Lindsay Holler & the Dirty Kids @ The Map Room, 07/12/07
If I had a back porch, I’d put some speakers out there to blast Lindsay Holler & the Dirty Kids — they’re the perfect accompaniment to Charleston summers, all enveloping humidity and unpredictable storms that seem to come out of nowhere.
Sure, there were no lawn chairs or mosquito zappers, but The Map Room was a fine venue for Holler&Kids last Thursday night. The crowd wasn’t huge, but a large chunk of Holler’s core audience was most likely over at Cumberland’s watching Lucero. In fact, Holler herself “snuck” down to Cumbie’s to throw some notes in with Lucero openers Shovels & Rope (Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent’s new baby band — and, ooh, their MySpace picture is saucy as Mephistopheles himself).
Back in West Ashley, Ilad were a great listen but not exactly adrenaline rush-inducing. Holler&Kids got the sleepy crowd up and hootin’ from the get-go (I’m looking at you, overjoyed barfly who seemed quite surprised that the band was so good), playing for an hour or so. After they finished and the bar united in their demand for an encore, an interband debate resulted in one more song: a fine rendition of Tom Waits’ “Gun Street Girl.” But, in the words of Levar, you don’t have to take my word for it: click here to download an mp3 of “Gun Street Girl” from Thursday’s show, or check out the, um, light-challenged video footage.
–sm
Even though I said I’d post this “tomorrow,” obviously celebrating freedom got in the way. (Slacker!)
If you’re living in one of the tent cities at Bonnaroo, sleeping in is not really an option. Doesn’t matter if you drank your weight in overpriced beer (or snuck-in beer) the night before and fell asleep shivering in two hoodies and a blanket — if it’s not cloudy, the sun is going to turn your tent into an oven by 9 a.m. After returning to camp and finally crashing around 7 a.m., I woke up at 10, drenched in sweat, and did my best to trick my body into ignoring the heat, as well as trick my brain into forgetting that this day held the promise of seeing The Hold Steady and Spoon back to back. It didn’t work, so I front-loaded some water and hiked to Centeroo to meet up with my sister, Sally, at Dr. Dog.
I’d passively listened to some Dr. Dog before the festival and liked it, and lolling in the grass at the edge of This Tent while absorbing their breezy, slightly jammy indie-boogie was the perfect way to shake off the previous night’s festivities. The people in the center of the tent were far more jolly and active than I could imagine, despite the midday heat, and erupted into a frenzy when the band kicked into “Easy Beat” (download the MP3 from the band’s site).
After they finished, Sal and I headed to the Cinema Tent for a “Filmmakers in Focus” presentation by animator Bill Plympton, whose 1987 short film “Your Face” has been burned into my brain for life ever since I saw it on MTV’s Liquid Television, like, five million years ago. Click the link, it’ll probably open some great memory floodgates. Unfortunately, Plympton was disappointingly boring and we left the tent right after he sketched a lucky audience member, then showed “Your Face” and a beautiful/sad short from 2005 called “The Fan and the Flower.”
Even though the music on the stages is rigidly scheduled, the pervading ethos at Bonnaroo is freedom. The freedom to take in whatever you want, whenever you want, and the organizers offer quite a tasty spread to choose from, with nonmusical side diversions like the Cinema Tent and the Yet Another (Comedy) Tent (which we never went to, since the lines were not just hellishly long but organized somewhat like a marijuana spider web).
We relocated to That Tent for the impending Hold Steady show, which I’d been wolfing at the door for all week. I was rabidly curious about how (and if) their swaggering bar-rock would translate to a festival setting and expressed this curiousity many, many times to my companions the night before. The aforementioned Stratton had seen them at Langerado and was duly unimpressed — it was impossible to explain to him that these five guys put on one of the most energetic, openly enthusiastic, straight-up FUN shows you’ll ever see in a nightclub and also that lead singer Craig Finn is a lyrical gangsta (cf. his previous, kinda superior band Lifter Puller).
They’re something of a divisive band; I think it’s because if you don’t buy into the fun wholeheartedly, Finn’s flat voice and guitarist Tad Kubler’s heavy-handed use of power chords and Franz Nicolay’s überpoppy keyboard riffs and all, it’s easy to hate The Hold Steady and call them “derivative.” Also, their recorded music doesn’t come anywhere close to doing their live show justice. Listening to fist-pumpers like “Massive Nights” (from last year’s Boys and Girls in America) alone over headphones just doesn’t compare to throwing your hands in the air alongside all the other giddy converts and witnessing Finn’s spastic dancing and air-preaching in living color.
