A Bit Of Freshgrass 2022

We had such a great time at Freshgrass back in 2014, but it's a bit of a stretch from Eastern Mass, and they haven't had must-see lineups recently, so we haven't gotten it together to go.  But I've really wanted to see Sierra Ferrell again since seeing her at GRF last year, and I saw she was on stage on Saturday, followed by Del McCoury.  Good enough, we could do one day!  It'd have to be a long one: leave here at 7:00 and get back by midnight if things worked out, but we figured it would be worth it.

And it was!  Saturday the 24th of September was a beautiful, crisp and windy, early Fall day.  And as we traveled West out Route 2 and gained elevation, eventually topping the Berkshires, the Fall colors popped out of the trees and the blue sky and hills surrounded us.  Got to North Adams @9:40 and one parking lot was already full, but we got a great space in another one, grabbed the chairs, and moseyed over to join the line on a chilly, breezy morning.  There were a lot of psyched people there already for the 10:45 gates, most of whom had frozen their asses off there on Friday night.  But we were all prepared with multiple layers, though Sarah and I were possibly the only ones with gloves and the morning Globe.  People looked at us jealously.

Typical confusion getting our bags checked, our wrists banded, and tickets scanned, but we got in eventually and set up our chairs to the left of the soundboard at the field stage.  M&J were going to meet us at 10, but they were delayed and so we brought in extra chairs and tried to hold places for them.

First up was Willi Carlisle over at the courtyard stage.  It was crowded already!  They had a few seats there over on the right and I was able to grab one, sit in the sun, and really enjoy his act.  He called himself an Arkansas folk-singer and he went on to prove it, singing some silly songs on guitar about living in a van and crotchety, euphemistic, hillbilly sayings from his uncle.  But he showed a serious side too, doing Steve Goodman's powerful anti-war anthem, Penny Evans, a cappella.  He then picked up a button accordion and did a great polka, and then another powerful Tex-Mex song.  The sound in the courtyard was fantastic and he was able to rear back and fill it with his voice.  He switched to clawhammer banjo for his last few tunes and led us all in a sing-along on Your Heart's a Big Tent.

Checked back at the main stage and M&J hadn't yet arrived, so ended up back at the courtyard for the next act, California Bluegrass Reunion.  This is a super-star act that Darol Anger's assembled for a few gigs, and I was anticipating some confusion ... they sure sounded close to a train wreck in the sound check, with vocal mikes feeding back and no one knowing who was going to solo when.  But then their set started and they were wonderful, each one getting a chance to shine and no one stepping on each other.  Their sound was great and I was close enough to hear the vocals; they didn't want to risk a lot of loud harmony singing and get feedback monsters so stood back from the mikes.

The band consists of Anger on fiddle, Chad Manning (David Grisman, Laurie Lewis) on another fiddle, Bill Evans (Dry Branch Fire Squad, Due West) on banjo, Sharon Gilchrist (Uncle Earl, Peter Rowan) on bass, the great John Reischman (Good Ol' Persons, Tony Rice, etc.) on mandolin, and Jim Nunally (David Grisman, Kathy Kallick) on guitar.  They rotated the vocal leads and showed awesome talent without any of them dominating.  I have to say that Reischman's mandolin was what I was listening to most closely, I hadn't seen him for 40(?) years!

Sarah and Matt showed up during the set and were able to squeeze in with me up front.  The wind had died down and the day suddenly became warmer, though it kept its Fall brilliance and it never got really hot.  Took a break out at the car for some cheese and crackers, and had a quick compliment for John Reischman and Darol Anger on my way back in.  I wanted to catch some of Alison Brown at the indoor stage, but there was a huge line to get in, and so I instead headed back to the field stage to see the tail end of Willie Watson's set.  He had a wonderful fiddle player (Sami Braman), a bass player, and another guitarist with him, but who was playing at any one time varied.  He did a few songs solo and ended with an excellent cover of Gallows Pole (you could hear people saying, "Where have I heard this before?" and the answer, "oh yeah, Led Zeppelin").

Next up was Misty Blues back at the courtyard stage, and I can't help but gush about how great this was.  The band is led by powerhouse Gina Coleman on vocals.  I'd seen them at GRF on 2021 and they played a mellow and saxophone-heavy set there, but this time they were out to take no prisoners and they were load, raucous, bluesy, driven by an excellent lead guitar who was smoking the strings.  The sound was perfect again, they had the whole courtyard rocking, and Coleman was growling the blues at the top of her lungs.  She mixed in a couple of ballads, and introduced one as composed with her son, Diego, who was stuck at the back of the stage but was so integral to the sound, playing an excellent rhythm guitar.

They were all great musicians, I think they've turned over a lot in personnel since last Summer.  The keyboard player was exceptional, but I kept going back to Diego.  His Mom mentioned him a few times and was obviously very proud of him.  But I wondered what things looked like from his perspective: a) my Mom is supposedly proud of me but sticks me at the back of the stage, and b) how cool is it to be playing rhythm guitar for your mother while she's belting the blues and hundreds of people are dancing?  The capper was when they did an excellent, slow intro to St. James Infirmary, then broke down, and then kicked back into it at an incredible pace.  They actually got into a Buddy Holly-esque groove on that, between Diego on rhythm and the wild lead guitar.  Boy, did they have people dancing!

Wow, needed to towel off and get some water after that set, so back to the seats at the main stage to see a bit of Aoife O'Donovan.  I've seen her many times and loved her with Crooked Still and of course with I'm With Her, but her solo stuff lags a bit IMO.  She had Isa Burke on guitar (and a drummer and bass), but still failed to take off in the few songs I heard.

Ok, I was early for the set but determined to get a great place to stand for Sierra Ferrell back at the courtyard stage.  The word's gotten out about her and I was able to get right up behind the VIP seats about 20 minutes before her set, but then the place quickly filled up.  It got pretty packed!  I spent the time talking with the people standing with me, all of whom were enthusiastic fans.  Sierra came on with Josie Toney on fiddle, a bass player, and a mandolinist.  She wore a beautiful white dress with lace trimming and a bow in back, brown cowboy boots, lots of makeup, and at first a large fur hat, but it blew off in the first song so she picked it up and threw it away.  She is unique, eclectic, and amazingly talented, some of her guitar runs had my jaw dropping.  She's hard to describe, you have to hear her!

But it's her vocals that put her over the top.  I've seen some excellent country/bluegrass vocal performances, like Peter Rowan doing throat singing and Ranger Doug doing the best yodeling ever.  But you have to hear Sierra mixing in woohs and ahs and hums with her great lyrics.  Toney really helped out on this, but Sierra is unreal.  Then she'd laugh at the end of the song or turn her serious vocalizations into a spooky shriek!

She did Give It Time, Bells Of Every Chapel (Sierra curtsied to the crowd after that one), Made Like That, The Sea, and a great cover of Don't Let Your Deal Go Down.  She told us she was sick of only having one record out and promised us another one soon.  She closed with a sing-along (and waving-hands-along) on At the End Of the Rainbow and then her early hit, Jeremiah.  Wow, she was good.

Took the opportunity to hobnob a bit with M&J and new friends Amy and Bruce out at the car after that, and to have some excellent spinach wrap roll-ups with hummus and fried eggplant and sweet potato.  The afternoon was ending, the sun was going down, and the temperature was dropping fast.  But then it was time to head back in for the great Del McCoury!

Sorry to miss Skip Marley's set at the main stage and then Jerry Douglas's set at the courtyard (Sarah and Matt caught a bit of it), but I had my priorities and was determined to not miss a second of Del.  The sun set right before he came on and I was glad to see he was accompanied by not only his sons Ronnie and Rob on mandolin and banjo, but by Jason Carter on fiddle and Alan Bartram on bass.

BUT, they lit into their top-notch bluegrass and the sound was terrible!  I was so disappointed.  These sound guys had just done the quiet Aoife O'Donovan and the reggae Skip Marley, and they were not ready (apparently??) to do a loud bluegrass band next.  That's quite a challenge I guess, and the mike setup was a little odd in that there were two ribbon mikes on stage and everybody had in-ear monitors.  But still, I thought it was quite non-professional for such a big act on Saturday evening at such a big festival.  Ronnie McCoury does not play a toy piano!

Whatever, Del is an amazing musician and entertainer and turned in a great set.  He's 83 years old and he's the last of his generation.  The sound guys got his voice right at least, though all the instruments sounded as if they were playing inside a tin can.  Finally they got it adjusted correctly and actually the sound was excellent for the last three tunes: Traveling Teardrop Blues, Vincent Black Lightning, and All Aboard.

Ok, that was it!  The festival still had a couple of acts to go (Gary Clark and Li'l Smokies), but we were done and had a long road East in front of us.  Said goodbye to our friends and got back to the car quickly.  It actually wasn't a bad drive back, over the Berkshires and down a pretty deserted Route 2 ... got back home right before 11:30.  Soon to bed, what a day!

JRAD Back Downtown, part 2

Ho-hum, just another JRAD concert.  It was a sunny, hot and humid, breezy, end-of-August day and we had a fun time playing croquet during the day and trying to stay cool.  Before you knew it, it was time to head back downtown.  This time we got reservations at the new Lord Hobo (Woburn brewery) in the Seaport.  We had a bit of a hard time finding it, partly because they have few street signs in the Seaport, in that charming Boston way.  And when we got there the right door for the restaurant is not marked.  Whatever, it was a fine evening and it was amusing to see others (many in GD uniform) get confused about where the place was themselves.

Right back to the tent after that, where we had seats in the row in front of where we'd been Friday.  Strange, but though it was just one row we seemed a lot closer!?!  A fellow Deadhead gave Sarah a rose!  No setup for a sax that night, and there was again a real delay in spectators getting to the venue, but it eventually was packed and we were elbow-to-elbow with a full crowd, loving it:

• Foolish Heart
• New Minglewood Blues
• Bird Song
• Black-Throated Wind
• Scarlet Begonias
• Fire on the Mountain

As great as they'd been on Friday,  this was even better.  The sound system was still taxed, but Tommy was back to his familiar old guitar with the rainbow stripe and he was rocking it.  Foolish Heart always reminds me of when it was on the radio back in the late 80s, and Tommy does this kind of song so well.  Without Bogie they were able to turn on a dime and they played a beautiful set.  Scott was not about to let Tommy upstage him and countered with his best, growling Bobby blues on Minglewood and BTW.

