In the midst of a bleak winter – the rainiest in Seattle’s history and that’s not an area known for December sun – and fighting off fears about worst case scenarios, I made a New Year’s resolution that wouldn’t be popular around these parts. I was going to limit how much music I was going to see. In order to do that, I gave myself a one show per venue rule. While my positive spin on this was that it was making seeing music an active endeavor, being forced to make an intentional decision to see something instead of just going out because it was there, ultimately it was coming out of a bad place. It took ritual to come to the rescue.
Greensky Bluegrass have a tradition known as Casual Wednesday. It might only come around every seven days, but concerts in the middle of the work week always have an extra component of silliness to them. My Greensky shows had been skewed to the weekend side, so with extra vacation days stored up, why not take a detour in my planned Colorado trip to drive down to Taos and see what this is about firsthand.
The Taos Mesa Brewing Mothership is a venue that could create desert love in anyone. It is situated outside of town along US 64. A few miles to the west of the venue is the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, an epic span rising 565 feet above the river, one that originally was called the Bridge to Nowhere because they couldn’t afford to build the rest of the road. That’s what the desert is though: massive open space, roads that connect nowhere to a different nowhere, and the ever present looming specter of death if one makes one wrong turn. It’s fascinating and mystical; even a brewpub can have that effect if it’s just sitting in a field surrounded by mountains, with little but a campground for its neighbors.
When you’re playing a place this magical, there’s an implied contract. You must prove yourself worthy of the venue. There might only be a few hundred people scattered around – some by the stage, some inside at the bar, others by the fire pit because, why not dance by a fire in the desert night? – but playing on a clear evening on one of the sacred nights of the Jewish calendar makes it feel like anyone could be listening.
Perhaps it was the small crowd or maybe it was the altitude (7100 feet), but this Wednesday inspired chattiness with the bands. During Fruition’s set, Mimi told a story about the previous time they had played the venue. On that occasion there was no power and they were forced to plan an acoustic set. The last song she remembered singing was Neil Young’s “Albuquerque,” a song they then proceeded to play with all three singers taking a verse. Casual Wednesday was barely underway and we already had a rarity played.
While Greensky’s show had some epic jams – mainly the “Train Junky” in the first set, an interesting extended version of “Windshield,” and a 17 minute “Leap Year” that would have been worth the drive by itself – what really stuck out about this show was the looseness. The “Casual Wednesday” banter was largely about a wizard hat with Mickey Mouse ears that Dave Bruzza bought for Anders on a band trip to Disneyland. Between the jokes about that, massive teases throughout the set – “1999” and “Lovelight” in “Ain’t No Bread in the Breadbox,” “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” in “Fredrico,” and “Casual Wednesday” whenever people felt like it – the fun quotient almost hid just how great the earlier jams were.
Thursday was the warmest day of the week, but both Fruition and Greensky Bluegrass took the day off. That didn’t mean that this was a day free of music. Brad Parson was playing with Grant Farm at Cervantes Masterpiece. Portland’s favorite black cowboy clad singer was also joined by 60% of Fruition (Jay Cobb Anderson, Kellen Asebroek, and Tyler Thompson) to make this the perfect way of spending the day between.
This was a night with no bluegrass influences. While elements of country occasionally wandered into the set, this was largely straightforward rock and roll. In fact this set could serve as a history of the medium as there were songs in the style of Buddy Holly, a calypso song, the blues stylings of “Stay Close,” and covers of artists from Ted Hawkins to Nirvana. The set closed with another Neil Young cover – “Cortez the Killer” – that had Brad, Jay Cobb, and Grant Farm all competing as though they were on a reality show where the winner gets to join Crazy Horse on their next tour. In a week full of highlights, this song on the theoretical off night managed to stand out.
So you’re a band that is entering a growth spurt but you love playing small, intimate venues. How can you balance that? If you’re Greensky Bluegrass, you try the experiment known as the two-day multi-venue pass. Red Rocks holds 9000 people, the Boulder Theatre one tenth of that, but by playing both venues on consecutive days and requiring people to buy tickets to both if they want to see the smaller show, you make it harder to scalp and also make sure that the tickets to the smaller show fall into the hands of your most diehard fans.
The one thing this system does though is to create a crowd dichotomy. The smaller venue is going to be the most obsessed fans while the larger is likely to be skewed more casual. Do you change your shows as a result, playing rarities for the obsessive and the big hits for the Saturday night special? While that would be one approach, they mixed it up both nights.
Forgotten songs don’t get played for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes they didn’t work live. The band might be burnt out on them. Occasionally it’s as simple as them simply forgetting how good the older songs are as they continue to write. Why there’s many reasons song drop out, there’s one commonality to why songs stay in rotation; they’re the ones that are really working for the band. As much fun as seeing songs for the first time is, it was the end of the first set with the ridiculously danceable covers of “Time” and “Dancing in the Dark” and the beginning of the second with extended versions of “All Four” and “Worried About the Weather” that are worthy of endless relistening.
While the Boulder “Worried About the Weather” might have been unfinished, that didn’t stop of us from doing just that. Red Rocks might be a beautiful natural ampitheatre but, like most of Colorado, it is subject to squalls at any time of the year. We arrived in the lot at the height of the storm, put on layer after layer, and speculated over if the rain might be slowing down. Hint: no matter how many times I said it was stopping, it wasn’t. As much fun as it was to joke about blowing off the show, going to the hotel, and watching the webcast, this is a night where we earned every chord that we received. Was it 44 degrees? Were there literal waterfalls going down the stairs of the venue? Well yeah but once the music started, that felt like a minor consideration. If you’re cold, just dance harder.