Needless to say, I was excited as shit and made an informed, slightly drug-induced decision to worm my way into the crowd near the front of the stage. As soon as Craig Finn walked up to the mic, grinned, and said, “We’re The Hold Steady, welcome to Bonnaroo, we’re gonna have a really good time!” and the crowd clapped along as Kubler strummed the opening notes of “Stuck Between Stations,” any doubt about THS “translating” to Bonnaroo had evaporated. I mean, Bonnaroo was the “Party Pit” come to life! What the hell was I worried about? The Hold Steady have a fantastic way of making people feel like they’re playing just for you, but for everyone, too. It’s hard to explain. In my jumbled pocket notes from the weekend, I wrote down The Hold Steady setlist and the note “Craig Finn is a supastar.”
Here’s a clip from the second song of the set, “The Swish” — it’s only about 40 seconds long, but it encapsulates why I personally enjoy this band so much.
1. The delicious riffs.
2. The clapping.
3. Craig Finn’s evangelical stylings.
4. SERIOUSLY, THAT HIGHLY UNSYNCHRONIZED KICK-DANCING!!
See, I tend to get very, very, very excited at rock shows, and Craig Finn is the one performer I can honestly say is often just as visibly happy as his craziest fans, if not more so. He obviously enjoys being onstage and even though I can’t say from talking to the man personally, the meteoric rise of The Hold Steady over the last year or so must be quite a goose.
Earlier this year, he got to sing with Bruce Springsteen (the musician he’s most often compared to) during The Boss’s tribute concert in New York City; the first time I ever heard Finn’s voice, I immediately thought of the bridge in “Rosalita” (“because a record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!”) … watching him actually sing it then freak out like a little kid as he’s standing right next to Springsteen himself made my heart sing with joy. (To see this for yourself, click here and then skip to the 4:50 mark, when Bruce waves Craig over to the microphone to sing the bridge.)
But I digress. The Hold Steady and Bonnaroo went together spectacularly, and I managed to inch over next to a contingent of shirtless superfans who shouted along with every word (my people!). Whoever put the setlist together is a genius, because there were no valleys in the set at all — it was peak after peak after peak; here’s the whole thing.
Stuck Between Stations
The Swish
Chips Ahoy!
Massive Nights
Party Pit
You Can Make Him Like You
Cattle and the Creeping Things
Multitude of Casualties
Stevie Nix
First Night
Hornets! Hornets!
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Southtown Girls
encore:
How a Resurrection Really Feels
Killer Parties
Between the last two songs, Finn talked about how it can be a challenge for them to adapt from a small bar to a large festival and how Langerado hadn’t gone over nearly as well as Bonnaroo, then he said, “There is so much joy in what we do up here.” And that joy radiated out, over the thrilled audience, and settled upon anyone lucky enough to be part of it all.
(Ack. I meant to write about Spoon, too, and The Police, and Girl Talk…but that’ll have to wait. Damn you for being so awesome, Hold Steady!)
–sm
If one artist, of the 20 or so I saw at Bonnaroo 2007, could sum it all up in just one tossed-off sentence, leave it to the furiously flowing Def Jux wordsmith Aesop Rock. As he bid farewell to the crowd after the absolute best set-closer I saw all weekend — “Daylight,” from his 2001 album Labor Days, which had everyone singing along with the chorus (“All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day/Put the pieces back together my way”) — “Have a great Bonnaroo weekend,” he said, pausing for a second before jubilantly proclaiming: “Do whatever you wanna do!”
And we did. We walked around and drank and smoked and laughed and danced and barely slept and sweated (oh, how profusely we sweated) and lay down in the grass when our tired legs couldn’t hold us up for another second.
PART I: FRIDAY
I almost didn’t make it to Manchester this year. Last year, despite the fact that I’d applied for a press pass and received one, I had to be coaxed into the car after many protests related to a) the heat, b) the crowds, c) the lack of modern plumbing. Thank goodness Karin and Craig were the pushers, because Bonnaroo 2006 turned out to be one of the best weekends ever. This year, I was literally handed a pair of free tickets two weeks before the big weekend, so although I had already planned on not going and skipped applying for a press pass, I pleaded out for one half-day off (Friday afternoon) and scrambled to find a ride. My resourceful friend with many friends, Stratton, eventually helped me connect with super-friendly Pour House bartender Mindy and her ‘94 Jetta. We had no CD/tape player, and heard a number of classic one-hitters on the way up (“Straight Up,” “Seether”) and two Red Hot Chili Peppers songs that sounded the same. The gods smiled upon us as we hit the last stretch, through the Smoky Mountains, and “What Is and What Should Never Be” came on and we dutifully screamed along.
