Happy Birthday, Bob
It's always a gas when you have two or three good shows to choose from when you're planning to go out -- a condition which has been occurring more and more frequently here in the Fort of late. It's even better when you can find a bill that brings together two or three bands you'd go to see on their own. That happens less often.
So when we saw that Pablo and the Hemphill 7 were celebrating Bob Marley's birthday at the Wreck Room with Confusatron and Kulcha Far I, it was a no-brainer. Since drummer Damien Stewart returned to the fold last fall after a brief hiatus to concentrate on his other band, Goodwin, Pablo has moved from strength to strength. The various members brought back the knowledge they'd gained in their outside endeavors (bassist Marcus Lawyer's plethora of secret recording projects, guitarist Steffin Ratliff and keyboardist Justin Pate's participation in a half dozen other bands) to broaden and deepen Pablo's thang. Their shows have progressed from merely great to collective ecstasies, and they've gotten smarter about the way they present themselves, too. After developing a following by working their asses off playing four-hour shows in any venue that would have them, they've retrenched to concentrate on developing original material and recording a real CD (although the bandmembers have circulated a steady stream of "bootleg" product that's afforded fans a window on their progress, allowing us to watch the evolution of both their material and their creative process). If he wasn't so secure in his skin, I'd expect Pablo frontman/mastermind Joe Vano to be steamed that Berry St. upstarts Darth Vato got their record out before his band did theirs. But that isn't the way Joe's mind operates.
There's a lot of intentionality behind every move Pablo makes, a reflection, I think, of Vano's temperament. You might expect him to be "crazy" -- all poets are, aren't they, after all? -- and if you ask him, Vano will tell you that he's a poet first and foremost. (When his best bud Stewart stepped out of Pablo for a minute, the bandleader assured him it was cool. "After all," Joe said, "I'm a poet first. But wait a minute...I'm your friend first. So I guess that means I'm a musician third.") But if he is, he's crazy like a fox. Vano's into creating events, shows that flow organically and build in intensity and vibe. Witness last November's Xtreme Soundclash '04 at the Axis, where Pablo topped a bill of reggae-inflected (to varying degrees) bands from the Fort: Darth Vato, Sally Majestic, Kulcha and Sin-C. But the Darth boys and Sally draw a different kind of crowd -- less, how you say, bohemian; more collegiate on the one hand and more, um, thuggish on the other. And Sin-C, a band that's been together as long as the Hemphill 7, remains most remarkable for its inability to progress musically -- they're more garrruuunk/stoned hoodlums with instruments than a band, really (although the singer looks like a miniature Joe Vano and the guitar player sounds like someone needs to play him some Bad Brains to give him an idea of an approach that might work for him -- if he starts practicing). Perhaps a better example: the recent evening at the Axis where Pablo appeared sandwiched in between jazzified funkateers Confusatron (who've grown by leaps and bounds over the past year to the point where they'd be unrecognizable to someone who last saw them when they were just a trio, playing "All Blues" on the street in front of the old Coffee Haus in Sundance Square) and fusion heavies Bertha Coolidge (taking advantage of drummer Rich Stitzel's availability to play a run of shows at the Black Dog Tavern and elsewhere).
An unheralded development on the Fort Worth scene: the rising number and growing popularity of bands whose stock in trade is groove and vibe rather than pop-rock flash or singer-songwriter angst. Think about it: Sub Oslo, the Spoonfed Tribe (when they're doing their organic drum thang, not coming across like cock-rockers in hippies' clothing), Bertha, Pablo, and now Confusatron. That's an encouraging sign to people who like their music organic and free from VH-1/MTV popstar poseur bullshit. Because face it, kids: There isn't going to be "another Toadies." But if you're smart and self-aware, where a door closes (ClearChannel), a window opens up (the internet). And Joe Vano's smart enough to realize that all you need to do to have a "scene" is to have enough people who believe you have one and are willing to pay the price of the ticket to see the show.
