Denton, 6.23.2024

(All photos by Mike Webber)

An eclectic bill at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios last night. I was familiar with the trio of titanic Tennessee tenor wunderkind Zoh Amba, whirlwind drummer Chris Corsano, and noise-rocker turned electric American primitive guitar master Bill Orcutt from their recording The Flower School, and had seen 2/3 of them in the past year (Amba twice at Molten Plains Fest, in a trio with Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez and a duo with Joe McPhee; Corsano in a duo with Chris Pitsiokos at The Wild Detectives). A friend of mine caught them in L.A. a couple of nights earlier and was duly impressed. I was particularly looking forward to seeing Orcutt, whom I'd missed when he came through Gloves a couple of years ago.

Everything about Orcutt's playing defies expectations. He plays a Telecaster through a Fender amp (had to borrow a smaller one when his Twin malfunctioned during sound check) with a booster, but gets a much darker, warmer tone than one generally associates with that instrument, and such sustain! He has what must be the strongest wrist vibrato I've ever observed -- cat can shake them strings. And his technique is all hammers and pull-offs, using lots of open strings on his unique 5-string instrument (he leaves the 5th string off and tunes the low E up to G, then uses a capo). 

The hazard of this instrumentation is that sometimes guitar and tenor occupy the same frequency range, and when Amba dug in and blew from the bottoms of her feet, Orcutt was swallowed by the sound, but she was mindful of her position in relation to the mic and tried to regulate her volume that way. From what I saw last night and on previous occasions, her rep as a flamethrower does her no justice. She can testify like tongue-speakers Ayler, Sanders, Lowe, and Wright, but the real hallmark of her sound is a lyrical and very human song, marked by her distinctive vibrato and based on simple folkloric melodies in the same way Ornette's was based on the blues. 

Corsano is a wonder behind the trap set, always in motion, always listening intently and responding instantly to what his bandmates are doing. As I've said before, you can see how fast he thinks. Never overplaying, always intelligently musical. Orcutt announced this was the last night of their tour, "Back in Denton with the Dentonites," and there was a slight sense of fatigue in the musicians as their set went on. When sound from the concurrent show in the Rubber Room bled through the walls, Orcutt smiled, "Gotta love it," and started something aggressive. A passing train inspired all three players to respond, and kind of put paid to their set. "We're done," Orcutt said, and they were.

Lisa Cameron told me that Orcutt had requested Unrelenting Psoriasis on this bill after they opened for him on a previous occasion, and it kind of makes sense when you remember Bill once played in Harry Pussy. Besides the Austin-based Cameron (who drove up after playing a set with Joshua Thomson and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten the night before) on drums and electronics, the lineup included Denton mainstay Rick Eye (Flesh Narc, Gay Cum Daddies, Bukkake Moms) doing a lot of pickup toggle switching on guitar and Aaron Gonzalez (Kolga, Akkolyte) on fuzz bass and vocals, summoning the shade of the Gunslingers from France (whom I once saw levitate the Chat Room in Fort Worth). 

Watching them, I was reminded of a conversation I'd had earlier with a drummer of my acquaintance, to whom I'd suggested that the drummer always has to be the best musician in a band (which they denied -- "No, too much pressure!"). I've seen Cameron in a few different settings, mostly improv, and I know her history goes back 40 years to stints with Brave Combo and Roky Erickson, among many others. But I never heard her play as full-on as she did last night, and her lightning and thunder elevated the other musicians and gave form to their cacophony. At times she sounded like Elvin and Rashied doing their twin-volcanoes-erupting thing on Trane's Meditations, at others I detected the hint of a shuffle as she locked in with Aaron's furious chords. It made the set a stunner.

Opening set was a series of live soundtracks to animated shorts selected by Chad Withers. I'd seen things like this before, but never with the cohesion that this set of musicians was able to pull off. Perhaps it was because the four -- Andrew Dunlap (Captain Moon and the Silver Spoons) on standup bass and voice, Randall Minick (Python Potions) on synth, Kristina Smith on accordion and voice, and Rachel Weaver (Python Potions) on electric guitar and voice -- had previously played together in various configurations, but I could have sworn that their improvisations were scored, so focused was their attention and so in tune were they with each other. Both Minick and Weaver assured me after the fact that what we heard was extemporaneous, with only one practice and some discussions ahead of time. When I see stuff that I don't understand but I know is real, I call it magic. And it seems to happen all the time at Gloves. So there.