Luxbndr's Blog

Review
Richard Thompson
Robin Lane
Westbrook Performing Arts Center
8/31/11

Since moving to Rangeley and working in Farmington every day, I’ve come to appreciate mid-week concerts. As most concerts are in the metro areas of Bangor, Portland, Waterville and such I’m usually “almost half-way there” when I leave work in Farmington. Were I in Rangeley, with an hour to drive just to get to Farmington, convincing myself to drive a couple hours more to get to the concert becomes difficult. But when my nephew Tom called to let me know that Richard Thompson was playing in Westbrook on a Wednesday night, it was pretty much a no-brainer. Pop out of work early, head to nephew’s in Saco for a meal, drive to the concert and then crash in Saco for the overnight.
Tom and I had discussed the particulars the night before the concert, and I happened to ask whether there was an opening act, since the concert was set to begin at 7. Tom checked the ticket details and replied that “someone named Robin Lane” was scheduled to open. Could it be THE Robin Lane of “Robin Lane and the Chartbusters”? A Boston-based band from the late 70’s- early 80’s, the group was defined by Robin’s strutting blues voice and legendary live shows. Robin hailed from the Topanga Canyon days of Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young and others, in fact had sung back-up on a couple of Neil’s early LP’s, as well as living with him for awhile in a cabin up in the Topanga woods. Robin later moved east and created The Chartbusters from parts of the busted-up Modern Lovers, the band behind Jonathan Richman and a few strays from other Boston bands….. Hmmmmm…… in preparation for the idea that it just might be, I went to my LP collection and pulled out the EP “5 Live -Robin Lane and the Chartbusters”…..and just for the fun of it, I pulled out an old Richard Thompson LP, “Hand of Kindness”. Ya never know.
Hit Tom’s a little after 4:30, had a bracing “comfort food” meal of mashed potatoes, salad and barbecue pork…yum yum…. Then, LP’s tucked under my arm, we were off to the newly-constructed WPAC. This is a spanking new venue tucked into the Westbrook Middle School campus. Think Room C-131 of the UMF campus. Not a whole lot of seats (maybe 1,000- 2,000?) . Now think of C-131 as an actual concert venue (nice seats and sound system, carpeted floors, acoustically resonant walls) and not a lab/lecture hall…..good sightlines throughout, and built for the function of live performance, this venue could become a unique addition to music performance in Maine.
When we drove into the Middle School parking lot, we realized we weren’t the only people who knew this was a GA concert. The first section was already filled, and actually that turned out as a plus. We were within the first two rows of the second section, allowing us to have a sightline above the shoulders and heads of the folks in the first section. The only better spots would have been in the first half-dozen rows of Section 1. Maybe next time…..
It was minutes before the concert was scheduled to begin and I had to observe…. “where IS everybody”. I had remarked to Tom earlier that I had been intrigued by the LACK of promotion about the concert. I don’t recall seeing any public notice of it in any form, anywhere. Tom had caught notice of it by going to the Yarmouth Clam Festival and noticing a paper poster stapled to a telephone pole. For whatever reason, this meant that the concert hall was “maybe 2/3” sold, although I would say closer to “1/2” . Very Strange Indeed.
A tad after 7 and Robin Lane comes out for her brief opening set. In earlier remarks by the Heptunes promoter, it is noted that this is the only concert of Richard Thompson’s tour in which an opening act is included. And yes, it IS Robin Lane of Chartbuster’s fame, singer on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Round and Round and other Neil songs, “present at the creation of The Police” and other notable moments in musical history (or whatever)…she seats herself at the lone seat, faces the lone mic, and guitar in hand…presents. No longer the singer in a blues/rock bar band, Robin still has a strong voice with full range and tone. I have to figure that, being a Topanga Canyon habitue’ back in “the day”, her self-confessional lyrics of her new works are not that far from what was happening back then. Introspection was THE DEAL, “emo” before it became a term. In any case, she’s still writes in that “open-diary” mode, about relationships and feelings, weaknesses and personal dilemma. Her demeanor at the chair indicates that she may prefer more intimate settings than a concert hall…. her songs reflect a pretty raw emotional core…in any case, her set consists of seven songs
You’re Not My Kind
Long Dark Tunnel (people get ready)
Over You
When Things Go Wrong
Flying On Broken Wings
Troubled Man
Longest Night