We pulled up to the gates at 8:55 p.m. CST, five minutes before Tool was set to start. After a brief discussion with a pessimistic and oddly bitter volunteer (“There’s no way you’re going to make it! I’m stuck out here and I can’t see it, either.”) we parked about a mile away and did some Olympian speedwalking while I tried not to whine as we heard them ripping up “46 & 2″ and “Schism.” On our speedwalk, Mindy, a festival veteran, said “I feel like I recognize every face I see at these things,” and it’s true — when you’re in a crowd that massive, everyone’s your friend.
Mindy skillfully weaved through the field full of people, eventually getting us close enough on the right side that I could see bassist Justin Chancellor’s face and a few of Danny Carey’s bagillion cymbals. Maynard Keenan was singing from a platform near the back of the stage, so we couldn’t see him, but between projecting his unreal bombastic and beautiful voice over the rapt crowd in song, he was chattier than I’d ever seen him on the Lateralus tour. When they got to the lengthy bridge of the title track from the 2001 album, Maynard introduced former tourmate (ca. 1992!) Tom Morello, who had played earlier in the day as his acoustic alter ego, The Nightwatchman. Morello came out and played a gnarly solo for about four minutes, ending by lifting his guitar up to his face and playing with his teeth! (Watch Morello’s axe skills, oral and otherwise, in this video I found on YouTube. The teeth-playing starts around 3:26.)
During the show, Mindy and I witnessed our first bits of Bonnaroo insanity: a middle-aged metalhead couple, both with long hair and wearing TOOL T-shirts, came toward us from the front of the stage, and the man was carrying a naked baby (!); a few minutes later, a tall, naked man came stumbling through the crowd and pausing every few seconds to spread his ass cheeks as if to take a giant dump in the middle of 80,000 people – but whenever he started this nonsense, someone (usually a large, disgusted man) would shove him toward the periphery of the crowd. Eventually he got to the waist-high fence, fell over it, landed square on his head, and scrambled out of (my) sight.
Here’s a few truths I’ve gleaned in my two years at this festival:
1. If you like drugs, you’ll like Bonnaroo.
2. If you like live music, you’ll like Bonnaroo.
3. If you like drugs and live music, Bonnaroo is a four-day pass to a too-temporary nirvana — in other words, you’ll love Bonnaroo.
However, you’ve got to know your limits, man! Naked shitting dude liked the drugs a little too much.
After Tool, I met up with some of my favorite awesome people, my sister and old friends from Nashville, and we headed to This Tent for Aesop Rock. It seemed like the majority of the crowd split to either Sound Tribe Sector Nine, the John Paul Jones/Ben Harper/?uestlove superjam, or tent city, leaving a moderate amount of Ace Rizzle fans amped up on Tool and god-knows-what as they waited for him to go on. One of the best things about being at Bonnaroo with 79,999 other people is that no matter who’s playing at what stage at what time, there are going to be people there who really enjoy that artist. And they’re bringing the party. That’s exactly what happened at Aesop Rock, as everyone under the tent went berserk when he emerged with fellow Def Jux MC Rob Sonic and they launched into “Fast Cars Danger Fire and Knives” (the title track from Aesop’s tiiiiiiiiight 2005 EP), followed immediately by “Holy Smokes” from the same album. They did a song or two from 2003’s Bazooka Tooth, the artistic-nerds-rule anthem “No Regrets,” a few songs from his upcoming album (August 28!) including “None Shall Pass,” a perfect soundtrack for mistreated 20somethings ready to stick pins into voodoo dolls of their incompetent superiors. And then there was “Daylight.” Aes and Rob were visibly grateful and seemed surprised by the enthusiasm of the hundreds of people singing every word and shouting along with every call-and-response throughout the set. Here’s another YouTube video, this is the entire performance of “Daylight”:
This was the second time I’ve seen Aesop Rock and it confirmed my belief that he’s one of the best — if not THE best — hip-hop performers working today. Not only does he have a sick flow and a great rapport with a crowd, he doesn’t need a slew of hype men to pick up when he trails off. Because he DOESN’T TRAIL OFF. Can’t say the same for his labelmate El-P, who came on immediately afterward surrounded by four or five dudes — all of them dressed in matching camo outfits in a nod to the highly politicized lyrics from El-P’s latest album, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead.