For Pablo, the Marley birthday bash had a threefold purpose: 1) to commemorate their greatest collective inspiration (they learned to play together by listening to the '73 Marley bootleg The Sausolito Sessions, and an early milestone in their journey was opening a show for Bob's backing band, the Wailers, at the Ridglea Theater when they'd been a band for scarcely three months); 2) to raise money to cover production costs for their CD; and 3) to test the waters for a new Wreck Room "ritual" -- regular reggae Sundays. Maybe add a fourth: To drop some political knowledge. When Joe, who'd just watched Fahrenheit 9/11, told the crowd "Don't be afraid to live your life" and later, to vote for Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas (his slogan: "How hard can it be?"), you knew he meant it.
For me, part of the joy of the evening was seeing two old guitar-playing buds working in situations where they seemed happier and more comfortable than I'd seen them before. Ron Geida plays with Kulcha Far I, where he fills a lot of space in the band's three-instrument format. Ron's a transplanted Yank from Springfield, Mass., with jazz and classical training and exquisite chops. He taught two of my daughters guitar, and he and I once had a band together that started out with the idea of being a free-flowing jam band but wound up (due to the temperaments of the people involved, a collection of smart jazz guys and dumbass blues guys) evolving into a tight-assed little fake jazz band that ground to a halt after 13 gigs, three bassplayers, two drummers, one nervous breakdown (mine), and a partridge in a pear tree. Over the years I've seen him with the Civilians (which I originally thought was a Christian rock band but wasn't, not really), Jasper Stone (with whom I always thought Ron was both underutilized and more firepower than they needed, although he did get to tour Europe with 'em), and loads of bluesbands and cover bands. While I was surprised to hear he was playing reggae, he fits in well with his rootsy bandmates (John Shook on bass and Jeffrey Williams on drums), and seemed to be having a blast, holding down the riddim and blazing up and down the fretboard at will.
Kulcha's frontguy Chris Hakata can legitimately claim the title of African Rasta (which he does, on his last CD), having grown up slightly east of Fort Worth in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he actually got to see Bob Marley perform in the flesh on his country's first-ever independence day, April 18, 1980. Chris is an energetic, upful performer who projects positivity and has the vocal chops (and, um, unaffected accent) to really sing this stuff. It was nice to see him and his band getting a good reception from a decent-size (although not as big as it'd get later) crowd. At Soundclash, the crowd didn't seem to know quite how to respond to Kulcha -- possibly, I thought, because they weren't used to seeing, um, y'know, black people onstage. A word on that, by the way: the crowd at the Marley bash was nicely multiculti in a way you usually don't get to see here in the Fort (except occasionally at blues or jazz shows). Building webs of inclusion through the shared enjoyment of music and art is, well, the best candy bar your money can buy.
Kulcha set the tone for the evening with their opening number, "Good Vibrations" (that's right, the '66 Beach Boys hit, done as an instrumental). Then the baton passed to Confusatron, and they ran with it. My other old guitar bud John Stevens has been playing with them for the past few months. I remember standing next to him at the Black Dog one Thursday night watching them play and hearing him remark, "This'd be a really cool band to play with." The next time I saw them, he was in the lineup -- a fortuitous thing all the way around, I think. I first heard John play when he was still a teenager and even then he was a natural -- a groover and a listener, the kind of player who can hear four bars of anything and jump in, playing good, creative shit. At the time I met him I was trying to insinuate myself into a blues-rock outfit called Smokehouse. John wound up getting the gig, which was fine: he was the better man for the job. Back then he was still heavy into his Stevie Ray bag, to the point of doing the little sidestep move he probably copped, perhaps unconsciously, from SRV's Live at the El Mocambo video. While playing with the jam band Nuthin' Special, his ears got opened up to a wider palette of influences, from Jerry Garcia to Django Reinhardt.