Fruition did get the weather short straw as the rain was at its peak right before their set and it was still going strong when they took the stage. Fortunately Portland bands are well situated for such an event, having many many songs about the rain. Liquid air is a frequent breakup metaphor in their songs (e.g. “Falling On My Face” and “Mountain Annie”’s “The sky must know/The way that these things go/Because it’s raining like it’s never gonna stop.”) so seeing them in that setting just feels appropriate.
Greensky hails from Michigan so they’re more of a snow band than a rain one. Instead of being one with the rain, they vowed to keep us warm. Two songs into their first set, they delivered on that pledge. The run in “Run or Die” might be using the definition, “To retreat rapidly,” rather than, “To move swiftly on foot so that both or all feet are not on the ground during each stride,” [1] but as someone who needs to exercise daily for his health, the chorus has been a bit of a mantra. If you do want to try to increase your speed, I can think of few better soundtracks in the gym than this version.
As important as the high energy songs were to stave off hypothermia – “Handle With Care” and the second set opening “Don’t Lie” are also prime examples of energetic Greensky at their best – this wasn’t a one dimensional show. Midway through the first set, they brought out the Fruition singers to perform Handgun’s “Beauty and Pain.” This song is a perfect one for our era or at least my past year, a tribute to using music to surpass depression.
Between the jams, the mixture of songs throughout their eras, setlist games like throwing “Bring Out Your Dead” and “War Pigs” (with a hint of “Whole Lotta Love”) in the middle of “Kerosene,” this felt like a signature show for the band. They were given a shot on a big stage with weather that would fix the night strongly into everyone’s memory and they delivered.
The night didn’t end without one last surprise. All of Fruition was brought out for the encore. They performed one song from each band: “Death Comes Knockin’” followed by “Fixing to Ruin.” “Fixing” had the honor of being the first song Greensky would repeat over my three show run. They’ve quietly reached the point of being a band where you have to attend 4 shows if you want to see all of your favorite songs. Even the repeat shouldn’t count, as it was a complete rearrangement of the song, with almost a calypso feel. Inventive setlists, powerful jams out of great songs, and a silliness that lets them play games with their material if they feel like it: it’s hard to see a reason not to see Greensky Bluegrass right now if you can.
While the rain continued to fall on Boulder on Sunday, there was still room for one more event. Fruition was billed to perform on the eTown radio show. The experience of seeing a radio show taped was unique to me. There were lots of jokes about how this show was in the future as it wouldn’t air until January. When Fruition debuted a song (“Lonesome Prayer”), they were able to fix a slight miscue that occurred. Perhaps most memorable though were the surprise co-bill band, a Swedish sister group named Baskery.
When I first heard that the show that sold out as a Fruition bill was going to have a second band playing, I had flashbacks to 12/31/90. Phish were the only band on the ticket for that night, but it turned out that Chucklehead was going to play and play and play and play to the point where Phish were robbed the option of even having an encore; the venue turned on the houselights as the band was huddled to decide what to play. Other than the late announcement, this Baskery experience had nothing in common.
The theme in the bands I’m loving now is that they take acoustic bluegrass instruments and proceed to do insane things with it. Fruition are classic rock, Greensky Bluegrass play like they want to weaponize a 1994 “Split Open and Melt” jam. Baskery is Joan Jett and the Blackhearts as rearranged for acoustic bass, guitar, and banjo, and put into a bizarre cultural blender that their outsider’s perspective gives.
The youngest child Sunniva Bondesson jumps around and plays an aggressive electric guitar while Stella holds down a full upright bass. And then there’s Greta. Not only does she simultaneously play a kick drum and banjo – as their father was a one man band, perhaps that ability is genetic – but I watched her the entire time and I could not for the life of me figure out how she managed to get those sounds out of that instrument.
What was this punk energy devoted to? Were there songs about anarchy or some sort of manifesto? Nope? They had an ode to cat flaps and a cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man.” There was a desert song. Between their 40 minutes of playing and the interview, Baskery were pure delight, a mixture of influences combined so bizarrely that it became something that never could be confused for anything else. Yes, I was there for Fruition, but it was the delight of seeing something completely new that brought the week to an amazing close.
New Years – secular or religious – are about fresh starts. Seeing 5 shows in 5 venues in 5 days to start out 5778 was a perspective changer. The fires and the storms and the threat of war are still going to be there, but what’s the point of surviving all of that if we lose who we are. Yes, it’s a time to be alert and to help where you can, but it’s also one where you have to take time for yourself.
Why do we do this? When everything is falling apart, why spend our time and money to go see music? Greensky (with a little help from Jay, Mimi, and Kellen) answered that on the Rocks. As the chilly rain continued to fall, they sang words that resonate:
We are singing to comfort pain.
We all want to feel high again.
If my path is to worry, then I walk in shame,
‘Cause I’d rather find beauty in pain.
It’s going to be weird for a while to come now but as long as great people perform amazing music, we might just survive this.
[1] American Heritage Dictionary definitions
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David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1994. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capital Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at http://www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html and he’s on the board of directors for The Mockingbird Foundation. He now tweets and has a daily update on the Phish Stats Facebook page
His book This Has All Been Wonderful is available on Amazon, the Kindle Store, and “his Create Space store.”: https://www.createspace.com/4667209