What else can I say about that long set?  Not much, you have to hear it, especially the long, perfect Scarlet > Fire.  Ack!  We were suddenly three quarters through our time on the JRAD island.  Oh well, time for the last quarter:

• Lost Sailor
• Saint of Circumstance
• Echoes (Pink Floyd)
• Terrapin Station
• Throwing Stones
• Jessica (Allman Brothers)
• Throwing Stones
• Another Brick in the Wall (Pink Floyd cover)
• Throwing Stones

As mentioned, Scott was not going to be upstaged and he did a great Sailor > Saint to open, though perhaps not as good as the one he'd done for us back in the Boston HOB, which will always be at the top of my list.  But then they went off the reservation and we were back to tingling at their inventiveness and musicianship.  They stretched and stretched and then suddenly were filling the tent with one of the most atmospheric Pink Floyd songs ... don't know if they'd ever played this live before as an ensemble.

They followed this with an excellent and tight Terrapin, and then Scott took over again.  This had become his night and he did the first few verses of an epic Throwing Stones.  They stretched this out and were suddenly doing the Top Gear theme song!  Then more sonic explorations, back to Throwing Stones, and then back to Pink Floyd!?!  Maybe they had the upcoming new school year on their minds.  Finally back to Throwing Stones for the last bridge.  What a set!

Phew, our feet were aching after two nights of dancing on their concrete floor and our minds were reeling.  Many more thanks from Joe, then a quick break and the band was back.  A guy up front had been waving a Ramble On Rose sign throughout the evening, and Joe pointed to him and told him this was for him, then they did a great encore of that song.  Marco waved and waved and pointed to people he recognized.  Tommy gathered up the setlists and handed them out to people in the front row.  They're such a friendly, folksy band, and have I mentioned how excellent they are?

Same scene in the Seaport as Friday, but we got out of there with no problem (actually, the parking lot machine did not want to let us out, but luckily there was an attendant who overrode it).  Back home soon, and we can't wait to see them again.

 

 

JRAD Back Downtown, part 1

We've been more selective than we used to be about what concerts to go to, not wanting to be in a poorly ventilated room with unmasked people in the continuing world of COVID-19.  So when we heard that JRAD was coming back for two shows at the open-air tent in Boston's Seaport (currently called the Leader Bank Pavilion) we got tickets ASAP.  Well, with a little hesitation.  We'd had a great time the last time we saw them, at the Pavilion in 2018 (over 4 years ago!!), but part of that was that we had great seats and so the inexcusably-underpowered PA there was not a factor.  We needed to get great seats again and luckily we did, right next to the soundboard.

Dave came up for the weekend and we got parking tickets online.  We ate at home that Friday and then made it down to the Seaport through really thick rush-hour traffic.  Rain showers and thunderstorms had been taking unpredictable paths through MA all day and we were hoping they wouldn't interfere with the concert.  Close, but they managed to avoid us.

Made it to the show and celebrated with a beer by the shore.  It really is a fun, almost intimate, place when you finally get there if you don't mind the prices and the takeoff/landing route from Logan isn't overhead, as it sometimes is.  Got to our seat and the place was not full at all, must have been a lot of people stuck in traffic and/or at work.  The crowd finally showed up by the end of the first set and the place seemed very full, though the people who had the seats to our right never turned up and so we had plenty of room for spreading out and dancing.

There was a sax on stage and soon Stuart Bogie came out and picked it up, followed by the rest of the band.  We were psyched!  Here's the first set:

• The Wheel
• Queen Jane Approximately
• Help on the Way
• Slipknot!
• Cats Under the Stars
• Feel Like a Stranger
• Not Fade Away

It had been too long since we'd seen JRAD!  The first song we ever saw them do was The Wheel at soundcheck in the Paradise, and so that was a real "welcome back" song for us.  And I can't tell you how great Queen Jane was, with an excellent vocal by Scott and a loping, not-in-a-hurry to get there, country pace.  I didn't know whom to watch!  Dave was booming and dominant, Marco was as brilliant as I've ever heard him, Scott was incredible, Tommy was playing Garcia's Wolf guitar, and Joe, of course, was the leader of the band.

Just a note that Dead concerts are so much fun and the people at them are generally so happy.  That night and the next we saw a good number of excited kids accompanied by their parents.  I love the fact that people want to pass their love of the Dead down through the generations.

And they're such an adventurous band.  The Dead defied convention, and JRAD sure do to.  After the drop-dead Queen Jane the whole band suddenly started into this cacophonous medley of sound that knocked us all flat and then suddenly stood us all back up as it morphed into Help.  I hope the noise didn't scare the children, to coin a phrase.

Stuart was a great addition and integrated into the band very well.  But he distracted a bit from the tightness they can feature ... they didn't want to lose him.  Fantastic to see Tommy playing Wolf again, but he sometimes seemed a little uncomfortable with it.  It has so many possibilities and he didn't want to play the wrong tone at the wrong time.  And though we were well positioned in the Pavilion, the sound system there is just not that good and seemed overtaxed at times.

So a few faint criticisms, but we were having a great time and that was an excellent first set.  Not too long of a break and then they came back out with:

• Here Comes Sunshine
• Truckin'
• King Solomon's Marbles
• Truckin'
• Cassidy
• St. Stephen
• The Eleven
• St. Stephen
• Reuben and Cherise
• Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad

Oh my God, what did we just see?!?  The rain *had* stopped but the sun had set by then and so HCS was not as appropriate as you might think, but whatever, I love that song.  They did a great intro to Truckin' and then played the shit out of that, including teases of Marco's Dropkick, and then suddenly were doing King Solomon's!  The second time I ever saw Joe perform he did this with Furthur.  And to emphasize their scoffing at convention, they went back into StS after The Eleven.

Stuart continued to shine too, and it was a great ending to the second set with a beautiful Reuben and Cherise (Tommy was in great voice himself) and then a rolling, sing-along GDTRFB.  Joe was the gracious host, thanking us all profusely for the applause and saying, "See you tomorrow!"  We thought this might signal no encore, but the band came back out soon and did a rocking and short Johnny B. Goode.

What a show!  We were tingling from the experience, and the venue and the Seaport were still a hive of activity.  But we made it back to the parking garage through it all (and some dentists of course, who were playing tag with the police).  The underground spur back to the expressway was apparently closed, but we made it back up to Atlantic Ave after getting turned around, and had a short ride back home.  We'd see them again tomorrow! 

Phil Lesh at Thompson's Point

We're in the midst of a whirlwind of a Dead & Company tour, but don't forget Phil Lesh!  We've got tickets to go see him in Port Chester in October, but in the meantime he's been doing his own "Summer tour."  I put that in quotes because he said years ago that he was done touring, and when he goes on the road these days it's on his own, quirky schedule.  That works.

We decided not to go to his set at this Summer's Levitate Festival in Marshfield MA because the rest of the bill on that day was not really attractive to us, but he announced that he'd be appearing with the same band the next day at Thompson's Point, in Portland ME, and that was right up our alley.  He's touring with his usual compadres of Grahame and Jason Crosby this year, and also with Amy Helm, Cody Dickinson, and Stu Allen.  Though I'd rank Stu low on my list of "fake Jerry's" (hate to use that term, but there it is), this projected to be a great band and we were psyched!

Never been to Thompson's Point, but have driven by there a lot.  It's a peninsula sticking into the Fore River in Portland, next to the train station.  From our glimpses of the site from the highway we really couldn't imagine how they'd set up a concert there, but they did a really good job of it.  They've having some great acts there this Summer and we'll probably go again if this continues.

Dave had had to miss the DeadCo concerts we'd attended (see previous posts), but was symptom-free, CDC-approved, and more than psyched to see this one, and it was a great day for an outdoor concert on Sunday, July 10.  We drove up in time to get there for "gates open" at 4:30, and didn't have to wait that long in the line of cars filling their dusty, dirt parking lots.  Followed people to the gates, where they were doing thorough searching of bags and measuring of lawn chairs, and had to send some people back to their cars to get rid of contraband or illegal chairs (seat no more than 12" off the ground).  But we were prepared, got in, and grabbed a piece of lawn (well, hard-packed dirt with some weeds) by the soundboard, maybe 50 feet from the stage!

Filled water bottles, got beer, cruised the food trucks and got some (sushi tuna-roll for me, wrapped in tasty seaweed).  Some boats and kayaks were assembling on the Fore River to hear the concert, don't think they could see anything.  But it was a sunny day with a strong Southeast wind and by show-time of 6:00 the place was getting pretty full and there were still long lines to get in.  Don't know if the place sold out, but it got pretty crowded there.  This was our second time seeing Phil in Maine, and we'd seen TTB there this Spring.  Sheryl Crow and Lake Street Dive are coming to Thompson's Point later this Summer and I hope top-level acts keep coming to Maine, and keep getting closer to us!

Late crowd and so they didn't really get started until 6:20 or so, but finally we saw them doing their Phil & Friends trademark huddle in the wings, and then they came out and tuned up.  A big difference was that Grahame was way over to the right, beyond his Dad, with Jason far left, then Stu, and Amy, with Cody on the back on traps.  And then they lit right into:

• Alice D. Millionaire
• Here Comes Sunshine
• They Love Each Other
• Shakedown Street
• Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan)
• Bird Song
• Touch of Grey

At first we couldn't believe it, LSD Millionaire is such an obscure song, but this was our second time seeing it performed by Amy.  Amy can bring a lot of energy, and she sure did with this opener!  And great harmonies from Grahame, he and she are a great pairing and were on all night.  Then Stu continued the precise vocals with HCS and was joined by Amy, Phil, and Grahame on the choruses, singing about our redeeming sun, in the early evening while facing South toward the water on an outdoor stage in the beautiful Summer ... I was almost in tears and I think others were too.

