Here is our latest report from Jeremy Frazier. To read his interview with Papadosio, stop by Chicagojamscene.com
Beginning a fall tour after a summer like this has got to be an amazing feeling. In 2010, Papadosio became a legitimate force in the Midwest jam circuit. They headlined multiple small festivals (Muncie Springfest, Rootwire, Wuhnurth) and played at many, many others around the country. This summer was undoubtedly the most successful in Papadosio’s life as a band. So when I had the opportunity to see two shows in very different settings in the span of 10 days, I jumped all over it. Having followed the band closely for a about a year now, I have gained insight into where they currently are as a band and where they came from. I saw this as an opportunity to examine how their energy & approach differs when playing a small venue show then moving on to a headlining slot at an outdoor festival. The first show took place at Martyr’s in Chicago and ten days later they played the Friday night twilight set at Wuhnurth Music Festival.
Lighting engineer Daniel Hiudt brought the goods to Martyr’s.
A quick, northbound ride on the CTA Brown Line to Irving Park dropped me off only three blocks from Martyr’s at around 7:00. The night began a bit earlier than usual on this September’s Wednesday as I had scheduled a sit-down interview with Papadosio to take place immediately following their soundcheck. The interview went down in interesting & efficient fashion, further focusing my gaze into the musical mind of this band. I left the band to their business in the green room and settled onto a barstool near the stage for a few moments. The first thing I noticed was the stout light display that they had brought with them. Many shows at Martyr’s had come and passed with only the house lights and I was glad tonight wasn’t one of them.
Anthony Thogmartin could shred his way out of a lead room with this guitar
By the time 10:00 rolled around, I was ready to shred. Unfortunately, the turnout wasn’t as robust as I had hoped and only about 50 people were as ready as I was. Papadosio hit the ground running with a song I had been jonesing to witness live, “By The Light Of The Stars.” This is the title track from their only 2008 release (a four-song EP filled with electricity) and in hindsight feels like a logical way to start this tour of their catalog. “Hippie Babysitter” was the next song out of the chute. This tune had a light & dreamy energy until Anthony Thogmartin stepped up with a fiery guitar jam. It felt like time dilated as Thogmartin pushed this song past its usual length and level of intensity. Jams like this one really illuminate the chemistry of this band by putting Rob McConnell (bass) and Mike Healy (drumkit) to the Tightness Test. As the guitarist winds a little past the script, most bands would open the jam up a little bit to let it breathe. But Papadosio keeps these jams really tight, with McConnell seeming to increase the complexity of his basslines and Healy stepping on the gas as well. Billy Brouse (keys/synths) and Thogmartin have a linkage of their own, which really elevates the possibilities of any jam section. They can take turns bringing an equally powerful sound, or come together and harmonize the lightning. This dichotomy was put on display in “Frequence,” an unreleased song that feels so much like recent Papadosio I could have sworn it was on Observations. The guitar & synthesizer harmonizing was incredible in the front part of this song, but as it went on the individual influence of each member shone through. It wound through a chilled, reggae-infused section before McConnell broke into a high-powered bass sprint with Thogmartin shredding like wildfire to end the song. This one stuck with me.
Mike Healy is a machine behind the drumkit
Earlier in the evening, Anthony had explained to me how he liked to construct their setlist so that they ramp up the energy over the duration of the show. They never stop climbing until they hit the highest peak. Always building towards a grand finale. So I was a little surprised that the show had already been as loud & captivating as it had been. But when they busted out more of their aggressive & intense songs, a run of “Improbability Blotter” into “Night Colors,” I knew it was only going to get crazier. You see, they have a growing number of songs (including the two recently mentioned) that feel like giant musical monsters to me— like some sort of violent alien creature that just scares everyone into dancing their ass off. “Blotter” brought a downpour of keys from Thogmartin and a bass & synth groove so ridiculously heavy that it made me feel G-forces. “Colors” is simply a mind-numbingly intense song that feels like could be an encore song for every show. Not long after that, they unleashed a tune that has become a sneaky fan favorite. Thanks to its incredibly catchy lyrics, “Unparalyzer” brought a little bit lighter energy than the previous duo of songs but kept the crowd shredding every bit equally. This is definitely some of Brouse’s best work on the synthesizer, his energy especially broke through and his snappy playing put a serious hop in my step.