John's improvs with Confusatron are as focused and fluid as ever, and Brian Batson's still a badass little tie-dyed, patchouli-scented saxophone-slinging mofo, but really, at their best, solos are superfluous in this band -- it's all about the groove. They hit and within 30 seconds, they'd locked it in the pocket and didn't let up for a full hour. As I've written elsewhere, lately their jams have become more structured (Jonathan the percussionist confided that they've even been rehearsing, and it shows), which only enhances their punch and power. Matt Skates has pared down his basslines to just what's fundamental, only taking one brief solo slot, and he's built a great rapport with new drummer Lucas White, who's a lot more on point here than he was with Keith Wingate's trio, where he tended to frenzy out more and his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. The real groovemaker here appears to be Pablo's Justin Pate, who must be getting more arranbee in his diet. (Or maybe it has something to do with his discovery of Frank Zappa, by way of a dubbed copy of The Helsinki Concert he acquired via Damien Stewart. Or maybe it's just something in the water.) In any case, the reasons why are only important to the overanalytical. All you really need to know is this: It's impossible to hear Confusatron without moving. Forget the labels. This is dance music.
After Confusatron closed the best set of theirs I've ever heard with a cover, Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman," the stage was set for the headliners. Pablo's set was a masterpiece of pacing -- probably the best example of that I've seen since the Woodeye show where they started and ended slow and I told Kat, "It sounds like Carey Wolff's finally proud of these songs." Vano's crew opened with three newer songs, including "Green Light Girl" and "The Front," so when Marcus fired up the intro to their longtime set-opener "Freedom," it was almost like they were starting over again. In honor of Bob's birthday, they played a mini-Marley set in the middle: "Trenchtown Rock," "Small Axe," "Stir It Up," and climactically, "No Woman No Cry." Before "Small Axe," Marcus put the call out for any I-Threes wannabes in the audience, which brought three women (including Steffin's girlfriend Cammie) onstage to dance and sing backing "woo-woos." By "No Woman No Cry," there were ten non-bandmembers onstage and the room felt like it was about to levitate. That would have been a fitting closer to anybody else's set, but Pablo kept it going for another 45 minutes with audience faves like "Little Man and Chiva Joe" (which regrettably no longer includes Steffin's heart-stopping solo in the middle; for my money, he's the best point-to-point player in the Metromess, but I can see how he'd be tired of taking the same solo slots every single show after three years), "Wacked!" (which sounds like something Steel Pulse might have written in their Tribute to the Martyrs glory days), and Justin's Beatlesque feature "Picture This" (on which Steffin's solo quotes a keyboard part from Led Zep's In Through the Out Door, no fooling). They have over an hour's worth of strong original material now, which means no more "Steppin' Razor" or "Sound System," but the covers aren't missed -- the originals are that good.
Toward the end of the set, Pablo broke out the spacey-sounding dubwise piece that they've been playing onstage for awhile -- I still don't know its name, shame on me -- and what's become my favorite song of theirs (or anybody's), "Rude Boy." The two tunes are the first fruits of the studio experimentation Justin and Marcus have been doing separately for awhile, honoring the spirits of both Lee Perry and Radiohead. (I wish they'd play "The Great Bash" again one of these days, but realistically, they've probably progressed beyond it.) They've managed to integrate the "weird noises" into their sound as seamlessly as they've absorbed Jonathan's percussion and Matt Skates' trombone, to the point where all of these elements sound as if they've always been present. And "Rude Boy" really is something new -- an agreeable collision of reggae, trip-hop, and old-school R&B, sounding like the JB's and Public Enemy rubbing shoulders with DJ Shadow, Vano declaiming like a roots reggae rocker riding an out-of-control New York City subway. I want to hear it 50 times a day for the next year.
The latest bootleg CD Marcus was hawking (a "fundraiser" for the "real" CD that will also serve, he said, as lucky donors' ticket to the CD release party and a beer on Pablo) pretty much mirrors the sequence of the Wreck Room set and includes some new recordings of songs that previously existed, as far as I know, only on their very early "live at the Ridglea" EP. I understand that they've been recording at Matt Hembree's house, so there's no telling whether or not any of these will make the final cut for the CD. One thing I do know for certain: Pablo and the Hemphill 7 are the best band on the boards in Fort Worth right now, bar none, and they need to make a record that reflects that.