Then Amy took another lead with TLEO.  We'd just seen DeadCo cover this in Hartford and I loved Oteil's bassline on it, but how can you beat Phil?  You can't and he brought plenty of funk to it to mix with Amy's soulful vocal.

Great sound from the start!  We were worried that the stiff wind would be a factor, but it was not.  They had the leader of the band turned up from the start and as the evening went on, Phil just got louder and louder and filled our souls.  Grahame just keeps getting better and better and turned in some technical, uplifting, extended leads, especially on Shakedown.  Amy stuck to the vocals and turned in a great performance, and Jason was low in the mix at first, but then they got that right and he had a great night.  Stu was very good, and fit right in with the band.  But the player that again and again dropped my jaw was Cody Dickinson on drums.  We'd seen him with the North Mississippi Allstars and he was great, but with Phil & Friends he seemed to be playing on another level.  No lazy GD drumming for him, he was dropping in the paradiddles and drum rolls in the middle of playing the solid backbone role

Dave called Shakedown from the tuning and this was a long one, they were ready to hit the psychedelics from the start and we were loving it.  Didn't recognize the next one right off the bat, but it was an excellent cover of a Dylan song, sung by Stu (perhaps a few too many lead vocals for him).  I called Bird Song and again, it didn't take them long to get deep into a jam ... a loud one rather than a cerebral one, fitting the outdoor setting.  They were taking their time between songs to make sure they got everything exactly perfect, but when they started up with Touch I knew it was the set closer and so took off for the port-a-potties and more water.  I pooh-pooh this song a bit, but they did an excellent job with it (Grahame on lead vocal) and were still playing it with me dancing in the back of the suddenly large crowd.

Wow, that was a great first set and we gushed about it with our neighbors.  I'd been hoping for another cover of Two Souls In Communion by Amy (we'd seen her do this with Phil in Port Chester) and was sure they were going to a New Speedway Boogie of death, seeing the recent political developments.  But whatever, they should play what they want, especially when they do it that well.  The transitory nature of Phil bands means they're sometimes not well rehearsed, but the only one who seemed confused at times was Dickinson, who soon got back on the same page with everyone else.  The others have played with Phil many times before and were a tight unit.

The sun was about to set, and when it did the strong wind died totally.  Though the sound had been amazing for the first set, it was just perfect when the sun went down.  I was afraid there'd be noise from the nearby highway, but that was never a problem.  Lots of talkers in the crowd, but this was a joyous experience for everyone.  You don't get a great band like this in Maine too often!

So what did they do for a second set?  Well it was even better than the first set:

• Rosemary
• Terrapin Station
• Jack O'Roses
• Scarlet Begonias
• Dark Star
• Morning Dew
• Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad
• And We Bid You Goodnight

Holy shit!  You think LSD Millionaire is obscure, how about Rosemary?  This was a textbook, short version of it, again sung by Stu.  But as much as the others on the stage shone, there was no question that we were at a Phil F. Lesh show and he was at his delicate, nimble, powerful best on this.  And then they did Terrapin and Grahame took the mike to tell us about that fan incident.  I was waiting for it, and then here it came, the return of the Lesh Brothers!  Phil and Grahame can sing so well together, they're almost like one of those great bluegrass brother bands, the Louvins or the Stanleys or the Osborne Brothers.  Grahame watches him intently and Phil conducts the duets with facial expressions and a few hand signals.  It's not like Grahame just met him after all.  And when their harmonies are joined by Amy Helm's soul and Stu's strong baritone, the vocal sound was enough to lift me off the ground.

And then yet another obscurity that we couldn't believe at first, Grahame sang one of the bits of Hunter's full Terrapin Suite, Jack O' Roses.  We'd actually heard a recording of this done 10(?) years ago a few days ago, and here it was again!  It's a small Terrapin world.  Great stand-alone Scarlet after this ... people were just saying that they were sorry they hadn't continued it into Fire.  But then those notes rang out from Phil's bass and suddenly, once again, he was playing one of the best songs ever for us, Dark Star.  They did Phil's preferred vocal treatment on this, with him and then Stu, and then Grahame splitting the couplets between three voices.  And then Amy would join in on the "transitive nightfall" line and this was so good!  They went deep into space on this, and Amy to her credit did not faint from exhaustion, she stuck it out smiling until they swooped back into the second verse and took us all away again.

Boy, how could you beat that?  Well I'll tell you, just listen to that tape and you'll get blown away like we did when we were just coming down from outer space and then, Brrannggg! ... they hit the first chord of Dew.  Coincidental that there were so many "repeats" on this night.  I'd recently seen TLEO, Scarlet, Dew, and the encore done by DeadCo, as well as hearing Jack O' Roses recently.  But I was not complaining.  Stu did some excellent lead guitar work on this and Grahame and Amy sang it in the beautiful call and response arrangement we'd seen them do before.  Jason got out his fiddle for this and played a stellar lead.  The crescendo of this song is fantastic and Grahame hit it just right.  You think the times call for a protest song?  Well this will do.

OMG, GDTRFB came after this and gave us all a chance to wring out our handkerchiefs and start smiling again.  And when they got to the coda they kept it going and eventually morphed into Bid You Goodnight, which was done a cappella.  A perfect ending to an incredible second set, emphasizing their strong ensemble vocals.

I was getting pretty tired by then, especially after such emotion, and we had a pretty long drive home in front of us.  But there was old man Phil coming out, fumbling with his earpieces, and then giving us yet another fine donor rap.  It was unclear how many encores they had planned, but they just did one, with Amy taking the lead vocal on Liberty.  Yet another great protest song, "O freedom, o liberty, leave me alone!"  Don't get me started.

Wow, what a concert, ending right at 10:00!  Said goodbye to our neighbors, hit the port-a-potties one last time for the long drive, and then somehow found our car in the dirt parking lot.  We'd heard that exiting Thompson's Point sometimes takes a while and it sure did for us, as we were one of the last cars in our lot (except for the dentist contingent, who may still be at it).  But actually it was a bit quicker than we expected and by 10:30 we were back on the highway South, and eventually back in Massachusetts.  This was a lot of fun!

DeadCo In Hartford, 2022

Originally, we had thought we weren't going to go through the hassle again if Dead & Company played Hartford this Summer.  The parking fuckup from last year was agonizing and it's a long way to drive back on busy interstates with crazy Connecticut drivers late at night.  But ... every time they've played there has been fantastic and we thought maybe we could spring for a hotel, get there early to avoid traffic, and have a nice retreat after the concert.  Well, it was a good try.

So we got tickets to DeadCo at the huge amphitheater just outside of downtown Hartford on July 5 and the first part of our plan was executed as well as possible.  Dave (see earlier post) is still out with COVID so it was just Sarah and me, driving down through thick but fast-moving traffic in the middle of the afternoon through some off-and-on rain.  Yes, that's right.  The traffic was thick with trucks and on the verge of clogging up several times on a mid-Summer Tuesday afternoon!?!  But we made it to exit 50 in Hartford without getting smushed and luckily we were just in front of the crowd when we got into town, drove by the venue, and then got to our nearby hotel just before 3:00.

But that part of the plan had some flaws.  We hadn't wanted to pay multiple hundreds of dollars for a room we were just going to sleep in, but we should have!  We and then carloads of other Deadicated types arrived at the Super 8 by Wyndham Hartford on West Service Road and checked in, only to find that we'd landed in some sort of prison.  Perhaps we'd broken some obscure Connecticut laws and had to spend a night in a cell?  Our "room" had two spongy double beds which hadn't been made right and were kind of covered by spreads with cigarette holes in them.  The window was too damaged to shut completely and the air conditioner worked a bit but sounded like an air raid.  The smoke detector had been ripped out of the ceiling and thrown into a drawer, where we found it along with other trash when we checked out the bureau.  The TV had been violently broken off its base.  The fire doors at the end of the hall were propped open.  The sink had multiple cigarette burns and I was too frightened to try the shower.  Every wall had cracks in it, the floor was tile, should I go on?  Oh yeah, and they had no complimentary coffee and had cancelled the free breakfast they advertised.  DO NOT STAY THERE!!!!!  As mentioned in some online comments, they have graffiti on the walls *inside* the building, that's how bad it is.

Oh well, we chilled in the room for a bit as well as we could and then left.  The plan was to walk into the downtown area and find a nice restaurant where we could have a long late lunch/early dinner and then get back to the amphitheater at some point.  This plan worked pretty well!  It was a 1.4 mile walk into town, and we were very glad we'd arrived at 3:00 because even by 4:00 the traffic was already pretty bad, lined up almost all along our route to get into the free lots.  We proceeded past the Yard Goats' ball park and by the (closed on Tuesdays) City Steam Brewery that we'd loved back in 2017, and then over to Pratt Street, which is part of a pedestrian mall in the middle of Hartford, and to Vaughan's Public House.

They had outdoor seating and a hamburger/hot dog grill going outside, but no service out there, and so we sat at a table in their window area.  This was a fine Irish pub meal, accompanied by some Irish ciders and Vermont beers.  The guy at the waiter's station told us that they hadn't even planned to open that day because they couldn't get staff, but realized there was a concert going on and they'd better.  The inside tables were almost full when we got there, and it just got worse.  But us sitting up front in the window enabled the maitre d' to wait on us himself, and things went just about right for us there.  They were playing GD and DeadCo music, mixed with a few other tunes.  Everybody there was a Deadhead (one was sound asleep in the patio area and apparently had a nice nap), and the guys at the next table were mortified that they had missed StS > The Eleven the other night and hoped that this show would make up for it.  We smiled.

