just about everything.  Take a look at the pictures on Jack's site (click on 2014-09-17, Fenway).  And I'll add some more specifics later ... have to get ready for Freshgrass!

Here's the setlist:

Just One Drink
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
High Ball Stepper
Lazaretto
Hotel Yorba
Temporary Ground
I Cut Like a Buffalo
Top Yourself
Cannon
Alone in My Home
Entitlement
Astro
John the Revelator (Blind Willie Johnson)
Rambling Man (Hank  Williams)
You Know That I Know (Hank Williams)
You Don't Know What Love Is
We're Going to Be Friends
Blunderbuss
Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan)
Ball and a Biscuit

Encore:
Icky Thump
Steady, As She Goes
Freedom at 21
Sixteen Saltines
The Hardest Button to Button
That Black Bat Licorice
Would You Fight for My Love?
Hello Operator
Seven Nation Army

OK, more details!

Jack played with the fantastic band he's been touring with lately, Lillie Mae Rische, Fats Kaplin, Daru Jones, Dominic Davis, and Ikey Owens.  They were introduced individually like they were baseball players, emerging from the little door in the left field scoreboard and running across the field to the stage.

Davis played the first half of the set on an electric, then switched to a chromed stand-up bass, that sounded excellent.  Fats did not play the theremin he had on stage, but played everything else: mainly pedal steel but also mandolin, fiddle, and who knows what, while wearing a suit and sporting a Fu Manchu.  Jones had his kit set up to the left of the stage and was an animal, pounding away with an energy we couldn't believe.  Owens wailed on the organ and also played the delicate piano parts that make Jack's recent songs so outstanding.

 And Lillie Mae was everything I'd anticipated too.  She sang the soulful backup, ripped off the searing fiddle runs, and looked really cool!  Jack jumped over to her mike and screamed into it with her on the choruses.  Fats picked up his fiddle at times and those two played unison swing to back up and take over some songs, while Jack watched them critically.

My favorite part of the show was when Jack marched over to the stand-up piano with a serious look on his face, slung his guitar back over his side, strummed a chord on the strings, and then started pounding away on the keys, staring downwards.  After a few bars he screamed, "Tell me who's that writing?" and then answered himself in the same breath, "John the Revelator!!!"  He sang a few rounds of that great traditional song, and then took us away with him on the piano, up and up and up.  Until finally he started crooning: "I love you baby, but you gotta understand, when the Lord made me he made a rambling man."  This was soulful Hank Williams on his birthday; this was roots music wailed into the Fenway Park night.  Jack did a shout-out to the great Hank after Ramblin' Man, and then did You Know That I Know as well.

So many songs had me almost giggling with delight.  He covered an obscure Dylan song.  He did You Don't Know What Love Is, which was the song I really wanted to hear but never expected him to play.  He did the great duets with Lillie, Temporary Ground and Alone In My Home.  He did I Cut Like a Buffalo, perhaps the best song from his brief Dead Weather foray.  And then he did Ball and a Biscuit, a song I love but really, really, never expected him to play.

We were ready for it to get cold, as it often does on a late summer Fenway night when the wind picks up.  But the temperature didn't really drop and the crowd was thick and writhing.  It was so comfortable in the bleachers, both environmentally and psychologically.  Almost all of the people were there to see the genius play, and we almost all knew the songs and were hanging on every note.  The 10% who were just there for a rock show were kind of freaked out by us fanatics, almost like at a Grateful Dead concert.

And I have to mention how fantastic the production was, because that's what really took the experience over the top.  The "bleacher theater" idea worked wonderfully, at least for the section we were in.  The sound was perfect.  They had rigged lights all over, but chiefly in three large light boxes that swiveled high over the stage.  They opened the curtains behind the stage, and the background was the beautiful greensward of Fenway.  They had pixel-perfect video screens to the left and right at our eye level (40th row), and though we could see the musicians fine I found myself watching the screens at times.  The camera work from the robots on stage and the telescoping lenses near the soundboard (one section directly to our right) was incredible, and they had two separate feeds on the two screens.

They played a long set and then bounced off stage.  We knew they were coming back for an encore, but what I wasn't ready for was a fucking 9 song encore!!!  This was really a second set.  They opened with Icky Thump for Dog's sake and did Freedom At 21 and That Black Bat Licorice.  We were just rolling with delight and laughing in ecstasy.  Finally they were done, and Jack regaled the crowd with his appreciation of our appreciation.  Beyond everything, this was a case of a musician letting it all hang out and walking that fine line, having it work totally, and feeding off the raves of the crowd.  This was a lot of fun for everybody.