So when we saw that Pablo and the Hemphill 7 were celebrating Bob Marley's birthday at the Wreck Room with Confusatron and Kulcha Far I, it was a no-brainer. Since drummer Damien Stewart returned to the fold last fall after a brief hiatus to concentrate on his other band, Goodwin, Pablo has moved from strength to strength. The various members brought back the knowledge they'd gained in their outside endeavors (bassist Marcus Lawyer's plethora of secret recording projects, guitarist Steffin Ratliff and keyboardist Justin Pate's participation in a half dozen other bands) to broaden and deepen Pablo's thang. Their shows have progressed from merely great to collective ecstasies, and they've gotten smarter about the way they present themselves, too. After developing a following by working their asses off playing four-hour shows in any venue that would have them, they've retrenched to concentrate on developing original material and recording a real CD (although the bandmembers have circulated a steady stream of "bootleg" product that's afforded fans a window on their progress, allowing us to watch the evolution of both their material and their creative process). If he wasn't so secure in his skin, I'd expect Pablo frontman/mastermind Joe Vano to be steamed that Berry St. upstarts Darth Vato got their record out before his band did theirs. But that isn't the way Joe's mind operates.
There's a lot of intentionality behind every move Pablo makes, a reflection, I think, of Vano's temperament. You might expect him to be "crazy" -- all poets are, aren't they, after all? -- and if you ask him, Vano will tell you that he's a poet first and foremost. (When his best bud Stewart stepped out of Pablo for a minute, the bandleader assured him it was cool. "After all," Joe said, "I'm a poet first. But wait a minute...I'm your friend first. So I guess that means I'm a musician third.") But if he is, he's crazy like a fox. Vano's into creating events, shows that flow organically and build in intensity and vibe. Witness last November's Xtreme Soundclash '04 at the Axis, where Pablo topped a bill of reggae-inflected (to varying degrees) bands from the Fort: Darth Vato, Sally Majestic, Kulcha and Sin-C. But the Darth boys and Sally draw a different kind of crowd -- less, how you say, bohemian; more collegiate on the one hand and more, um, thuggish on the other. And Sin-C, a band that's been together as long as the Hemphill 7, remains most remarkable for its inability to progress musically -- they're more garrruuunk/stoned hoodlums with instruments than a band, really (although the singer looks like a miniature Joe Vano and the guitar player sounds like someone needs to play him some Bad Brains to give him an idea of an approach that might work for him -- if he starts practicing). Perhaps a better example: the recent evening at the Axis where Pablo appeared sandwiched in between jazzified funkateers Confusatron (who've grown by leaps and bounds over the past year to the point where they'd be unrecognizable to someone who last saw them when they were just a trio, playing "All Blues" on the street in front of the old Coffee Haus in Sundance Square) and fusion heavies Bertha Coolidge (taking advantage of drummer Rich Stitzel's availability to play a run of shows at the Black Dog Tavern and elsewhere).
An unheralded development on the Fort Worth scene: the rising number and growing popularity of bands whose stock in trade is groove and vibe rather than pop-rock flash or singer-songwriter angst. Think about it: Sub Oslo, the Spoonfed Tribe (when they're doing their organic drum thang, not coming across like cock-rockers in hippies' clothing), Bertha, Pablo, and now Confusatron. That's an encouraging sign to people who like their music organic and free from VH-1/MTV popstar poseur bullshit. Because face it, kids: There isn't going to be "another Toadies." But if you're smart and self-aware, where a door closes (ClearChannel), a window opens up (the internet). And Joe Vano's smart enough to realize that all you need to do to have a "scene" is to have enough people who believe you have one and are willing to pay the price of the ticket to see the show.