Left there and joined the tendrils of people dressed for a Dead concert as they gathered from all directions and converged on the Xfinity Theatre.  We detoured to the extensive Shakedown Street they always have at Hartford and were on the verge of buying a few things, including some excellent hats, but we didn't.  The rain had gotten steadier by then and we finally joined the long line to get in the main entrance when the gates opened at 6:30.  I asked a hassled security guy why Gate C wasn't open as well and he said it was because they didn't have enough staff, so I just told him to keep up the good work.

So they let us *in* but didn't yet have the seating or lawn areas open, and we just had to mill about the concourse while the rain intensified.  We were able to grab seats in the sheltered Xfinity tent though, and coincidentally a work friend of Sarah's was sitting at the same table, so we had some fine conversation.  Both Sarah and I spun the Xfinity wheel at a promotion they had set up and she won a koozie and I won a freezer bag, score!

OK, enough setup and we finally settled into our seats in section 600, dead center and about a dozen rows in back of the soundboard.  It had been a long, adventurous afternoon and we shivered at the thought of going back to the "hotel" (could we just drive back after the concert??).  But we knew we had great seats and were in for some great sound, which turned out to be putting it mildly.  This was an incredible concert!  Here's the first set:

• The Music Never Stopped
• Liberty
• They Love Each Other
• Loser
• Alabama Getaway
• Iko Iko
• High Time
• Cassidy

Boy, did they get after it right from the start!  Music was rocking and Bobby and John were singing like angels, and then they did the first Liberty of the tour, a relatively obscure gem that I really like.  One of the great things about the sound in the center of that huge amphitheater was the bottom end.  I've mentioned Oteil's new bass and this was as good as I've ever heard it.  I texted Dave that Oteil was just eating up TLEO, that's the best description of the way he dominated that gentle song with his elastic, bouncing sound.  I was loving it.

And they'd just started!  Loser was all about building up to and then everyone singing the chorus, and then Alabama Getaway was another feel good rocker.  The whole place was grooving to Iko Iko and then they started into High Time and Oteil stepped up to the mike.  As good as everyone else was (again, Lane and no Kreutzmann), this was Oteil's night to shine and he out-did himself over and over.  Then they closed with another explosive song, Cassidy, building and building up to the last coda.  Dave called it the best Cassidy ever.

What a set!  I texted Dave "OMGOMG" because I couldn't think what to say at first.  I'd called Hell In a Bucket (which they always do in Hartford) and I whiffed on that one.  But that was fine with me!  The wind was building through the whole show from the Northeast and did a fine job of drying things out after the downpour, but it never affected the sound.  The lawn was not quite full ... in fact, you could have had a croquet game up in the far corner (the grass was in great shape).  But the rest of the theater was pretty packed and so my strategy was to head uphill to the cluster of port-a-potties up there.  Sarah had gone for the inside bathrooms earlier and then gave up on getting back to our seats before the end of the set, there were so many people dancing in the aisles.  I guess the security staff was really short, there were just a few people checking tickets and no one was clearing the aisles.  I looked for good beer after the bathroom break but they didn't have any up on the edges of the huge lawn area, and I figured I might not make it out to the concourse and back in time.

Whatever, back to the seats without a beer but had plenty of water (one of their water filling stations was not working but the other one was) and I was sure they'd open the second set with the Scarlet > Fire of death, and that later they *should* be giving us a big TOO.  And I was pretty much right!  Here's the list:

• Jack Straw
• Scarlet Begonias
• Viola Lee Blues
• Fire on the Mountain
• The Other One
• Drums
• Space
• The Wheel
• The Other One
• Black Peter
• Sugar Magnolia

The first notes of the jam into Jack Straw were distinctive and let me down a bit because I'd anticipated Scarlet, until they started singing again about leaving Texas on the 4th of July ... it was the 5th but what the heck, why would anyone want to stay in Texas anyway?  And then they tried to hide it in the tuning, but I told Sarah they were about to play Scarlet, and it was an incredible version.  Viola Lee split up the pairing with Fire and I was afraid they weren't going to let Oteil sing again.  But Viola Lee built to its climax and then boom, Oteil was playing that bass line and warming up the vocal chords.  It was his day!

And then he kept it going into the Other One of death.  This song can take so many shapes and on Tuesday it was long and loud, but spacy and went way off the reservation at the same time.  I was ecstatic, especially when I figured they'd break for Drums and Space and then get back into it, maybe after a ballad.  Well, that's what they did!  Bob teased us over and over that he was about to sing the second verse, then they'd go another round, and another, and another until finally we were escaping through the lily fields (maybe leaving Texas but probably figurative you know).

Dave called the next one, because Bobby always sings Black Peter for me.  He didn't really go over the top on this one, luckily.  IMO, it requires some gravitas and Bobby brought it this time, continuing his great singing.  I was surprised to see, after he'd seemed to settle on his green and brown guitars in Foxborough, that he was back to the one with the white pickguard, and he stayed on it all of the second set.  Whatever, he often knows what he's doing and it was just the right sound to add to the mix.  And then another vintage song in Sugar Magnolia, with the whole crowd joining in, especially the Sunshine Daydream coda!

Wow that was great and I was just about to resume texting while they took an encore break.  But they didn't, they put their arms around at center stage and took a group bow, what a fantastic concert!  I looked at my phone and realized it was already a few minutes after midnight.  They'd just given us four hours of extreme brilliance.

Sat back in our seats at that point, while the large crowd jammed the exits.  Waved goodbye to a few seatmates whom we'd been talking with, there was not a frown in the house.  Eventually grabbed our stuff and shuffled after the crowds, then past lines of vehicle traffic back over to Weston Street and soon the Super 8 (which is right next to Erotic Zone!).  Had some crackers and cheese and then lay down for a fitful few hours of trying not to worry about the missing smoke alarms and the unlocked doors downstairs.  DO NOT stay in this hotel!

Oh well, got up at 5:30 or so, gathered our stuff, and took off in time to join rush-hour traffic on the Mass Pike.  Goodbye to Hartford and Connecticut, hate to see you go!  Again, what a hassle to get there and back (and stay there) but wow, what excellent music the band plays in that town.  Maybe next year at a better hotel?? 

Dead & Company Return to Foxborough

 Another Summer with COVID scares, but yet another Dead & Company tour!  This year they started on the West Coast and progressed East instead of the other way around, and didn't schedule as many dates.  One or both of these may have been a strategy to stretch out the tour more for the sake of Bill Kreutzmann, who had to sit out for a few dates as last Summer's tour moved on.  But everybody else in the band is getting older too, and they might have just decided to take the foot off the pedal a bit this year.

Unfortunately, Billy's problems (hopefully just exhaustion, though one of his tweets referred to pulling a muscle) have recurred and he's had to miss a few shows again.  Luckily they've brought Jay Lane along on the tour and he's been filling in admirably.  Billy's still been joining in on the Drums segment lately, though Jay's been handling the traps.  I really hope Billy gets better, and if it means his staying at home instead of touring, that's the way it's got to be.  He deserves a long life and a healthy retirement when he's ready for it.

Even though they cut down on the dates, they still listed Boston right up there, this time on Saturday, July 2nd at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.  We're blessed that they continue to come to the Northeast (we've got tickets to the Hartford show also on the 5th), and we were very glad to hear they were coming back to Foxborough.  They've played Fenway Park and the amphitheater in Mansfield also, but they both have major drawbacks.  Fenway is crowded and frantic, and Mansfield is always a traffic apocalypse.

More good news and bad news in the buildup to the Foxborough show: our nephew, Marin, was able to come up for the weekend and my brother, Andrew, had an extra ticket he could use.  But horribly, Dave tested positive for COVID the day before the concert and so was not able to go with us all.  Also, the Supreme Court continues to make politicized decisions to advance a white patriarchy and the government is filled with idiots, but that's old news.

Marin arrived the night before and Andrew arrived in plenty of time for a @3:00 departure and a pleasant drive around 128 and 95 down to Foxborough.  Missed the turnoff for the better lot, but we got a great spot in the P10 lot across route 1 and settled down for some fine tailgating.  The weather was looking iffy and we'd all brought rain gear, but there was no problem before the show.  Sarah and I entered the stadium around 5:30 (gates opened at 5:00) and there was no line for anything!  We were easily able to stand in front of the soundboard, as we had last time the band was in Foxborough.  There seems to be a sudden drop in people going to concerts, though maybe the smaller crowd was because of other factors, like people having things to do on a holiday weekend and the impending weather.  They hadn't sold any seats in the top two bowls of the Stadium.

Whatever, the crowd soon filled in fine on the field and the bottom bowl was full, as far as I could see.  Andrew and Marin had great seats just a few rows up from the field.  Then the band came out right on time, lit into a rambunctious Cumberland Blues, and we were back!  OMG, what can I say?  We've seen at least bits of most of the shows prior to this stop on the tour, and they've been playing great and continued at that high level.  We were disappointed but not surprised that Jay Lane was on stage from the start in place of Billy, though nothing against Jay at all, he's a fantastic and dedicated substitute (I was wearing my Golden Gate Wingmen t-shirt as two of them were on stage).  Oteil has been playing a different bass this tour and it sounds fantastic.  He was too low in the mix to start but they eventually adjusted this.  And Jeff has a spaceship of a piano, which sounded great itself, though his organ playing was one of the sounds of the night, especially on the Bertha > Good Lovin' sequence.

And speaking of that, we were dancing and freaking out to another great Bertha and anticipating a seamless switch to Good Lovin' when they suddenly stopped and an announcement came on!  And even as we were beginning to realize that they were telling us all to exit the field, the rain started.  Sarah and I crowded with the rest of the field crew under the archway at the West entrance to the stadium.  We had our masks on as we were cheek to jowl with a lot of high people (we were the only ones with masks that I saw, besides my brother).  The downpour was pretty intense, but luckily I heard and saw no thunder and lightning.  After about 15(?) minutes the worst of the rain had stopped and we pushed our way out of the crowd, put on our slickers, and made our way back to our spot, soon followed by everybody else.

