FTW, 10.26-27, 2022

 

Sometimes I go out. These days, the Grackle Art Gallery seems to have become my venue of choice, although there are certainly more rooms with music policies in my city than there were 20 years ago, and post-Covid -- it's not over, but the economic environment for live music has changed because of it -- there are a lot more touring bands coming through than in days gone by. But I can walk to the Grackle, and the shows are early, so I can be home in time to medicate my insulin dependent diabetic old man cat. Age-appropriate, then.

Thursday night had the vibe of a house show in Denton 20 years ago, and motivated me to dig out The Pyramid Scheme's The Long Con, Vol. 1 CD (a nice audio snapshot of Denton ca. 2004) the next day because I remembered having first seen Sarah Ruth Alexander with Warren Jackson Hearne's Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers (I mistakenly thought it was John Wesley Coleman III, but she set me right) around that time. As much as I dig Sarah Ruth in band and improv contexts, my favorite work of hers is the kind of intimate, solo, weird-folk set she played on this night, where her quirky humor and roots as a West Texas farm kid come to the fore. She opened with a hymn, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," with which we were invited to sing along ("We'll be singing verses one and three"), reinforcing a sense of place (the Grackle's in an old pier and beam house with bare wood floors, not unlike a rural church) and the connection between performer and audience that your humble chronicler o' events found particularly comforting after years of virus-driven isolation. As always, the contrast between her classically trained voice and folkloric harmonium and dulcimer was striking, but in an ethereal and haunting way, not one that jarred the senses.

Chris Welch -- the Denton singer-songwriter, not the Brit music journo -- was a new name to me, although he's been around for years, fronting the likes of Pinebox Serenade and the Cicada Killers. He's a burly hulk of a fella, but looks can be deceiving; he suffered a stroke at the ass-end of 2019, and while the rest of the world was locking down, he was learning to play and sing (and walk) again. While his recovery might remain a work in progress, he strummed and sang with plenty of power, soul, and grit, singing songs inspired by family stories and social injustices. May his mighty roar remain undiminished.

The last time I saw Chris Plavidal, I carried his flaming amp out of Lola's after it caught fire onstage (something flooky about stage right power in the recently-vacated location; same side of the stage where my amp blew up the last couple of times I played there). Stumptone's Gravity Suddenly Released, his band's 2008 opus, remains one of my very favorite records of the Aughts. Since then, he's collaborated with UK shoegazers the Telescopes and local dub duo Wire Nest, among others, but Thursday's appearance was his first time on the boards in two years. For my two cents, no one does a better job of rendering the psychedelic experience acoustically, with electronic effects accenting his guitar's ringing harmonics like lysergic overlays on pristine reality. He makes my previous benchmark of "wooden" psych excellence, Roy Harper's Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion, sound hamfisted by comparison. Opening with the venerable "O Death" (the B-side of his latest Dreamy Life single under the rubric Storms At Sea), he played a selection of his own tunes plus covers of Syd and Roky (including my Gravity fave "Never Say Goodbye") that was deeply satisfying even when he re-started one song "because I really love this song but I fucked up the lyrics." No harm, no foul. Welcome back.

Friday night was something really special. On the occasion of an annual visit from a local boy now living in Colorado, the preternaturally fleet-fingered guitarist Bill Pohl (The Underground Railroad, Thinking Plague), Grackle Live music supremo Kavin Allenson booked a singular lineup: Bill playing improv in a trio with his Railroad bandmate, keyboardist extraordinaire Kurt Rongey (tickling the ivories in public for the first time in a decade) and Warr guitarist -- think "Chapman Stick on steroids" -- Mark Cook (99 Names of God, Herd of Instinct). All three are masters of their instruments, and good friends, but they'd never played together in a totally improvised context before. Watching them conjure complex architectonic structures on the fly, inhabit them just long enough, then blow them away like smoke and head off in a new direction, was riveting -- so much so that it doesn't appear anyone present captured the high spots on video, a rarity these days. But the music demanded one's full attention; you wanted to be listening to them as intently as they were listening to each other. 

Bill's been playing in a cover band that gigs regularly, doing stuff like Meters and Miles Davis, and you could tell from the simplicity of his rig (Marshall head with 1x12 cab) and some of the new tricks in his trick bag -- lots of propulsive rhythm things, some grittier tones than I can recall ever hearing from him, the way he casually plucks false harmonics out of a pre-bend and release, as well as executing his trademark rapid-fire, wide-interval runs. (Also noteworthy is his generosity of spirit, passing his custom instruments around so the guitarists in the audience could try 'em out before the set.) Mark plays enough music for three people all by himself on that aircraft carrier-looking axe, sometimes playing simultaneous lead and bass lines, sometimes using his array of effects to orchestrate colors and textures. The real surprises came from Kurt, though, applying his impressive classical chops, composer's intelligence, and old school prog sensibility to serve as the music's fulcrum. At one point he pointed out that he and Mark were wearing the same shoes, proving that virtuosic progsters can be funsters, too. If you weren't there, you missed it. Hopefully they'll do it again next time Bill's in town.

Now back to pre-election anxiety. Go out and vote for democracy, kids.