For Pablo, the Marley birthday bash had a threefold purpose: 1) to commemorate their greatest collective inspiration (they learned to play together by listening to the '73 Marley bootleg The Sausolito Sessions, and an early milestone in their journey was opening a show for Bob's backing band, the Wailers, at the Ridglea Theater when they'd been a band for scarcely three months); 2) to raise money to cover production costs for their CD; and 3) to test the waters for a new Wreck Room "ritual" -- regular reggae Sundays. Maybe add a fourth: To drop some political knowledge. When Joe, who'd just watched Fahrenheit 9/11, told the crowd "Don't be afraid to live your life" and later, to vote for Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas (his slogan: "How hard can it be?"), you knew he meant it.
For me, part of the joy of the evening was seeing two old guitar-playing buds working in situations where they seemed happier and more comfortable than I'd seen them before. Ron Geida plays with Kulcha Far I, where he fills a lot of space in the band's three-instrument format. Ron's a transplanted Yank from Springfield, Mass., with jazz and classical training and exquisite chops. He taught two of my daughters guitar, and he and I once had a band together that started out with the idea of being a free-flowing jam band but wound up (due to the temperaments of the people involved, a collection of smart jazz guys and dumbass blues guys) evolving into a tight-assed little fake jazz band that ground to a halt after 13 gigs, three bassplayers, two drummers, one nervous breakdown (mine), and a partridge in a pear tree. Over the years I've seen him with the Civilians (which I originally thought was a Christian rock band but wasn't, not really), Jasper Stone (with whom I always thought Ron was both underutilized and more firepower than they needed, although he did get to tour Europe with 'em), and loads of bluesbands and cover bands. While I was surprised to hear he was playing reggae, he fits in well with his rootsy bandmates (John Shook on bass and Jeffrey Williams on drums), and seemed to be having a blast, holding down the riddim and blazing up and down the fretboard at will.
Kulcha's frontguy Chris Hakata can legitimately claim the title of African Rasta (which he does, on his last CD), having grown up slightly east of Fort Worth in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he actually got to see Bob Marley perform in the flesh on his country's first-ever independence day, April 18, 1980. Chris is an energetic, upful performer who projects positivity and has the vocal chops (and, um, unaffected accent) to really sing this stuff. It was nice to see him and his band getting a good reception from a decent-size (although not as big as it'd get later) crowd. At Soundclash, the crowd didn't seem to know quite how to respond to Kulcha -- possibly, I thought, because they weren't used to seeing, um, y'know, black people onstage. A word on that, by the way: the crowd at the Marley bash was nicely multiculti in a way you usually don't get to see here in the Fort (except occasionally at blues or jazz shows). Building webs of inclusion through the shared enjoyment of music and art is, well, the best candy bar your money can buy.
Kulcha set the tone for the evening with their opening number, "Good Vibrations" (that's right, the '66 Beach Boys hit, done as an instrumental). Then the baton passed to Confusatron, and they ran with it. My other old guitar bud John Stevens has been playing with them for the past few months. I remember standing next to him at the Black Dog one Thursday night watching them play and hearing him remark, "This'd be a really cool band to play with." The next time I saw them, he was in the lineup -- a fortuitous thing all the way around, I think. I first heard John play when he was still a teenager and even then he was a natural -- a groover and a listener, the kind of player who can hear four bars of anything and jump in, playing good, creative shit. At the time I met him I was trying to insinuate myself into a blues-rock outfit called Smokehouse. John wound up getting the gig, which was fine: he was the better man for the job. Back then he was still heavy into his Stevie Ray bag, to the point of doing the little sidestep move he probably copped, perhaps unconsciously, from SRV's Live at the El Mocambo video. While playing with the jam band Nuthin' Special, his ears got opened up to a wider palette of influences, from Jerry Garcia to Django Reinhardt.