The highlights are (for me)
“When Things Go Wrong”…which I have as a raucous bar song on the Live EP but here is delivered solo in a much more evocative tone. A woman frustrated by the fact that it appears to her that she loves her man better than he loves himself. It’s a great song in either format but as a solo, the love within the frustration seems to be underlined with a clarity missing in the band version (which just seems angry about it). Talking with Robin later, she expressed how hard it was for her to transfer it from that rock-hard anger to something sadder.
“Flying On Broken Wings”….the imagery and language can seem a bit strained at times…but as Robin explained, the lyrics were drawn from workshops she does with women prisoners, helping them respond to the issues in their lives through writing and poetry. Between her website (which Tom forwarded to me) and her presentation at the concert, one discovers that she is spending much of her energy on a non-profit she has set up to help people with PTSD and other issues. So she conducts writing and recording workshops with youth and inmates and other marginal populations. She obviously has deep emotions about this and, as with any deeply felt drive, sometimes it can feel a bit strong/preachy to the listener who may not “get it” as far as what she’s talking about. But I know her population well and to me, as juvenile and inarticulate as it may sometimes sound, the words ring true to where the heart is.
Other songs like “Long Dark Tunnel/People Get Ready” and “Longest Night” were very well done and delivered in such a clear, strong voice that one wonders how it was maintained all these years. She’s still “got it”. And she’s still got a few issues regarding relationships…..many songs were a tad bitter, shall we say (“Over You”, and “Troubled Man”, specifically)…. But in that regard she was a perfect bookend to Richard Thompson. Between the two, I don’t believe there were three songs about functional relationships the whole night. Not a happy time for people who think LOVE is the answer to everything.
Robin’s set was brief but powerful and then on to break. During the break I went to the lobby with my EP and (yes!) caught Robin as she came out to sign CD’s. We briefly talked about her charity work, she signed the EP (“My God, I’m so happy you came!”) and then off to wait for Richard….
An observational aside…yes we are here mixed with the weird demographic dissonance I experienced at the Dylan concert. Who ARE these people and why are they here? They’re so freakin’ OLD!!!!!!!
Ahem…….Promptly at 8 (I mean PROMPTLY)…and Richard enters the auditorium. At center stage is one stool, one microphone, and one guitar. This is the tone for the rest of the evening. The stool is not for Richard, it is for a glass of water (?) and a sheaf of papers that is the setlist for the evening.

She Twists The Knife Again
The Ghost of You Walks
Turning Of The Tide
Northern Girls
When Good Things Happen to Bad People
Johnny Far Away
Working for the Pharoah
52 Black Vincent
Who Knows Where The Time Goes
Bright Lights
Bees Wing
Crawl Back Under My Stone
Wall of Death
Stumble On
I Misunderstood
Down Where the Drunkards Roam
Enc:
I Feel So Good
You and I
2nd Enc
Bathsheba
Two Left Feet
Final Enc
Dimming of the Day

To eager applause, Thompson steps to the mic and starts the concert off with a striking “She Twists The Knife Again”…..this happens to be the song that Tom frequently quotes as one of his favorites and there it is, up front and out there as number one….bang….one check on the “perfect setlist”.
This bodes well for the evening.
And really, it is followed through by the rest of the 90 + minute unbroken set. The next three songs continue the wronged and haunted lover theme, Ghost of You Walks, Turning of the Tide (and the bitterness therein)…and the brutal “Northern Girls” with the returning phrase “northern winds will cut you/ northern girls will gut you/ like a fish upon the slab”….ouch!
I’ll not do a song-by-song analysis for no other reason than that in many ways it comes to the “you had to be there” moment. Some things go beyond my capacity to express. Even trying to write about “the high points” leads me to want to write at length about each song. I shall not. So…..the stunners…..