We were hoping the band would come right back out but they apparently decided to make that the set break, even though they'd done only two songs.  Probably the biggest factor was that the sound crews had lots of re-setup and re-testing to do.  So we had a bunch of un-anticipated waiting around to do, though we knew that when they came back out they'd try to make up for it.  And they did!  Here's the second set:

• Good Lovin'
• Crazy Fingers
• Mr. Charlie
• St. Stephen
• The Eleven
• Brown-Eyed Women
• Estimated Prophet
• Eyes of the World
• Drums
• Space
• Dear Mr. Fantasy
• Hey Jude
• Morning Dew

They popped right back into the start of Good Lovin' and then played an excellent, long set.  The highlights were numerous, with John Mayer playing some great blues and space and Bob Weir just doing what only he can do on his fantastic-sounding green and brown guitars.  For me the amazing and wandering St. Stephen leading into the bridge and then The Eleven was the part that moved me the most, closely followed though by a long and loping Eyes after a tight Estimated.

Billy didn't even come out for Drums, I hope he's all right!  But Jay and Oteil were out there and as with the prior time at Foxborough, they had the whole football stadium resounding with their beats, especially when Mickey got out his saw and started applying it to The Beam.  It was a long and enthusiastic Space, ending with a nice segue into Mr. Fantasy and then a beautiful Hey Jude chorus.  They've been doing Hey Jude a lot this tour, possibly as an an homage to Paul McCartney, who's been touring the States and whom Dave had seen recently at Fenway.

BUT, I thought it was coming and suddenly here it was, like a large presence suddenly emerging from the mist and knocking you flat, Dew!  I love this song and they sure played and sang the stuffing out of it.  Another protest song in a Summer unfortunately made for them.  Long set, but they finally put down their instruments and took a short break.

People had been saying that Foxborough has an 11:00 curfew, and the band came out soon and started strumming a tune which I could tell was a Dylan, and then recognized as Knockin' On Heaven's Door.  Very well played, but then another highlight of the night ... you knew it was coming ... was a rocking and loud One More Saturday Night to close the show.  Bobby did not leave anything behind on that!

Wow, how do these guys keep doing it?  We followed the crowd back up through Patriot Place and across route 1 to the lot (a guy was raving to us about Sarah's DeadCo VOTE pin, and then saw my GGW t- shirt and offered to buy it on the spot), where Andrew and Marin had already set up the chairs for some post-concert tailgating.  This is always the best strategy of course, as there was a long line of cars trying to get through the traffic jams on route 1 while we just relaxed and re-hashed the show.  Eventually things died down though, the cops around there have learned how to handle crowds.  And we jumped in the car and had a pretty smooth ride home, though there'd been what looked like a gruesome accident on the expressway, involving three cars and a motorcycle.

So that was a lot of fun but we really missed Dave.  We'd been texting with him throughout the show and he was trying his best to enjoy it from afar.  He may have had it a bit better than we did.  The sound where we were was not as great as it had been before; this may have been due to the damp weather and the fact that the stadium wasn't as full.  They had to lower some of the stacks of speakers at the start of the show in anticipation of high winds.  And the rain and the crowd was distracting of course.  But I love live concerts and will do it again, hopefully with Dave!

GRF 2022, Sunday

Woke up to another beautiful day in Shelburne Falls, which we knew was going to turn out even brutally hotter than yesterday, woo!  Another leisurely breakfast of yogurt, orange juice, and iced tea in our ski lodge of an apartment, then we packed up, hobnobbed with the crew, and got ready to leave.  Paul reported that Diane was doing better and would probably be released that day.  Poor Diane that she had to miss the whole Festival!

The first act that day at noon was going to be one of the ones I wanted to see most, but we realized there wasn't an incredible hurry to get there so didn't get on the road until 10:30 or so.  Plenty of time for a mellow drive back to Greenfield, up to the plateau the Fairgrounds are on, and a slow stroll in.  The strategy was to be mellow and stay cool.  Even so, we got great seats again in front of the soundboard.  These were probably a little too close to the standing room zone, but we knew we wouldn't be at the seats when it got really crowded, so that was no problem at all.

Another late morning of cruising the vendors and not panicking while the temperature rose and rose, and then it was time for the first act at the GSB Stage, Brennan Leigh.  Brennan's been around Nashville for a while and has written some mildly successful pop country songs, but lately has been hitting her stride, has recorded with Asleep At the Wheel, and has come out with a string of successful hits.  I was psyched that the GRF had gotten her, and I thoroughly enjoyed her set.

Brennan's been touring with Asleep At the Wheel and was backed by four members of the band, who laid down some excellent country/western beats.  But I was not prepared for what a great guitarist Brennan is!  Her vocals were great of course, she did Obsessed With the West, Analog, Steam Threshers Reunion, etc. (no Tommy Duncan's Voice), and displayed her smoky but at the same time bright and precise voice.  She got some great fiddle and dobro breaks from the guys.  But she was playing the lead instrument, and she proceeded to take over each tune after they had their say.

Another great start to the day!  I was melted into my chair at the main stage after being up front for most of her set and then realizing I had to sit down or fall down.  The mid-day sun was beating down on us unmercifully.  But I forced myself to move and got up and over to the Dean's Beans stage for another act I really wanted to see.

Dave and Sarah were over there too and we got an uncrowded spot over to the left of the stage to see Sarah Borges.  Sarah's been around for a while herself and we've seen her at Johnny D's.  She's a Massachusetts girl from Taunton who's played all kinds of rock and punk and rock and folk and country and rock over the years.  This time she had a great band with Keith Voegele (Bottle Rockets) on loud and loping country electric bass, Eric Amble on stratocaster with a big hat, and a drummer who was determined to tear the place down, and she played a set of excellent, greasy rockabilly.  She was wearing a little black dress and white cowboy boots and rocking a telecaster herself.  She covered If Some Folks Would Leave Us Alone, but that was as close as she got to the mainstream, everything else was their style of rockabilly and was riveting!  Loved this set.

After that I realized I hadn't eaten anything since my small breakfast, the afternoon was beginning to get on, the heat was still rising, and I'd better take care of myself.  Got some more water and then wandered over to the far side of the Fairgrounds, where I knew there was a food truck selling burrito bowls.  Got a chicken one and then a seat in their shaded eating area and had a nice relaxing, refreshing meal.  The bad thing was that the La Veracruzana people chose that time to come over and say hi to their food truck buddies and busted me as eating somewhere else!  Oh well, they smiled at me.

Where to after that?  It was a slow spot in the afternoon.  I'd thought about seeing the Young At Heart Chorus but was feeling kind of sleepy after a nice meal, so I headed out to the parking lot and took a short nap in the car with all the windows open and a slow breeze.  Actually, I could hear the chorus through most of it, so that was a nice sonic background ... even out in the parking lot the sound from the main stage was pretty good.  Several others out in the lot had the same idea about a nap/rest.  But after the food, the nap, and some more iced tea from the cooler I was ready to go again.

And perfect timing to head back to the GSB Stage and see Allison Russell!  We've seen Allison several times with Birds Of Chicago, Sisters Of the Strawberry Moon, and Phil Lesh (just stumbled across this duet from Allison and Emmylou).  Lately she's put out a solo record and was now touring with an all-woman band.  And boy were they good!  The stood in a line across the stage, just close enough to link hands to show their support for each other.  From left to right they were cello, acoustic guitar, Allison, electric guitarist, bass, and drums.  Allison of course played some excellent banjo and her other-worldly clarinet, but even in the shadow of Allison, the acoustic player was the one who stood out.  She took the lead on each song and kept things from getting too atmospheric or down-tempo with some great finger picking.

OK, we loved her set but had developed an exit plan!  We'd go see the next set at the Dean's Beans Stage, then come back to catch a little of the penultimate act at the main stage and pick up our chairs, then put them back in the car and take a little break, then be all set for the act we really wanted to see ... and then leave and skip Father John Misty, who they somehow had booked as the closing act on the main stage.  I mean, he's good but things have to be pretty bad if you've positioned him as the ultimate headliner at your music festival.

First up over at the Dean's Beans Stage was the Dustbowl Revival.  We three walked over there together and at first figured we could be shaded some if we were at the left of the stage, but then realized that if we went over to the right side we'd be shaded even better.  And they did a fine set.  Z. Lupetin is still leading the band (again, we'd seen them at GRF before) but Liz Beebe has left the co-vocalist role and has been replaced by Lashon Halley, who was fantastic, though she didn't play the washboard.  They were the most vocal artists at the Festival on recent political developments, though by no means the only ones.  Z. and Lashon performed a song they'd just written.  They warned that it was not yet complete but they wanted to sing it anyway, it was about the abortion rights rollback and was viscerally honest about politicians, uncaring people, and what this would mean to victims of our patriarchy and our unfair economic system.  The audience exploded with applause, shouts, and screams when they finished, mixed with many tears.  They had done it at the Green House Stage earlier, which I missed, and I'm told the reaction was similar.  They followed it up with a few happy songs, and got us all singing along.

Time to execute the next step of the plan, which was to strike our camp over at the main stage, where we were entertained by a few songs from Waxahatchie.  Got the stuff out to the car, texted the group with our latest plans, and hung out for a bit.  This was our last calm break at the car and then our last return to the busy Fairgounds of the weekend.  Things were starting to close down (frantic lines at the beer tents before last call) and everyone was packing up.  But we strolled down to the Dean's Beans Stage for the set I was most looking forward to, Asleep At the Wheel with Brennan Leigh sitting in!

I'd been anticipating a mob scene for AATW, and was shocked when, not only was there not a mob, there was plenty of room for dancing even close to the stage.  How could people not be crazy about this venerable band who are masters of perhaps the most distinctive style of American music (see this on the band's history)?  I don't get it, but we sure had fun being up front in our shady spot (I moved close to the stage for some of the set).  And it was exactly the setlist you'd expect: Miles and Miles of Texas, Cherokee Maiden, Faded Love, San Antonio Rose, Route 66, etc.  Brennan sang lead and/or accompanied Ray Benson for about half of the songs.  Ray stuck to a blue strat, they had a dynamite piano player, a precise player on a tiny pedal steel, a doghouse bass and a small trap set, and of course twin fiddles (the fiddlers switched to mandolin off and on).  Even so I was a little disappointed that the band wasn't as huge as other times I've seen them, but they couldn't have fit some of those bands on that stage!  OK, it was a mellow and pretty formulaic performance, but I love that formula.