Between Ace Rock and El-P, I wandered over to the tightly-packed Superjam at That Tent. I got bored at the fringes and turned around to watch a group of five or six people scream-sing along with “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the silent disco when I felt this strange, familiar pulse thumping through my chest. For the Superjam, they somehow amplified JPJ’s bass so that it was less like a rock-n-roll accoutrement and more like a nearly-silent siren call of vibration that must’ve spanned over half of the center of the ‘roo, and what I’d felt were the unmistakable first notes of “Dazed and Confused,” which JPJ, ?uestlove, and Harper (providing vocals) transformed into an even more serpentine, trippy, acid-jazzy version of the original. (?uestlove is apparently an internet junkie; you can find him on MOG, MySpace (do yourself a favor and check out his informed, insightful blogs, especially “Blog 95: Brother You See King The Police,” about some seriously bunk-ass racial profiling/harassment he endured at an airport in Buffalo, N.Y.), and YouTube, where he posted a video of the Superjammers rehearsing “Dazed and Confused” — check it out below):
There was no way you could’ve been standing anywhere near That Tent and not been pulled toward that thundering bass, so I floated back into the throngs until the song was over, when I headed back to the silent disco for a tic. I started thinking about last year, when I videotaped a bunch of people singing along to “Walk This Way”, and then heard people singing the familiar refrain. Wacky. I took it as a sign to get away from that damn mesmerizing silent disco and headed back to my sister and El-P.
El-P was technically sound but couldn’t hold my attention — possibly due to a ridonkulous amount of anticipation for DJ Shadow, who was up after him. Right after El-P ended, Sally (sister) and I had to head back to her (far-away) camp to put a bad-trippin’ friend to bed, and on the way there we could hear the eerie piano and operatic voice at the beginning of “Building Steam With A Grain of Salt” (from Endtroducing…) as DJ Shadow took the stage. It was torture, not being able to follow that haunting riff back to That Tent immediately, but Sal and I eventually got back to Centeroo with enough time to catch the final two blocks of Shadow’s set. He had a set-up of probably six turntables in front of him, with laptops augmenting, which he rushed between as appropriately mind-fucking visuals flashed on the huge screen behind him. It was probably 5 a.m. at this point, and Sally and I swayed slowly as DJ Shadow gradually built up to the big finale: “Midnight in a Perfect World,” accompanied by rapidly switching sets of human eyes and a wild roar from the audience. After the final “now approaching midnight!” he left the stage and the crowd followed suit. Sal and I stepped over and around the literally thousands of people who chose the dry, hard Centeroo grounds as their pallets for the night and grudgingly headed back to the tent. I watched the sun rise over the Tennessee hills on our way back, cursing myself for gypping my body out of so much sleep but totally high on all the truly amazing shows I’d seen already — Tool, Aesop Rock, the Superjam, DJ Shadow — in less than 12 hours on Bonnaroo grounds!
TOMORROW, a recap of Saturday: Dr. Dog, perfect midday hangover cure; discovering whether or not the Hold Steady can excite sweaty hippies at 4 in the afternoon just as easily as they can rile up a whiskey-drunk group of barflies.
–sm
A brief break from Piccolo! (But let me just say that The Cody Rivers Show, which I saw tonight, is one of the most unique, inventive, straight-up brilliant live productions ever. The aquarium bit alone is worth the price of admission.)
So last night I went to see Robbie Fulks at the Village Tavern; he played with just himself and another guitarist (Robbie Gjersoe) and it was easily one of the best performances I’ve seen in Charleston, much less at the Tavern. They played for over two hours, these two finger-pickin’ wondermen, singing their hearts out…to an empty room. I could’ve counted everyone watching them play on two hands. In fact, there were 10 people watching. Now, there were more people THERE, but they couldn’t have cared less that this man, who’s been playing music for over THIRTY YEARS and who regularly sells out venues in Chicago and San Francisco, was ripping shit apart onstage. No, chatted up potential one-night-stands at the bar or played pool in the back so loudly that you could hear the constant *crack* of the pool balls over the music. The two Robbies took it all in stride like professionals, taking requests from the faithful few and making the occasional witty remark about playing in a strip mall.
When they played “Georgia Hard,” the title cut from Fulks’ fantastic 2005 album, I went all fangirl and took a video. I mean, this is what technology’s for, right? To capture the moments you wish could go on forever?