It was great to hear “We’re All Working for the Pharoah”, a song Richard had written about the international monetary system, long long long before the banking crisis. We’re all working on “fixed incomes”
Early in the concert, Thompson refers to his youthful times with the Fairport Convention and to his “amazement” the group is recognized by the audience. He then states that we can buy the “complete 19 cd collection for, like 2,000 dollars or something”…then, in a brief, touching memory, speaks of Nick Drake and how after years of anonymity he has gotten his due as a songwriter…”from a bunch of VW ads”…..”eventually the cream does rise to the top”…..Richard then introduces the next song….”I cannot sing this song as well as Sandy, but if I sing this well enough to get you to listen to her, then I’ve done the job”… turns then into Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” and it’s great….a famous song done with a different turn, not with the tentative voice of Sandy or of Judy Collins, but the longing voice of Richard Thompson.
Later he gets to my favorite song “Bees Wing”….is there such a thing as a female version of a roue’ ? A raconteur? I don’t know if there’s a dictionary term, but she does exist. Bees Wing describes her. A woman as “into the moment” as any directionless male. Unwilling to commit beyond the Now, no promises of anything but the Moment we are in. Richard, as the raconteur who wants to get “serious”, aced by the woman who played him at his own “let’s just live for today” game. He paints a ragged end for her…a woman who troughed her life into the ditch because “of the chains that she refused”…..but as she constantly reminded him “you would not want me any other way”….if she had accepted the chains, he would have walked away…..a no win situation. Really great song, not often played but when it happens, it’s like Dylan’s Fourth Time Around…. Just Like a Woman….Tangled Up In Blue….One Of Us Must Know…..
And we keep going into incredibly well-performed versions of exceptional songs….the sing-along of “Crawl Back”, the celebratory defiance of “Wall of Death”…the almost Country and Western lyricism of “I Misunderstood”, another sing along of “Down Where the Drunkards Roam”…..off the stage and the lights dim…Thompson returns for an encore with an ecstatic “I Feel So Good”, descending it into “You and I”, another dip into the melancholy of love. The second encore driven by a cheeky/hilarious “Two Left Feet”, complete with contemporary lyrics such as “Rupert Murdoch was indiscreet/ hacked the phones with two left feet”
Richard Thompson leaves the stage again….called back for a final song, what better than “The Dimming of the Day”….crystallizing life into what really matters as the days become more essential. A gracious bow and away….
I had been clued ahead of time by an audience member that the soundman at the helm of the mixing board was also Thompson’s manager….”if you want that LP signed, run it by him and you’ll have no problem…Richard can sometimes be aloof”….as I left the concert, there was Simon at the board. “Simon, will Richard sign…..”
“He’ll be at the CD table in a few minutes, he’ll be MORE than happy to sign that!” (after all, it was “Hand of Kindness”….which contained the original “Two Left Feet”)
and Richard Thompson most graciously signed the LP.