Oh no, time to leave!  Another quick bathroom break and then it was back to the car and back to the road East.  We'd seen a lane drop on the stretch where 2 and 91 join, and so split through downtown Greenfield so we wouldn't be caught in that miles-long backup.  That worked out fine and the traffic back home was fine too.  Got back in a bit over 90 minutes and the cats were ok, we'd left them with large stashes of food and water over the weekend.

So what did I think of the 2022 GRF?  The last few Festivals had struck me as having themes: great guitarists and guitars one year, saxophones another, female singers, drummers and drums, etc.  But nothing like that stood out for me this year.  The weather has been getting to me more and more, possibly related to age, and as with other GRFs, that will always be one of the first things I think about when I remember the weekend.  But I had a great time, from the nice upgrade we got at the hotel, to a few surprises from smaller bands, and on to the performances by my headliners, which did not disappoint at all.  We'll be back!

GRF 2022, Saturday

The early acts on Saturday did not make for a compelling bill, and so we decided to have a mellow morning instead of rushing out for "gates open" at 10:00.  We'd brought some yogurt and orange juice, which with our beer and cider might have filled a small fridge in one of the rooms, but took up only a bit of the big one in the kitchen.  We were kind of embarrassed not to have more food to cook ... next year!  Joined the crew out on the patios in front of their rooms, yucked it up a bit more, and shared impressions of the Festival so far.

We'd all been a bit disappointed when they announced that they'd be staying at the Franklin County Fairgrounds instead of returning to Greenfield Community College, where they'd been for years and which we loved.  But we had to admit that there were lots of plusses to the Fairgrounds and they'd tried to address the minuses.  There had been lots of audio leakage between stages last year, but this year they'd lined up the vendors a little better to create more distinct areas between stages.  Their selection of vendors was as good as ever, and they keep adding kids (and adult) activities.  This year they had a whale exhibit, the BMX bikers, the Frisbee Dogs, an Art Tent, and they even had a VIP tent (at outrageous prices of course).  And they did a great thing in putting up a large tent with open sides that they filled with picnic tables, perfectly positioned to let you cool off, eat your food from the vendors at a table instead of balancing it on your lap, and also hear the set at the Dean's Beans Stage.  They also opened the huge, shaded basement of the Grandstand for people to cool off in, they had a hammock jungle, and they added the shady (well, shadier) Green House Stage.  No hot air balloons like they used to have, but it was very acceptable and very well done.

Strange though, that the attendance didn't seem to be over the top like in previous years.  There was never much of a line to get in (partly because they managed opening times and checking bags a lot better), and though the stage-fronts were as packed as ever for the big acts, the edges were pretty empty at times.  None of the days sold out, tickets were available at the gate all weekend.  The good thing about this was that it was never really packed like the last few years and there was no problem walking around, though the shady Green House Stage was usually filled.  Perhaps they'll take a look at their bottom line and realize that they need to get some bigger acts ... I sure hope so.

The heat was *really* oppressive on Saturday and Sunday.  They had a lot of water stations and water sprinklers set up, but also a lot of hot, hard-packed, dusty ground and pavement to burn your bare feet.  There were a few clouds but we could have used a lot more.  Luckily there was a breeze all weekend, not strong but enough to cool you off and make you say, "Aaaahhh!!" every once in a while.  A guy in a chair near us was suddenly unresponsive on Saturday afternoon, probably from heat stroke.  But we all yelled for security and they had the golf carts over with ice to put on his neck and medical professionals to tend to him within a minute. 

There had been a schedule switch and Matthew Fowler went on at the Dean's Beans Stage at noon.  I'd just had a snack (a "BBQ cup") in the big tent with the picnic tables and was undecided how much of his set I'd listen to.  But then I realized they were really good and walked up front.  He was the dreaded one guy strumming his folk songs on an acoustic, but he had two women with him who supplied excellent, moody harmonies.  And then one of them picked up a clarinet and the other one picked up an oboe and they made a great sound!  This was excellent main-stream folk but with an unexpected edge from the woodwinds.

Back to the GSB Stage and saw a bit of Steve Poltz, who's another folkie with a guitar.  He's really got some chops and knows his way around his instrument.  It would have been good if he'd concentrated on that, but instead he talked a lot.  He name-dropped Molly Tuttle and then Billy Strings and then Anthony d'Amato and then even Emmylou Harris, and later he told everyone how he'd had a stroke and after that was suddenly a Grateful Dead fan.  The funny thing was when he introduced the song he'd co-written with Molly Tuttle, a chorus of voices shouted out, "How fast can you play it?" as Molly had told us to do.  He staggered back, he was so surprised!  He had no idea how to react and we could almost hear Molly laughing.

It was peak heat by then and I took a break out at the car, where the open hatch shed a little shade.  Then met Dave back at the Artifact Cider Stage for a band I really wanted to hear, Poor Monroe.  This is a basically amateur bluegrass band from the area who were tickled pink that they'd been asked to perform at the Festival.  They mentioned several times that this was by far the biggest gig they'd ever had, and they were psyched for it.  They danced back and forth around a ribbon mike and showed some great vocal arrangements and a great variety of talent (to put it kindly).  They started off with an a cappella cover of On the Resurrection Morning and then their name-sake song, Poor Monroe.  Then they did a Jimmy Martin song and then a Peter Rowan song (not the Rowan and Martin you're thinking of), and then a David Grisman song and I was in bluegrass cover heaven, singing along with all the lyrics (Dave was loving it too).  But most of the people there were shade seekers, not necessarily bluegrass fans, and when they asked how many people in the audience had heard of a band called Hot Rize only 4 people put their hands up, two of which were me!  Not heard of the best bluegrass band to ever exist????  I was beyond shocked.  They said that the song they were about to play was perfect for the Artifact Cider stage and then lit into Hard Pressed.  They followed that with one of my favorite Hot Rize songs, Pete Wernick's Just Like You.  Loved their set!

Then back to the GSB Stage for Parsonsfield, whom I'd seen a couple of times before at GRF.  They played a great set of bluegrass-tinged folk, led by Chris Freeman on vocals and guitar and with Antonio Alcorn on banjo and other stuff.  They also had a great keyboards sound from a small box that could be set to sound like a piano or a harpsichord, or somewhere in between.  The frustrating thing was that for once the sound guys really couldn't get them right.  There were feedback and cutting-out problems throughout their set.  Very unusual for GRF, which is generally excellent on sound.

Time to wander, have another beer and lots of water, and look for some shade after that.  I can't emphasize enough how hot it was, though the humidity was fine.  You'd be in the seats at the Main Stage and realize that you were just turning into a shriveled up piece of bacon in the middle of a hot and dusty field.  I'd checked out the Green House Stage several times, which featured shade and lush grass, but it was hard to get a seat there it was so packed.  I bet some people did not move from there all day.

Then back to the GSB Stage and caught most of Katie Pruitt's act.  I'd checked out a couple of her videos and she's a rocker, I was really looking forward to seeing her and she did not disappoint!  She reminded me of seeing Annie DiFranco on the same stage a year ago, at about the same time of afternoon.  She had a great band with her (all from Georgia, one of them shouted out, "Go Braves, Go Dawgs!" when introduced) and she'd engineered a really good setlist mixing some of her ballads with power anthems.  She closed with CSN&Y's Ohio, and she rocked the whole world with that.

I should digress for a second to say that this was ... is ... a tough time for freedom loving people, for all of us.  You can read about it in the current papers and you'll be able to read about it later in your history books I'm sure.  But right-wing politics are ascendant in our country, especially represented in late June 2022 by a couple of politicized Supreme Court decisions, overturning a New York gun law that had been on the books for over a hundred years and overturning the federally-guaranteed right to abortion that had been on the books for fifty.  They rolled back our rights!  These decisions are not popularly supported by a wide margin, are illogical (anti-states rights on the one hand and pro-states rights on the other), and represent a shocking power play to control us by limiting our rights and our protections.  Pruitt played Ohio as a protest anthem, and several other groups expressed vehemence against what's been happening.  I think almost everybody in the crowd agreed.

Back to the Green House for the next couple of hours.  I'd met up with Sarah and we both grabbed some more water and pulled up a seat on the lawn there.  The Festival organizers were announcing Green House pop-up acts by text message and Sarah and I had both heard that Parsonsfield would be playing there soon, so moseyed on over.  The band was as almost as good as at the Main Stage but without the sound problems.  They brought the funky keyboard machine with them, had a small trap set, and Freeman and Alcorn rotated on guitar, banjo, and mandolin.  A short set but very fun!

Wandered around some more after that ... the afternoon was beginning to get on and some of the vendors were already out of wares and beginning to close up.  But then we got a text that LSD would be on the small stage soon, and so bee-lined over there.  We squeezed into about the same spot on the lawn and were quickly surrounded by almost everybody else in Western Mass.  The people out at the other stages must have been wondering where everybody went.  Where we were was over in a back corner of the Fairgrounds, waiting for the great Lake Street Dive.

And then they pulled up in a golf cart and soon went on!  Bridget was on her big bass of course, Akie on some kind of mouth-powered melodica, Mike C had a combination tambourine/frame drum that was Bluetoothed to an amplifier, James Cornelison (the new guy) was on an acoustic guitar, and Rachael was as radiant as ever.  They only played three or four songs but this was a great teaser for their impending evening set.  The second song they did was the classic Neighbor Song ... great to hear them still playing the wonderful songs from their first few albums as well as the new stuff.  And right from the first note it was clear that the vocal backup by Bridget and Mike was as good or better than ever.  Then they jumped in the golf cart and took off, this time surrounded by their fans and looking a little alarmed at the adulation.