The concert was amazing, but I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for my city and regretful that I hadn’t written a better article, something that would’ve possibly maybe lured some of the people who helped sell out the Charleston Music Hall last time Ryan Adams came to town. These guys are 10,000 times the musicians Ryan Adams is (and listen, I luuuurve me some Ryan Adams), and I guarantee that anyone who enjoyed either of Ryan’s recent shows here would’ve fallen in love with Robbie Fulks and his aw-shucks, unapologetically authentic old-school twang. And not only did he have an incredible voice and mad guitar skills, he turned the evening into something of an Opry-style variety show, but brainy and sarcastic — between songs, Fulks became a smiling, world-weary stand-up comedian, rapping with the audience (well, one guy in the audience) and doing impressions of Merle Haggard (Right after playing his song “Sleepin’ on the Job of Love,” Fulks improvised a hilarious little ditty called “Fixin’ to Quit” that was spot-on Haggard), Willie Nelson, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
Despite how awesome the show was, I left feeling just awful. The Robbies didn’t seem upset about it — like I said, they’re professionals, I’m sure they’ve played some crazy empty honky-tonks in their days — but I fully understood last night why Trey (the owner of the VT) sometimes breaks down and rails against the world at poorly attended shows. Because these really talented musicians, they come to Charleston, they see that NO ONE GIVES A SHIT, and they leave with a bad taste in their mouths and probably tell other people to avoid this town full of apathetic assholes who just don’t care if they haven’t seen a mention of the band on Pitchfork or whatever the heck it is that gets people to head to Mt. Pleasant and take in some lifeblood — I mean live music.
–sm
Rage, rage against the constraints of the Music Farm sound system and the corporate sponsorship (singing the Jack Daniel’s song with no stage lights was a cheeky touch)! Play that rock ‘n’ roll like it’s a honky-tonk, just sloppy enough to keep ‘em interested! Then turn ‘em around and stick a cowboy boot full of old-fashioned good tunes right in their earholes!
So, uh, that’s how Band of Horses went tonight. Current Awendaw resident and Carolina-bred lead singer Ben Bridwell came onstage wearing a Sera Cahoone (Carissa’s Wierd bandmate, drummer on BoH’s 2006 debut album Everything All the Time, Sub Pop labelmate, and the creator of last year’s subtly heartbreaking “Couch Song”) T-shirt, introduced the band, then waited as the house music came back up and his fellow Horses made final adjustments before launching into the first song of the night, a slow, twinkling bit of atmosphere that I didn’t recognize but which was quite pretty.
The crowd seemed both bemused and amused by the proceedings — around the third song, I heard a guy behind me say, “yeah, I guess they play this band on the radio sometimes or something?” — but any of the unconverted quickly warmed to the sextet. It was the aural equivalent to sitting down to a big table full of Southern comfort food — a rousing “Monsters” here, a forceful “First Song” there, a few new songs (featuring solid vocals from Bridwell that strongly recalled Jim James from My Morning Jacket) peppered throughout the mix, including the barn-dance-y banger that closed out the show, and the soothing crowd-pleaser (hey, we are in Carolina, after all) “Part One.”
Songs weren’t the only things making their first onstage appearances tonight; it was also BoH’s first show with their new bassist, Bill Reynolds from Asheville band The Blue Rags (thanks, Ballard!). It’s been a wild year for the Horses, who’ve been on a distinctly upward trajectory since the winsome Everything All the Time came out last March. After the album’s favorable reception across the blogosphere and in numerous papers of record, the band set off on tour last summer and in the midst of it went their separate ways with cofounding member Mat Brooke.
They didn’t have to shoot the whole band, though, and the group cleaned up in 2006 end-of-year polls; swept the PLUG Awards (think indie Grammys) by earning nods for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Americana Album of the Year; and recently (as in, a week ago) were named as finalists for this year’s peer-judged Shortlist Music Prize — they’re up against Tom Waits, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joanna Newsom, Hot Chip, Beirut, Cat Power, Girl Talk, Regina Spektor, and Spank Rock.
In the meantime, they moved into Kevin Taylor’s old house, had a few beers, watched some football, and made nice with the locals: tuba master/photographer/pool creator Clint Fore (a.k.a. Clint4) played bass for BoH on their Australian tour, they brought Cary Ann Hearst and the Gun Street Girls on a Southeastern U.S. tour in March, and tonight’s openers (who I missed, ARGH!) A Decent Animal will abandon the Atlantic for a West Coast jaunt with BoH in July.
To read more about what Bridwell and co. have been up to since they headed back home, check out former City Paper writer (and current law-learnin’ badass) Ashford Tucker’s fun and funny Pitchfork interview from January. Thanks for the free show, Jack Daniel’s! Here’s hoping for another Studio No. 7 party (featuring Spoon, mayhap?) in Charleston soon!
(Download/listen to the original demo versions of “The Funeral,” “Our Swords,” and “Wicked Gil” from Everything All the Time here, plus “Dingle,” a song that didn’t make the final cut.)
–sm