The Other Review

A Richard Thompson concert can be a difficult review. His technical expertise at the fretboard of the guitar is stunning to the point where words become useless. Metaphors melt, aphorisms atrophy, pictures are required to minimize the thousands of words. The concert in Westbrook was by definition an “acoustic” concert. Richard Thompson used one guitar, the same guitar, all night. He dusted it once with what appeared to be talcum powder. When performing, he frequently played both the rhythm and lead structures of a song, simultaneously. Historically, other acoustic guitarists that can pull this off would be John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, Lenny Breau, and a handful of others. You may note that most of these guitarists are not really great lyricists (possible exception, Leo Kottke, although lyrical content is pretty minimal)….and none of them are vocalists in the traditional sense. Richard Thompson writes lyrics with content, delivers them with solid vocals inflected with real emotion, and under all that is a line of ecstatic guitar play. Tom noted that Richard was always adjusting the tuning of his guitar (even mid-play) and Tom was pretty sure that most of the tunings were not “standard tuning”….I noted that Richard Thompson was greatly influenced by his Sufi faith in the 70’s and frequently adjusted his guitar tunings to middle-eastern instruments (like the Oud and the Lyre) and atypical song structures….even the inner flow of the song may not follow the typical “pop song” formula of lyric/refrain/chorus etc…. add to that his deep interest in Celtic and early English musicianship and well…..Richard is his own territory.
This resulted in an “acoustic” set that never really sounded that way. Thompson’s ease and familiarity with this one guitar allowed him to create a sonic fullness with nothing but the basic six strings, holding harmonics and sustain on the instrument without knobs or wah wah pedals. Just knowledge and control. I look back at the Jeff Tweedy concert and no bad words about Jeff….but he was surrounded by about six or eight guitars. I think he used two. I guess they were individually tuned or otherwise special. Thompson needed one.
When I first saw Richard Thompson in concert it was at the Maine Festival, maybe 86, 87… at that time held at Bowdoin College. I had sat (excruciated and tortured….a redundant but effective phrase) through a set by Manhattan Transfer, had been thoroughly entertained by the verbal/musical antics of Jonathan Richman. He and his Modern Lovers had split (remember way back at the beginning of this…and Robin Lane?) ….there was a delay between artists and then Richard Thompson eventually emerges….explaining that he was sorry for the delay. His guitar didn’t make the flight and so he would be borrowing the guitar of Jonathan Richman for the evening….which he proceeded to bend into every shape imaginable to create that Richard Thompson “band in a box” … guitar as accordion. I wonder if Jonathan ever played that guitar again…..

Decemberists

This is the story of the road that goes to my house
And what ghosts there do remain

…….July! July!…Decemberists

Grimy/Gray fogshot of a stage…..Springsteen’s “Seeger Sessions” blends into Levon Helm “Rumble at the Ryman”….if this music indicates the night….yum….early fans keen to their favorite spots, kestrels of sound, on the wires and waiting….lights fall and a wash of sound, a noised flow as Sara Watkins, of Nickel Creek, and her brother Sean draw themselves to stage center and begin the night with rambling fiddle and guitar duets…. A passioned talent for bluegrass and folk, Sara had been asked by Meloy to do double duty. Not only a vital member of the re-adjusted Decemberists, she was tasked/”honored by” doing an opening set of fiddle/guitar duets. Much of the work was from her self-titled solo LP, with a few nods to the historical bluegrass works, remembered from her childhood in San Diego, as well as a few nods to Nickel Creek. She was clearly “happy to be here” and although a noticeable novice at being the lead person/sparkplug of a set, she still managed to win the audience over, entertaining them with energetic, enthusiastic fiddle play (how can you be a fiddle player and not be enthusiastic and energetic?) Fearing a possible “Howdy Moon Moment”, I still chose to go to her stand in the back of the space to get a CD. Not only was she there to sign stuff, but she also had the work on VINYL! DEAL!

Good songs:
Long Hot Summer Days
Same Mistakes
Jefferson (great acoustic piece)
Freiderick (another acoustic)
All This Time

Etc etc

Sara especially impressed me. A solid, speedy first set that pops out at about 45 minutes. Pretty straightforward fiddle/guitar runs, mostly high-energy with some relaxed balladry here and there. A break and then into a 90 minute train with the Decemberists. Here she tackles piano, solo vocal and harmony, percussion, the expected violin/fiddle…. Geesh!

Then a blurbreak between sets and to Meloy and Co…….the songs kick in with July!July!. An homage to Jenny Conlee and her anticipated return end of June? Who knows, but it opens every concert, followed, surprisingly, by one of the more popular songs of their current release. I had expected to hear Down By the Water as, say, an encore or at best a closer. But no, Colin’s channeling of river songs and full moon romance out and gone. Hmmmm……then a slam-bang series of vocals from Meloy. Calamity Song/Rise To Me (one of my clear favorites), We Both Go Down/Don’t Carry It All/Rox in the Box….these aren’t necessarily in sequence, there were others between some of these, but the sense to my ears was this rush of hurled voice and torn poetry. Colin Meloy’s essential talents, brilliant and to the fore—wild vocal abandon and ecstatic writing—as wild as Dylan Thomas reciting lines of poetry. And the poetry of Meloy, his writing, is from that eternal wash of coast and ocean, where tragedy, if not current in your situation, lies just off shore. The Portland he wrote from and the Portland he sang to share tide and time with each other, dark mysterious and unswayed by Man. Whether his delivery is an affectation like Bob Dylan’s early Guthrie or whether it is his “true” voice (from a new found land) the result is Whitmanesque yawp….raggedly clear, brogued, roared against a battered coastline, a Marsden Hartley painting sprawled by voice. For Colin to still exhibit this energy 10 plus years into the game is substantial.

