the underground railroad, lonely fire

went out to the soundstage behind competition music at 3136 e. lancaster (aka "the speakeasy") for the first time ever last night (even tho i've been invited to a few after-parties there before; i can't do anything that _starts_ at 3am anymore) to hear the underground railroad warm up for their upcoming week-long tour of the eastern u.s. just being in that 'hood took my mind back to 14 yrs ago, when i briefly worked at st. theresa's boys center across the street (now closed). i had the 10 to 6 shift and usedta have to walk the parking lot every hr to make sure nobody's car had gotten broken into. but, the soundstage is a good-sounding room, decorated in the style of a mid-'80s deep ellum rawk dump. plus they had free popcorn, soft drinks 'n' water (it's byob there). there were about 20-30 ppl there in the course of the evening; "not bad for u.r. in fort worth," a muso observed.

after parking the car in the rock-strewn vacant lot behind and checking out the remains of the restaurant next door that caught fire 'n' burned to the ground on tuesday (thankfully leaving competition unscathed), we strolled up to the open door, through which we could hear the strains of mark cook's trio lonely fire (or "lonely fahhhr," as drummer jason spradlin suggested they'd be known "if we were a country band") emanating from within. we also encountered u.r.'s three members -- gtrist bill pohl, keyboardist and now drummer kurt rongey (who emphasized that "we didn't fire john [livingston]; in fact, i'm using his kit tonight"), and bassist matt hembree. rongey seemed undaunted by the fact that until u.r.'s recent spate of rehearsals, he hadn't played drums in 15 yrs. "i have some new influences," he said. "back then, i didn't have [magma drummer] christian vander in my life, for example." also on hand was piano man mike richardson, famous for forming coverbands at the drop of a hat, who replaced hembree on the four-string axe in between the recording of through and through and the origin of consciousness and was running sound this particular night.

onstage, lonely fire was, um, burning. playing the double-extra-wide-necked warr gtr, which has two sets of strings and is played by tapping with both hands, mark cook is always amazing, occasionally sounding like all three string players from discipline-era king crimson at once. at times, he'll play sinuous sustaining lines on the top neck while underpinning them with complex ostinatos on the bottom; at others, he'll play furious unisons that might inspire a lesser player to wonder, "dude, why don't you just buy an octave pedal?" cook's bandmate from 99 names of god, jason spradlin, gets as organic a sound as i've ever heard from electronic drums (if i could just get used to seeing a guy hitting a little pie plate-shaped thingy and getting cymbal sounds). and multi-reedman bob fisher applies an arsenal of f/x to his flute and alto to create spacey 'n' ethereal textures which he contrasts with episodes of frenetic freeblow. between the three of 'em, they weave a dense thicket of sounds that are prolly at least partially composed, but sound spontaneous. afterward, cook said "it was all a big accident." maybe, but a happy one.

i was curious what underground railroad would sound like as a "power trio," since drummer livingston announced he wasn't going to be able to make the tour (on which they depart monday, september 18th). mike richardson pointed out that "it really doesn't sound any different," since all of rongey's keyb parts are still heard through the miracle of sequencing. i'm as wary of bands that play with pre-recorded tracks as i am of e-drums, but if anything, u.r.'s stage trip with rongey on traps is more dynamic and exciting than i've ever seen 'em before. don't ask me how kurt 'n' bill can sing while playing the complex chord changes and difficult time signatures they do. i've always thought of anything i know is real but can't understand as magic; perhaps that description applies here. still recovering from hand surgery, pohl has traded in his trademark red gibson sg for a music man gtr with a thinner neck that's easier to negotiate. when he got on his knees in front of his amp to play with harmonic feedback, i kept looking at hembree expecting him to shed his shirt the way he does in stoogeaphilia; he didn't. i think matt is my favorite musician that i know, not just because he's so versatile, but because he clearly loves to play so much. it's nice that he's been getting to do it _a lot_ of late. while the u.r. repeatedly made it clear that "this is just a rehearsal," the last few wks of intensive practice have obviously paid off. opener "the canal at sunset," "mars," the knotty "julian suite," and closer "may-fly" were particularly fine. safe travels, fellas.