Took a while for the bleachers to empty, but we and the people around us had nothing to complain about.  We'd just shared an incredible auditory and visual experience and wanted to keep it in our minds as long as we could.  Finally got out of there and it was just a few hundred feet to where I'd parked.  We were gone into the night but I think I'll remember Jack White at Fenway Park longer than a lot of things!

AATW Runs Into Shirley

The summer music slow season is about over and the Fall schedule is about to descend on us, oh no!  First up was Asleep At the Wheel at the Bull Run on Thursday, 9/11.

AATW has been around since 1970 with a rotating cast around lead-man Ray Benson.  Ray has had his ups and downs over the years, but the band is back on top.  Nobody can do Western Swing the way they do.  Well ok, some people can, but AATW and Benson do it with an ease and a sense of fun that can't be equaled.

We were at the table at the left corner of the stage, and so had pretty good seats.  You've got to be up front for the Sawtelle Room because the floor isn't pitched and the stage is barely elevated.  Just before the band went on a rogue attendee asked if she could squeeze into our table and we said sure.  She asked and I told her I'd been listening to AATW for a long time, and she said probably not as long as her.  As it turned out, she's Ray's sister and is currently living on the Cape!

Ray has added some new personnel to the band, Emily Gimble on piano and vocals (Tommy Gimble's granddaughter) and Katie Holmes on fiddle and vocals.  Emily was off the charts fantastic.  Her piano chops were superlative and her vocals were flawless, including a lead on the classic blues tune, A Good Man Is Hard To Find.  Katie was pretty good, as well as Eddie Rivers on steel, David Miller on stand-up electric bass, and David Sanger on drums.  They also had a saxophonist/clarinetist (their producer perhaps? he alternated on soundboard) who we would have liked to hear a bit more.

Their mix was pretty muddy at first, but they eventually got used to the room and filled it well.  Benson was in a pretty expansive mood and was, as usual, incredible.  He's got one of the great voices, including power throughout an amazing range from upper baritone to the deepest bass.  They have an incredible repertoire to cover and tried to get to a bunch of those songs.  I was very glad to hear them do Faded Love, on which they did a couple of measures of "everyone play!" Dixieland, and also House Of Blue Lights and even Hot Rod Lincoln.

Dave liked it!  Not a bad drive back home and got to bed not too late.  Much more music to come soon!

Ol' Brown Shoe on the Dock in Salem

Ol' Brown Shoe was playing on the deck of the Black Lobster in Salem on a sunny Sunday afternoon and that was not to be missed.

The tide was way out when we showed up for the 1:00 show at @1:30 (luckily they were just about to start), and the rivers were mostly gullies of mud.  The band played three long sets and were mostly excellent, though there were of course a few vocal flubs.  They had a BBQ (hamburgers and hot dogs) which was as good as could be expected, and the beer was cold.

Everyone there had an great time, ourselves included of course.  By the time they were done and we'd hobnobbed a bit, the tide was almost high with not a bit of mud in sight, and it was after 5:00.  A nice last part of the weekend!

Meet Up At Movies 2014

This year for Meet Up At the Movies the Dead organization arranged to show the made-for-TV film "Beat Show" from 1972-04-21 at Bremen, which was then in West Germany.  This was the latter part of the Europe 72 tour and the band were on top of their game to say the least.

Though they only showed the whole filming of the TV show (including bits left on the cutting room floor), this approached a successful documentary or memento in its own right.  Because the Dead were so relaxed, the feeling of the setting and their current goals came into focus better than if they just showed a performance (as in last year's Sunshine Daydream).

We went to the Fenway Regal 13 theaters after a fine meal at Yard House, both on Brookline Ave.  They were screening it in two theaters and the one we were assigned to was supposedly sold out, but there were a number of empty seats in it.  The film was fantastic and everyone had a good time, applauding and cheering.

In the bathroom afterwards the topic of conversation was what they'd do for a second set.

Green River Festival 2014, Sunday

As mentioned, most of our friends did not get tickets to Sunday, but we did!  We all three kind of forced ourselves to rise at a decent hour after being up late partying.  But how could we stay in bed when there was another beautiful summer day out there, a scrumptious Oxbow breakfast (this time with coffee), and more golf to play?