The concert continues and Meloy brings out a few pearls of the past, O Valencia!, Perfect Crime (which I think may have been the first Decemberist song I ever heard…like the Pet Shop Boys meet Robyn Hitchcock…..weird lyrics to catchy hooks and that SoHo sound)….Logan will be relieved that the jerk behind him so many years ago, yelling for “CHIMBLEY SWEEP!!!!!” finally was rewarded….. Colin and crew serenading that very song as the final piece of the night….I hope the idiot was there……over the course of 90 minutes, maybe 18 songs…..most of them pretty straightforward….live and somewhat open-armed, yes,……yet structured to be played over the course of MANY evenings for three months. Unlike Phish, I did not get the impression that Colin Meloy was into “improv” much. It didn’t make the concert any less enjoyable, but it did affirm that there would be no need to see the tour more than once.

Later we all repaired to be dismantled by pitchers of Margaritas and “really deep thoughts” (what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?-Tori Amos)

So the most critical question at the table seemed to be whether Colin Meloy was engaged with the audience or not. I admit to being struck at first by the impression of an “all-business” attitude presented during the introductions to the first few songs. Perfunctory one-liners like “ This is a song about joint suicide” then, bang, into the song.

Is this just his normal way? Or is he getting burned out by the demands of the road, or is he pre-occupied with concerns about Jenny Conlee’s diagnosed breast cancer (she’s off the road, getting treatment)….not for me to say….and does it matter? To use Dylan’s example, people allow him the arrogance of non-engagement with the audience because, as one critic put it, “Dylan’s talking to the audience in every song, why does he need to speak further?”

So if we move away from that point of interest, what remains? In my opinion, we are left with a satisfying concert, professionally played, crisp. Not particularly exploratory for the musicians but that’s not surprising. Most concerts in most genres are not notable for challenging music, either for audience or musician. The piece of work being played is already composed and so the concert is, within limits of live performance, not supposed to be much beyond a variant to the original text. A few musicians allow themselves the luxury of challenging the work, of pushing themselves, the audience and the work being presented into unexplored territory. But those are exceptions to the rule.

A proving example would be the second song into the set “down by the water”. It was presented cleanly, professionally, a near-templated re-pressing of the original CD version. Anything wrong with that? Not for me,…it was still live, it had the energy of a live performance. Their capacity to hit the notes familiar to the audience is obviously pleasing and not unexpected. It was a great performance of a great song, regardless of the lack of surprise or exploration. A good song done well is not to be dismissed lightly. Live performance does not possess the quality of perfection attainable in a studio full of moderating gadgets or the suspension of time afforded by the process of editing.

Live is live. That’s why we go to it. Not to see a musical car accident. But to “participate” to be a part of the moment of the event. Glenn Gould, later in his career, dismissed live-performance altogether. A brilliant perfectionist and obsessive control freak, he had found his Nirvana in the studio. There he could edit, insert, clip, re-do, until the work was exactly as he wanted it preserved. No errors, no minor gaps between notes, no piano key dulled by an ill-placed fingering. Crisp precise, perfect. Concerts were TOO participatory. He didn’t even want to hear applause after a piece. And he couldn’t countenance any sound during the playing. So, a cough, a rustle of paper, any distraction was just disgusting! Move that expectation to a live concert and the dissonance is impossible to accommodate.

So live concerts are participatory events. The audience wants to be a part of the moment. By way of contrast, there is no way, short of drugs, NOT to be a separated entity when listening to a recorded performance. No matter how wonderful the speaker system or the quality of the headphones, the music is stuck in time, already dead. It will only change if it develops a skip or warp or some other defect. Live music, on the other hand, has open moments, waiting.