Out to the car for another long break after that.  I should have remained in the fray and caught some of Rayland Baxter, The Dip, and/or StompBoxTrio, but just thinking about that made me tired!  I had to get my act together, summon up energy, and then return to the main stage for ...

Ripe was Dave's favorite band of the Festival.  They're another product of Berklee College Of Music led by the dynamic Robbie Wulfsohn on vocals.  Though they look like a bunch of headbangers (and can play that way), like Pruitt they had a great setlist, mixing tempos and instrumental arrangements.  Another band that I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I was going to.

OK GRF, time to fasten the seat belts and get set for the main act!  Lake Street Dive came out after the sun had gone fully down and you realized that maybe it was still early Summer.  They spread out across the stage like the last time we'd seen them at GRF (they've appeared more times at GRF than any other band) and proceeded to play a long, loud, thrilling set:

• Know That I Know
• Hypotheticals
• Hush Money
• Being a Woman
• Anyone Who Had a Heart (Burt Bacharach)
• Same Old News
• Lackluster Lover
• How Good It Feels
• I Don't Care About You
• Making Do
• I Can Change
• I Want You Back (The Jacksons)
• Feels Like the Last Time
• You're Still the One (Shania Twain)
• Nick of Time (Bonnie Raitt)
• Baby, Don't Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts
• Nobody's Stopping You Now
• Seventeen
• Bad Self Portraits
• Good Kisser

Encore:

• You Go Down Smooth
• My Speed

What can I say?  They were great and the addition of Cornelison is a good one, he played several fine leads but mostly stuck to his role as the new guy.  Akie took a few vocal leads, Calabrese was rocking our world, and Bridget Kearney is nothing less than an amazing musician (she switched to electric bass for a few songs).  But this was Rachael's night and her voice was in as fine shape as I've ever heard it.  A couple of songs she just killed were I Can Change and Bonnie Raitt's Nick Of Time.  And my favorite part of course was when they pulled Seventeen out of the night (talk about early songs!) followed by Bridget's incredible Bad Self Portraits and they capped off with Good Kisser.

Woo!  What a performance and what a long and physically challenging day it had been.  We folded up our chairs and got back to the car covered with dust, still thirsty, exhilarated and exhausted.  Long line out of the parking lot and back to route 2 that night, but soon we had left the crowd and were on our way out West into the silent night.

We washed off our feet and rallied back at the Red Rose.  Most of our group were already out at the fire pit beyond the swimming pool, and we joined them with a couple of beers and bags of chips.  It was a perfect evening and we talked long into the night, waiting for the fire to burn down.  It was almost 1AM by the time we last few stragglers headed back, and we all were soon asleep.  Again, no need for AC, just leave the windows open and the cool night air filled the room.

GRF 2022, Friday

You may have heard this before, but we had a great time at the Green River Festival last year and were psyched to do it again!  They announced that the show would be June 24-26 in 2022, and they gradually announced an acceptable lineup.  The earlier date was fine with us, hoping to avoid mid- or late-Summer heat, and the lineup was what we've come to expect, spotty.  Lake Street Dive was going to be there, along with Molly Tuttle, and then Asleep At the Wheel.  And they had a solid second tier, including Galactic, Sarah Borges, and Brennan Leigh.  They're not back up to the quality of the lineups of several years ago, but we were looking forward to a few discoveries.

In January we decided on the Red Rose again for our home base, and made reservations.  I called a few days before the Festival to remind them that we wanted to check in early, and it's a good thing I called because there'd been a mix-up and our reservation wasn't in the books!  But they were great about it and said they'd give us a free upgrade to their "upstairs" which they were in the process of converting to a apartment rental.  Sounded ok to us, we were up for an adventure.

Dave came over the night before and then on Friday June 24 we headed out West.  The weather forecast was for intense sun the whole weekend, and unfortunately our hope to avoid mid-Summer heat was dashed.  They were forecasting temperatures in the 90s for Saturday and Sunday in Greenfield!  Oh well, we'd done this before.

Beautiful drive out route 2 to Greenfield and then to Shelburne Falls, arriving at the Rose at about 12:30 so we could be back at the Fairgrounds for gates opening at 2:00.  Aldo ushered us up the back stairs and into the upstairs apartment, which was as homey and funky as we'd hoped!  You enter into a big room with two couch areas (one with flat-screen TV), a bar area, and a kitchen/dining area.  A hall opened up from this towards the street, with a bedroom off of it and a sink area, then down the hall was a bathroom and around the corner another bedroom.  Both the bedrooms had double beds.  We were psyched and texted the crew that they all had to come up for a party after the Friday show, or at least stop by to see it.  And when they did, everyone had the same reaction, wow!

Dumped our stuff (they were still vacuuming and making the beds) except for what we needed for Friday night, and headed on out at about 1:30.  No problem getting to the Fairgrounds and parked a few rows from the gate, not bad at all.  I'd forgotten the paper tickets (duh!) but when we'd realized this on our way through Concord that morning I'd stopped and checked my phone, and all the PDFs were available there, so we had no problem getting weekend parking passes and wristbands.  We were about 20th in line and some of the same old folks were there.  Got in at 2:00 and set up about 16.5 feet in front of the soundboard.  OK, time to tour the grounds!

Entered a kayak raffle (Lundgren Auto tent), inspected all the craft vendors, got a beer (Berkshire Brewing), and found the new Green House stage they'd added this year.  A pot dispensary (Resinate) had been added as one of their sponsors, and also my favorite food vendor, La Veracruzana, had become a sponsor.  Got a CBD/seltzer sample from Resinate, bought a tapestry for our bathroom in Maine, and then settled down at the Main (Greenfield Savings Bank) Stage a little before 4:00 for...

Funky Dawgz Brass Band - another great opener!  The energy just went through the roof with their first note and continued for the whole set.  From left to right they lined up with two trumpets, a tenor sax, and an alto sax, with a guy on trap drums and a guy on Sousaphone in the back.  They supposedly also have a trombonist and another trumpeter but they weren't there and weren't really needed.  I moved up front and was back in my happy spot, being blasted by the two trumpets right in front of me and dancing to the great beat the drummer was laying down.  Almost all of them took turns singing and rapping, but the standouts were the alto sax player, who was a great technical player, and the Sousaphone, which was loud and funky and rattling the stage and OMG, just perfect!

Stopped by the Dean's Beans Stage right after that and saw a couple of songs by Mtali Banda, who was laying down some soulful jazz (he'd been at the 2019 GRF).  He had a large band himself, and he was strictly in control, pointing at them to indicate who was going to solo next, and urging them to keep it mellow.  He wielded a big sax and once in a while took time out from his band leader role to rap gently or to play a spacey lead.  Great stuff, and his band included an even spacier guitar player who I loved.  I walked away to go get some food while he was introducing the band and then wheeled back around in a cloud of dust (the Fairgrounds were dry and dusty all weekend) when he got to the guitar player.  It was Anand Nayak, whom we've seen many times with Rani Arbo and most recently with Heather Maloney ... I hadn't recognized him.

Then got some food, took a break out at the car, and headed back to the GSB Stage and up front for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, the act of the Festival!  Why they didn't have her on last I don't know.  They were at least as good as when we'd recently seen them in Shirley, and I have to say I enjoyed them even more (Scott and Michelle arrived as she was starting and rushed to join us up front).  The women in the band wore sparkly sheer tights (the guys probably did too, under their pants), and they put on a show like the big-league bluegrass band they are.  They stuck mainly to their new record, opening with She'll Change and closing with Crooked Tree and Big Backyard (for which they gathered around a ribbon mike).  Highlights were a long, jam-heavy Castilleja, a rocking Dooley's Farm, a transcendent cover of She's a Rainbow that had me on my tiptoes, and Molly's beautiful Grass Valley, about being a young girl at a music festival!  They also did some superior bluegrass featuring Molly's incredible fingering and style, like Take the Journey and the song she'd written with Steve Poltz, Over the Line.  Molly told us he would be playing on Saturday and we should ask him if he could play it that fast.

Wow, that was good!  Took another tour around to get some food and beer and then back to the seats for a band I was really looking forward to, Galactic.  They feature a great lead singer (Angelika "Jelly" Joseph, whom we had seen at GRF with Tank and the Bangas), a brass section that will blow your hat to smithereens, and a take-no-prisoners NOLA attitude.  I stayed back at the seats for them, but we weren't too far away and I was up and dancing of course.

Toured around again and caught snatches of Las Cafeteras at the Dean's Beans Stage and then Rose & the Bros over at the Artifact Cider stage, then back to the seats for the last act of the night, Guster.  They've been around for over 30 years and started as Tufts students (probably playing the same dorm lounges that my friends had played back in the late 70s and that Tracy Chapman played at in between).  They're a little too prog-rock for me, but had a great sound on the main stage and I thoroughly enjoyed their set.  We took off a little early to beat the traffic, but that was a fine afternoon and night of music.

Woohoo!  Back to the car and the lovely drive through the Western Mass night to our funky apartment at the Red Rose.  We were texting with our friends all along and encouraging them to join us upstairs.  The bad news was that Diane had ended up in the hospital with an electrolytes issue.  Paul split his time between her bedside at the hospital in Greenfield and the Rose/Fairgrounds.  So she missed the fun weekend, but she recovered fine and is determined to make up for lost time next year.

Washed the thick dust and the sunscreen off our legs, and soon the rest of the crew (except Michelle, who was ready for bed) joined us upstairs and we had plenty of room to gather around the dining room table, munch on chips and a cheese board, catch up on the past year, and drink a few beers.  They all loved the apartment and there was some talk about getting supplies for a big group breakfast, but this didn't work out.  Hopefully we'll be more prepared next year!

Suddenly it was time for bed for everyone else, and we slept well with the window open to the refreshingly cool night.