Dave and I enlisted Scott for golf and we had another vastly entertaining 6 holes.  There were some fine niblick shots, and we didn't run out of balls, though there was some danger of that.

Packed up as fast as possible after golf, refreshed water and other liquids, got the last few things out of the crannies of the room (you can settle into a hotel room dangerously fast), and hit the road for the festival while the others were still hanging out with languishing fervor (or something like that).  We got there about an hour later than we had Saturday and the line was extensive already.  There were possibly more people there Sunday than there had been Saturday.

The line started moving after not too long and even though several hundreds were admitted before us, we ended up with another fine space, about 10 feet in front of the soundboard, dead center.  It was already overcast and looked like rain (though rain hadn't been forecast last I checked), but this did not keep people away.  We did our Sunday-GRF morning routine of getting overpriced iced coffee and people-watching (there was a lot to watch).

Finally the first act came on, The Deadly Gentlemen.  They're a Boston band, formed by phenomenal banjo player Greg Liszt after he left Crooked Still.  Liszt is an incredible talent, and this was a thoroughly enjoyable set, though I missed some of it in the aforementioned pottie and food lines.  It was already a crowded festival!  I'm told that their cover of Cold Rain and Snow was incredible.

Whatever, it was down to the 4 Rivers stage next for another Boston band, Girls Guns and Glory.  This was another thoroughly enjoyable set that simultaneously showed some rawness in the band and showed their charm.  They played their excellent recent song, All the Way Up To Heaven, and did fun covers of Semi Truck and Chuck Berry's Sweet Little 16.  They also held off the rain; the sky was looking pretty scary at the start of their set but had calmed down a bit by the time they ended and we packed up and headed back uphill...

For the set of the weekend.  If you don't know Dave Alvin you ain't livin', and if you aren't familiar with the music he's made with brother Phil since the two of them got back together, you have to go hear this stuff now.  We'd told our son Dave about how good Alvin is, and he hadn't had time to catch up (GD fanaticism can be draining), but he was whacking me on the arm half-way through their first tune and saying, "Oh My God!!!!!"

The field was absolutely packed for the Alvins and people were standing and dancing halfway back to the soundboard.  This was another case where the festival people got it wrong: these guys were the headliners and the organizers thought Josh Ritter was?!?!?!  Phil has an incredible blues voice and Dave is just top notch.  Phil introduced him as the triple-threat: singer, songwriter, and guitar player, and boy is he good at all three.  And their voices melded the way brother's voices meld in heaven.  Incredible stuff.

They had Dave's band with them, and that's saying a lot: Lisa F. Pancratz (she did a drum solo that verged on TOO), Brad Fordham on his killer duo of basses, and Chris Miller playing the foil to Dave's guitar brilliance.  What did they do?  Well pretty much the whole Broonzy record, like Southern Flood Blues, All By Myself, Key To the Highway, Truckin' Little Woman, and the beyond-excellent Stuff They Call Money.  They finished up with Marie Marie and we were all (well, those of us with a pulse), in heaven.  We saw Mager a bit afterwards and he was still trying to calm down.  This was not only the set of the show, but one of those moments when you feel privileged for the glimpse into what a crack band of musicians can do.

Wow!  Time to decompress and eat a bit of Chinese vegetable wrap, the third year in a row one of our favorite food vendors has been there ... hope they don't get "upgraded" out next year.  Then we hit the road for downhill to see Barnstar! [sic].

We used to be devoted fans of Northern Lights back in the day, and we were eager to see Taylor and Jake's new band (though Jake's solo work in the meantime hasn't impressed me ... I'd lump him in with Josh Ritter and Ellis Paul), and Mark Erelli on lead guitar is no slouch.  We loved the few songs of their's we saw at the 4 Rivers stage before the sky that had been threatening rain all day finally let loose.

We made a quick decision to take off, and then finally ran into our friend GlennK and spouse, who have just had a milestone anniversary!  Rude of us to run away, but we wanted to get back to the main stage and stop things from getting wet, and then get out of there ... the World Cup final was being contested at that point and we wanted to get back home for the replay.

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper was holding forth up on the top field, but we packed up quickly and exited.  In all, the GRF had a whole bunch of second-tier acts and was sonically not well organized.  I hope their new direction leads to a good place, but I for one will not be jumping on early-bird tickets next year.  For instance, we could have stayed home and seen the one "great" act they had at Sinclair for a lot less hassle.

Oh well, got home at a leisurely pace on route 2 and saw the World Cup final.  I bitch, but it was a lot of fun!!!