But how participatory do we get to be? Audiences are, after all, the fourth wall of the “play” being presented of a particular evening. Audience participation is a fluid thing, more of a moveable bar on a scale/graph than a finite pre-scripted aspect of the play. It is the one part of the night that is most open to impulsive, creative innovative interplay between audience and actors. As such it can come laden with expectation—and I think this explains some of the discussion at the table. Was Meloy engaging the fourth wall? Did he care? What did he see as the purpose of the audience? Shut up and listen? No, I didn’t sense that. But it did seem as a half-engagement. I would put it to fatigue, pre-occupation. The concert was not sold out. The group was a day or less out of a daunting Bonnaroo marathon, and if rumors are correct, there were band concerns and accommodations to be made. Bringing Sara Watkins into a larger role, patching holes left in the tapestry with the departure of accordionist Jenny Conlee,…..trying to maintain a momentum to the tour may have colored the concert as much as any other element of the night.

When you look at the tour schedule for this summer, one wonders about the capacity to maintain such a pace and NOT have a walk-through night…a somnambulatory set now and then. After all, a look at the setlists reveal an almost concrete show… VERY little, if any changes, almost indetectable variation..this has to lend itself to a repetitive, mind-numbing redundancy, erasing all distinction for time and place…. How can anybody do the same thing night after night without a yawn or two?

I still got the feeling that he wanted the audience around, he wanted the fourth wall. I just think he didn’t really know what to do with it. If engagement becomes a blur, then where’s the reward? If you don’t know/are unsure of the role of self and audience at the clear, shimmered surface of the fourth wall, where do you place your hand? Do you want to feel the presence of the other hand, pressing toward you from the audience? Do you want to feel the heat, and if so, why? If not, why not?

Oddly by the end of the concert, after numerous encores, the audience had won Meloy over. Now, of course, we expect it to be the other way ‘round. The artist’ task is to present work to the audience, to break through the wall by dint of talent, effort and engagement with the audience

For me, The Decemberists had done that right from the first song. I didn’t care if he bantered with us, or yelled “Hello Portland!”….big deal. Stand and Deliver, Decemberists!

And they did…..

1962
Farm boy, digging a long line of peas….weeding, ever weeding. Small hands digging into dirt and turning, pulling a weed and packing, pull and pack. In his hand he rubs a stone but not a stone. He pulls and turns. It is flat. A coin. Thumbs wear at the dirt and reveal “1861”. The frame of a woman’s face. A half-penny of Nova Scotia…..in a West Paris farm field….he runs to the farmhouse, wondering …..

2011
Blue light…. and a singer walks into it…..hands-clapping……the boy lifted from the man…..phrase over phrase, a catechism…..”a boy with a coin he found in the weeds”…. “God left the ground to circle the world”…..”a girl with a bird she found in the snow and threw off her gown and that’s how she knows”…..“a boy with a coin/he crammed in his jeans/and making a wish/he tossed in the sea/he brought to a town where all of us burned/when god left the ground and circled the earth”……

Iron and Wine at the State Theater in Portland, Sam Beam at the center of the stage, cadence/singing “Boy With A Coin” and hurtling me through decades. Orson Welles as a slim man, young and bearded this time, …young and at his creative peak….turning to the mic as if it was Halloween, 1939…aided by hand-picked players….. around him, talented and ready ….“I hope you don’t mind if we f*ck with the music”….Puck is on the stage and Shakespeare, he’s in the alley.

Almost half the songs played are completely unknown by me….some from an LP called “Our Eternal Numbered Days” (yes… on order) as well as what seems to be a bootleg obscurity from 2005….still, I’m forward in my seat, watching the magic of a loose band drawn tight. A horn section? At an acoustic concert? Yup. Again, as in The Low Anthem, the small stones of a song built upon. Not unlike what Dylan did with the Budokan concerts. But frankly with arrangements that didn’t reek of Vegas. There has been discussion of this in critical circles, but for me on this night, it all works. Maybe it’s because I’m already in strange territory, what with so many songs unfamiliar. Sam can do what he wants, he’s got a free hand and he’s using it. I don’t know what to expect in this song or that. As Mello so ably texts during the concert, homage and reflection on influences flow from guitar to drums, organ and horns. The band is so happy to be here, and Sam Beam steers them gently, like Welles must have done with the Mercury Players. “Do your best to serve the text”. The arrangement is that there is no arrangement. It’s a fluid interplay, with space given and time allowed. Not unlike jazz, “you get the next four bars, go for it”. There are some parts that are “punched in”…..bookmarks that tell the musicians where they are, but generally there’s a free feel to the space, extends into the audience. We are part of the story of the night. Not mere recipients of “entertainment”. Beyond audience.