John's improvs with Confusatron are as focused and fluid as ever, and Brian Batson's still a badass little tie-dyed, patchouli-scented saxophone-slinging mofo, but really, at their best, solos are superfluous in this band -- it's all about the groove. They hit and within 30 seconds, they'd locked it in the pocket and didn't let up for a full hour. As I've written elsewhere, lately their jams have become more structured (Jonathan the percussionist confided that they've even been rehearsing, and it shows), which only enhances their punch and power. Matt Skates has pared down his basslines to just what's fundamental, only taking one brief solo slot, and he's built a great rapport with new drummer Lucas White, who's a lot more on point here than he was with Keith Wingate's trio, where he tended to frenzy out more and his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. The real groovemaker here appears to be Pablo's Justin Pate, who must be getting more arranbee in his diet. (Or maybe it has something to do with his discovery of Frank Zappa, by way of a dubbed copy of The Helsinki Concert he acquired via Damien Stewart. Or maybe it's just something in the water.) In any case, the reasons why are only important to the overanalytical. All you really need to know is this: It's impossible to hear Confusatron without moving. Forget the labels. This is dance music.
After Confusatron closed the best set of theirs I've ever heard with a cover, Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman," the stage was set for the headliners. Pablo's set was a masterpiece of pacing -- probably the best example of that I've seen since the Woodeye show where they started and ended slow and I told Kat, "It sounds like Carey Wolff's finally proud of these songs." Vano's crew opened with three newer songs, including "Green Light Girl" and "The Front," so when Marcus fired up the intro to their longtime set-opener "Freedom," it was almost like they were starting over again. In honor of Bob's birthday, they played a mini-Marley set in the middle: "Trenchtown Rock," "Small Axe," "Stir It Up," and climactically, "No Woman No Cry." Before "Small Axe," Marcus put the call out for any I-Threes wannabes in the audience, which brought three women (including Steffin's girlfriend Cammie) onstage to dance and sing backing "woo-woos." By "No Woman No Cry," there were ten non-bandmembers onstage and the room felt like it was about to levitate. That would have been a fitting closer to anybody else's set, but Pablo kept it going for another 45 minutes with audience faves like "Little Man and Chiva Joe" (which regrettably no longer includes Steffin's heart-stopping solo in the middle; for my money, he's the best point-to-point player in the Metromess, but I can see how he'd be tired of taking the same solo slots every single show after three years), "Wacked!" (which sounds like something Steel Pulse might have written in their Tribute to the Martyrs glory days), and Justin's Beatlesque feature "Picture This" (on which Steffin's solo quotes a keyboard part from Led Zep's In Through the Out Door, no fooling). They have over an hour's worth of strong original material now, which means no more "Steppin' Razor" or "Sound System," but the covers aren't missed -- the originals are that good.
Toward the end of the set, Pablo broke out the spacey-sounding dubwise piece that they've been playing onstage for awhile -- I still don't know its name, shame on me -- and what's become my favorite song of theirs (or anybody's), "Rude Boy." The two tunes are the first fruits of the studio experimentation Justin and Marcus have been doing separately for awhile, honoring the spirits of both Lee Perry and Radiohead. (I wish they'd play "The Great Bash" again one of these days, but realistically, they've probably progressed beyond it.) They've managed to integrate the "weird noises" into their sound as seamlessly as they've absorbed Jonathan's percussion and Matt Skates' trombone, to the point where all of these elements sound as if they've always been present. And "Rude Boy" really is something new -- an agreeable collision of reggae, trip-hop, and old-school R&B, sounding like the JB's and Public Enemy rubbing shoulders with DJ Shadow, Vano declaiming like a roots reggae rocker riding an out-of-control New York City subway. I want to hear it 50 times a day for the next year.
The latest bootleg CD Marcus was hawking (a "fundraiser" for the "real" CD that will also serve, he said, as lucky donors' ticket to the CD release party and a beer on Pablo) pretty much mirrors the sequence of the Wreck Room set and includes some new recordings of songs that previously existed, as far as I know, only on their very early "live at the Ridglea" EP. I understand that they've been recording at Matt Hembree's house, so there's no telling whether or not any of these will make the final cut for the CD. One thing I do know for certain: Pablo and the Hemphill 7 are the best band on the boards in Fort Worth right now, bar none, and they need to make a record that reflects that.
posted by stashdauber at 9:18 AM
1 Comments:
Ken. thanks for the kind words about what we do...and thank-you for seeing things that MOST people don't even know is there. You are a true poet. " There will come a day... there will come a day."
peace,joseph
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