TTB Way Up in Maine

We're always ready to go see the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and we were psyched when they announced a Spring swing through New England.  They seemed to be concentrating on small theaters this time and were going to play the Cabot in Beverley.  But by the time they had completed a pre-sale for the Cabot Club and for their own fan club (which also costs) there were just some corner balcony seats available!  But we saw they were then going up to Maine and so we went with Plan B and got seats (very expensive but 4th row center balcony) at the Waterville Opera House for April 15th.

I know there are plenty of great music fans up in Maine and they must have been delighted to have one of the best bands in the world show up in Waterville, which is kind of halfway between Augusta and Bangor (Colby College is in Waterville).  The Opera House is actually in the same building as City Hall, upstairs!  They played Portland the next night and then were off to Pennsylvania or something.

Dave had Thursday and Friday off (as well as Monday, Patriots' Day) and so we drove up to Sedgwick on Thursday, where the construction site that used to be (and will be again) our house was a little less muddy and more welcoming then the last time we were up.  Friday was a beautiful day and we had a great drive cross-country through farmland to Waterville, though a cat standing in the middle of the road tried to scare us off at one point.  We crossed into downtown by the lovely Ticonic Falls, which were raging with the water that's everywhere this early Spring.

Got a great parking space right across from the Opera House/City Hall and had a dinner that couldn't be beat at the Silver Street Tavern.  Then we followed the sudden crush into the second floor, picked up our tickets at the Will Call table, got drinks in adult sippy cups (they didn't want us to spill them), and sat down in the balcony to admire the Opera House, which featured plentiful swoops and flourishes and very small seats.

Great stuff and an electric sense of anticipation, but I was a bit disappointed to see that they weren't set up for the full band, just for the "Fireside" version.  Susan later commented that they couldn't have fit the full band on the tiny stage there, but I think they could have, they've done some squeezing in the past.  In Waterville they were just Susan and Derek, Gabe in his nest of keyboards, Falcon with an average-sized drum kit in the back, Brandon Boone on bass next to Susan, and Mike Mattison on vocals and acoustic far right.  Can't argue with that, especially when they put on a show like they did that night!

This was truly an excellent show.  The setlist was a little quirky/obscure but that was great.  Highlights were Made Up Mind, Walk On Gilded Splinters, and a long Angel From Montgomery/Sugaree.  Susan was having a great night on vocals and also on guitar, she ripped off a number of great leads, more than usual.  Derek is a force of nature of course, watching his effortless professionalism is almost as good as hearing the amazing stuff he plays on slide and with his fingers.  At one point they were deep into a jam and a subtle nod to Gabe, a slow turn, and then a mouthed "one two three" to Mike brought them out of it and back into the verse so smoothly ... this was magic.

• Set 1:
• Don't Drift Away
• Made Up Mind
• It's So Heavy
• Gin House Blues
• Keep On Growing
• Just as Strange
• Just Won't Burn
• Anyhow
• Key to the Highway

• Set 2:
• I Walk on Guilded Splinters (Dr. John)
• Misunderstood
• Everybody's Got to Change Sometime (Taj Mahal)
• Whiskey Legs
• Laugh About It
• The Feeling Music Brings
• Outside Woman Blues
• Angel From Montgomery / Sugaree
• How Blue Can You Get?

• Encore:
• Get What You Deserve

But I'll have to say the player of the night was Tyler Greenwell, just rocking the Opera House.  The sound was surprisingly good for a not-high-ceilinged hall and they got the sound on the drums just right, it was awesome.  And of course Susan and Derek play some fine-sounding instruments too!

They played a good three-hour concert with a small set break, it was almost exactly 11 when they ended.  Needless to say, the crowd in Waterville loved them.  Though the median age was perhaps a little higher than at most TTB concerts we've attended and very few people stood through the whole thing, the crowd was raging.  A funny thing they do at the Opera House is just as the show starts, they let people up into the orchestra pit.  When they did that this time the pit was full within a half a second!  They also encouraged people to dance around the edges of the balcony, very different than most concerts.  You don't get one of the best bands in the world playing the Waterville Opera House every day.

Made our way downstairs, back to the car, and on the road East in no time.  This time no cats and we made it back to Sedgwick in about 90 minutes ... not bad!

Molly Tuttle and Band in Shirley

Good thing I opened that Bull Run newsletter in a timely fashion a couple of months ago.  It announced that Molly Tuttle with her bluegrass band, Golden Highway, had just been signed for a date there.  I got quick buy-ins from psyched people (including Scott and Michelle) and got 5 seats at the front-center table for Sunday, April 3rd.  And then the Sawtelle Room sold out, packed to the gills!

Dave was up for the weekend and we got on the road and out there at around 6 for dinner before the 7:30 show.  The room was half full when we got there, and I can't over-emphasize how many people were stuffed in by the time the show started.  You could barely find your way through the tables to get to the bathroom it was so full.

Bella White opened, we'd seen her at the Green River Festival last summer.  She apologized with her wry sense of humor that all her songs were so sad.  She complained that even when she wrote a happy one it ended up kind of melancholy.  But this was great songwriting and her singing backed it up.  All of her songs are so long, like she was arguing with herself, "Oh just one more verse might really get the point across!"  I was just thinking that some of her themes seemed really familiar to me, and then she covered Guy Clark's Dublin Blues, which has exactly that theme she was hammering at!  Melancholy and distance and fear that you may have missed the best thing in your life.  A very enjoyable set and you could tell she was pumped to play for such a packed house.

The break before Molly was a little long, but we needed that to get in a last bathroom break and order another beer.  Then she came on with her incredible new band.  Left to right it was Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle, brother Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Molly, Shelby Means (ex-Della Mae) on a huge double bass, and Dominick Leslie on mandolin.  They jumped right into the first song and proceeded to rock our world.  As I was telling people, there's nothing like a bluegrass band firing on all cylinders, and there's nothing like sitting in the first row at the Bull Run and seeing those instruments being played in all their glory from 10-20 feet away.  At one point they left their mikes and moved right up to the edge of the stage like acoustic musicians do sometimes and Molly was right in Sarah's lap, she could have reached out and touched her.

Molly had just released a new record on Friday, Crooked Tree.  Some of the tracks have Dominick and Bronwyn, but besides that it's not her touring band.  It's just a few stray musicians like Jerry Douglas (who co-produced), Ron Block, Jason Carter, Mike Bub, Dan Tyminski, Margo Price, Gillian Welch, Billy Strings, Viktor Krauss, Darryl Anger, blah blah.  And the co-writer on many of the songs is Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show.  But the band did almost all of the songs on the new CD and they were tight and excellent.

And Molly is one of the best bluegrass guitarists I've ever seen!  I've had the privilege of seeing Del McCoury, David Rawlings, Tim O'Brien, Peter Rowan, Tyminski, Charles Sawtelle, etc.  But she was standing right in front of us and racing with her fingers up and down the fretboard with a rare nimbleness and touch.  And beside that her right-hand technique was at the same time both traditional and personal.  She switched between finger-picking and flat-picking effortlessly (she didn't have a stand to put the picks in and so dropped them on the floor).  And she did a claw-hammer technique on the guitar that was incredible (and must have hurt!).

This was riveting, and the rest of her band was keeping up with her to say the least.  Keith-Hynes is a great, atmospheric fiddle player who can also saw that thing in half when needed.  Kyle Tuttle on a large 5-string banjo and Shelby Means on bass were just fantastic and provided excellent backup vocals.  And Dominick Leslie payed an effortless mandolin that distracted from his technical acumen; you could have missed how good he was.  Shelby's brother also joined the band for one song on electric mandolin.  Here's the set list (Sarah snapped a picture of it):

• Friend and a Friend
• Nashville Mess Around
• Wheel Hoss (Bill Monroe)
• Castilleja
• The River Knows
• Side Saddle
• She'll Change
• San Francisco Blues
• Super Moon
• Dooley's Farm
• Goodbye Girl
• Helpless (Neil Young)
• Over the Line
• Grass Valley
• Boogie
• She's a Rainbow (Rolling Stones)
• Rain and Snow (Traditional)
• Crooked Tree
• White Freightliner Blues (Townes van Zandt)
• Take the Journey

Holy crap, what a setlist!  The packed house at the Bull Run all jumped to their feet and went crazy after her epic Take the Journey.  At one point earlier in her set we wouldn't stop applauding after some of her brilliance, and she graciously nodded and smiled until we were done.  She has a great smile and knows how to charm an audience, but when she was playing her guitar a look of steely determination crawled down her face, like a shadow.  As much as the claw-hammer technique looked like it hurt, she was oblivious to minor things like that at those points.

Bella White came out and joined them for Helpless, which was just crystalline.  I'd been raving about Molly's covers of She's a Rainbow and Cold Rain and Snow before she started, and then she did both of them!  As great as her guitar playing is, she's got such an ability to go from a quiet almost little-girl vocal tone to the power and the element of epiphany that you need to sing songs like that.  And after hearing her CR&S, you would not want to play lightly with her affections ... even if she is a rainbow.

Wow, after that and final band introductions and a group bow and the room just pulsing with excitement, I wasn't sure if there would be an encore.  But the boffins were setting up a ribbon microphone for the band to cluster around, and they soon came back out for a three-song encore!!!

Encore:

• Across the Great Divide (Kate Wolf)
• Back Up and Push (Bill Monroe)
• Big Backyard

The vocals around one mike on that excellent Kate Wolf song were extraordinary.  They had tried to get people to sing along with Helpless, and they closed with a great sing-along in Big Backyard, but we were all listening too hard to sing!  Kyle kindly told us it was all right to just boogie in our seats.  Molly threw her pick out into the crowd, and then they all disappeared downstairs to sign and chat at the merch table. 

We talked to Scott and Michelle for a while and then took off, meaning to stop for a quick bathroom break downstairs.  But the entire basement was wall to wall with all the people from upstairs who had rushed down there to buy her record and schmooze with Molly and the band!  We were glad Dave had picked up her new CD before the concert.

Wow, that was great.  Back in the car and quick ride back to Woburn, it's just 50 minutes and almost every time we've been out to Shirley we've seen a fantastic show.  This was one of the best!