Obviously, as memory serves us well, the songs that affected me most were the familiar. “Song of the Shepherd Dog”, “House By the Sea”, “Tree By the River”. But also the never-to-be-radio-broadcast “Monkeys Uptown”, which is one of the best songs from the latest CD, but has unfortunately appropriate language issues. “Tree By the River” was the tune I waited for. It’s goofy and fun and sad at the same time…..perfect. Reminded me of Douglas Coupland’s minimalist novel “Life After God”

Two songs floored me. One was “Walking Far From Home”….which opens the latest CD…..a sort of Lord Randall/Hard Rain…..except in this case there is no refrain, no touchstone chorus that will circle the visions and bring them to sense. It is just one disassociated blast of insight/vision after another. None with any connective tissue between them. Like PTSD and other random access onslaughts, the brain tries to make sense out of the senseless….. and is rendered impotent, a mere receptor of random horror. Like watching TV news with someone else controlling the channels. Does anyone remember Clockwork Orange?

The second intensity was “Free Until They Cut Me Down”, Sam’s pliant, plaintive “take me home” as whispered by a deadly lover. You can hear the rope, coiling. This version honestly better than the original. Yes…. I want the bootleg….

“Need to Hear Agains”…..”Love and Some Verses”, “Sunset Soon Forgotten”, “Fever Dream”, “Summers in Savannah”, “Big Burned Hand”…..

Jeff Tweedy
State Theatre Portland, ME
March 26, 2011

I have seen Wilco and Jeff Tweedy twice in the past two years, once as the group and, in this latest, solo. I have learned TWO important things.
First. Although I consider myself a fan of the group and the musician, the live concerts have convinced me that I have missed much of their output and catalog. Perhaps it’s the renewed interest drawn from live performance, perhaps the presentation freshens the work. Perhaps I just haven’t deepened my library adequately. But I leave a concert wanting more, wanting to hear particular songs a few times to better understand the lyrics, which can be moebius-stripped puzzles, or at least obscurely reflective. Like looking through someone else’s prescription lenses, it takes getting used to. Unlike REM, which are so closely aligned to my verbal and visionary style that hearing the music and listening to the lyrics has a hand-on-heart understanding, or at least feels so. The set list for this evening was packed with songs I’ve never heard or rarely attended to.
The Second Observation is somewhat of a subset to Observation One. I have found that in live Wilco/Tweedy concerts, if I am unfamiliar with the work or hazy on lyrical content, I need not worry. For there, behind me, or perhaps to my left… or down and to the right, will be a Wilco/Tweedy FAN. They are quite happy to lend boisterous voice to lyric content. It’s like they’re taking a shower, singing some Tweedy/Wilco tune and well, you and Jeff happened to transport somehow from an alternate, parallel universe and there you are….in THEIR shower. Welcome! Hope you enjoy the show! Pass the soap? Let’s SING! Concert as musical … lovely….where are the costumes?
All to say that the State Theatre rousingly welcomed Jeff. And rightly so. I think Jeff loves Portland almost as much as Portland loves Jeff. It was a love-fest. Almost too much of one. Like when your girlfriend hasn’t seen you for so long that she gets drunk with the idea that you’re gonna show up. So when you do, she’s so shit-faced it’s embarrassing. There IS such a thing as undeserved enthusiasm. I’m trying to think of a way that Jeff Tweedy could have disappointed some of the audience. I don’t think he could have.
He showed up. With a bunch of acoustic guitars in tow, he did not “rock out” as would have happened with Wilco. Some in the audience were clearly disoriented by this…but since they were already disoriented from other activities, his lack of “noise” was merely replaced by their riotous adoration at practically everything he did. This was not an audience he had to win. This was an audience he had to tame, or at least channel into, perhaps, concepts of listening and being present. “Attendance” may not be necessary, but it sure is appreciated.
But enough. Suffice to say that when the audience is more notable than the performance, one needs to reorient.
I’m not sure why Jeff Tweedy went solo for this tour. Boredom? A need to be away from the band? To strike another spark, start anew? A need to revisit the well that dwells within? Who knows?
There were two signifiers for me, hinting a superior show. Of course, seeing the bank of six acoustic guitars before the first note was plucked dashed the idea of a Neil Young style acoustic/electric solo series, and I was okay with that…although obviously some people didn’t read that news flash at all. The second hint that we were in good woods for wanderin’ was when Tweedy came out to the stage to start off “Via Chicago”….. no intro, no hello’s, he just wanders out kinda hunched with an acoustic guitar and harmonica…..said to self… “it’s Bob Dylan”!……and like Dylan, the song is about trying to get back home…this time “via Chicago”
It’s weird to look at a setlist of a concert you’ve gone to and realize that you can easily recognize only 8 of the 22 songs. The concert itself was intimate, well-played and really moving in a lot of ways. I dunno…is it the song titles, my personal lack of familiarity? What is it that makes it hard to place song with title? My notepad is scrawled not with a list of titles but a string of caught phrases and lyric runs. Those are my hints as I string back like greek mythology to the opening, to where the wandered run began.
So……my home run songs of the evening.

Jesus Etc…….a beautifully written song about the difficulties of relationships and why the hell do we bother with….I heard it with full Wilco and solo….both great, but I lean toward the solo acoustic just because intimacy has its rewards. Perfect for the transition in lyrics from “each star is a setting sun” to “our love is a burning sun”….cool

One Wing ……. A couple breaking up at KFC ? Perhaps but I don’t think so. A fun metaphor, not hugely deep but still filled with neat lyric content like “you were a blessing and I was a curse”….one of his icy/honest works, reflective in an accusatory way. “How we grow” etc etc ….

“Shot In the Arm”….. really worked acoustically …. A good set of riffs and excellent voice.

I really appreciated his final song “Acuff Rose”, which he performed not only solo acoustic but un-amped as well…..not even a microphone. Jeff Tweedy walks to the edge of the stage and, well, plays an old white acoustic guitar, no amp, and sings “Acuff Rose” …no mic….how intimate is that? The song is from the old Uncle Tupelo years, a nod to what drew him then and what draws him now. Great story-telling and songwriting that strides over the years and speaks to everyone decade after decade. And it shifted the rowdiness into a quiet way to leave the space…..

“Via Chicago”…the opener. Not familiar with the song until concert. Drawn immediately to the concept of trying to get home “somehow” as soon as possible. The sense of distance and desire. “I’m not where I want to be”

“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”….given that the band version has all sorts of studio/audio tricks, a huge palette of sound structures and conflicts that emphasize the decay within his desire, Tweedy’s acoustic version has a rawer, direct edge.

“I’ll Fight”……not necessarily due to the performance but more the discussion that Lu, Frank and I had over breakfast the following morning. It’s a song that can fold and reveal, hide and reflect ideas on adolescent relationships, cultural imprimaturs and the bestowing of honors to the dead, no matter how they got there. “why do we do what we do and can we change that”?

“THE UNKNOWN NEW SONG”…..I wrote down quickly a lyric “middle of the mind of mystery”…..it seemed like an opening for Jeff Tweedy…..creativity being cracked open, just for a line or two….the process….the process…..like Woody Allen about the creative process “ 90% of Life is showing up”

the woulda/coulda/shoulda’s

Songs I feel Jeff Tweedy could have pulled from the catalog and it would have worked (for me anyway….and given my sense of Tweedy’s audience…it IS about them)

“Deeper Down”

“You Are My Face”

“Impossible Germany”

“Kamera”

that’s my early observations…..????

ernie