Billy Brouse will tantalize her with his synthesizer
After seeing Papadosio a number of times in the past year, I have come to expect that they will leave the stage swinging. They always seem to bring a 99 mph fastball at eyelevel to wrap the set and they obviously didn’t disappoint on this night. There are a few songs I can think of that would perfectly end one of their sets, and “The Eyes Have Eyes” is one of them. As soon as those gravity-shattering opening notes came to life, my face twisted into a distorted display of amazement & bewilderment. Like when you know what you’re hearing is real, but it just doesn’t sound possible. This song is aggressive in all the right ways and perfectly embodies the ‘danceably scary’ vibe of the violent end of Papadosio’s range. An extended jam section brought out rows upon rows of razor sharp musical teeth that rendered the crowd incapable of stillness. Luckily there was some room in the crowd because there were some people absolutely thrashing. I try not to get that loose anymore out of fear of tearing the lens off my camera body, but I was pushed snugly against my boundary by this final song. This was easily one of the tightest and most carefully crafted setlists I have seen from Papadosio and they executed it with the force of a natural disaster. Needless to say, I was beyond excited to see what they would bring for the festival set.
View from the backstage area of the barn at Wuhnurth
Friday at the Wuhnurth Music Festival just outside of Spencer, Indiana was a wonderful day. The weather was great and the energy was boundless. Buzz surrounding Papadosio’s set was humming all day, so when the time finally came, the main stage was packed with better than 90% of the attendees of the festival. I arrived to find an artist named Andy Reed setting up for a live painting session during the show. Papadosio is a huge advocate for festivals being an outlet for more than just music and they made sure their set was the trendsetter for this concept. Reed waited to lay his brush to the canvas until the band played the first note of a song I was unfamiliar with but nonetheless got my blood flowing. “Geoglyph” left the stage like a bullet and hit the ground at an elevated energy level— much higher than the show 10 days earlier. The next song, “Take What You Know” upped the ante even more and pushed the energy further with an outstanding effort from Synthesizer Sorcerer Billy Brouse. This jam assumed a serious electronic bent and sent the heaving crowd into a dance frenzy. They wisely took a step back from the ledge with the next song, otherwise the audience might have just exploded right then and there. At first I questioned the choice of “All I Knew” because it felt like too much of an energy drop-off. However, when Thogmartin dialed up that stratosphere-piercing guitar section, my concerns were washed away. Even though the song was considerably mellower than the previous two, the powerful guitar work kept the show at a preposterous level of elevation.
Andy Reed laying down the paint with Thogmartin throwing down the heat
From previous experience I knew that the halfway mark meant the endangered nature of anything that could be considered mellow. This concept was once again confirmed when they threw down a natural linkage from latter half of Observations. “Smile & Nod” then “Night Colors” is a dastardly combination on the album and they conjured up the same spirit in the barn. “S & N” was a sneakily intense song as it wound through a mysteriously spacey section before it opened up into a breakneck jam. The rhythm section of Healy and McConnell really stood out to me in this song and it seemed as if they were pushing Brouse and Thogmartin to a higher plane. The conclusion of this song was far more intense than the album cut and a powerfully engineered extended jam section made all the difference. “Night Colors” once again proved to be a crowd mover and continued the climb up the musical intensity ladder. The machine gun barrage of electronic drums from Healy laid the foundation and a powerful synthesized bassline drove the message home. Another strategic lull in intensity was a sagacious tactic and “Find Your Cloud” really put me in a trance. It starts off with an energy like a digital blizzard only to find its way to a breakneck pace that somehow manages to possess a dreamy & spaced-out feeling. This song is an excellent choice to put immediately before a finale song and with it they sets a dangerous table of destruction. Like I mentioned earlier, Papadosio has a few songs in their catalog that are absolutely destined to be set-closers from now until the end of time. But I can’t think of a better example than “Polygons.” This song is the monster hiding under your bed. It will wake you at 5 am in a cold sweat from dancing in your sleep. It will dominate your dreams and put you in the middle of that crowd, unable to stop thrashing, unable to do anything but keep… on… moving. And the version on this night was like something right out of my wildest dreams. It was an epic, 12-minute plus version like I had never heard before. The bonfire in the barn was raging through some of the most turbulent musical peaks & valleys I’ve ever heard. They must have brought back the hook two or three times to allow yet another ascension up the Mountain of the Jam Gods. When it finally ended I found myself out of breath and weak in the legs. I must have been jumping the entire song because I was pooped and in desperate need of a stop at my campsite for re-fueling. I turned my back to the barn feeling like I had just seen one of the most impressive festival sets of the year. It was like the feeling after Thanksgiving dinner, except it was my second stomach—the one for music— that was filled to the brim.
Billy Brouse was in the zone
Looking back on these two shows I feel like they were complimentary in as many ways as they were different. The setlists shook out very similarly, even having some songs in almost exactly the same spot. The energy of each show was obviously very high but the festival set definitely pushed the boundaries of my experience. A good indication of how the approach differed between the two settings was the number of songs they squeezed in the allotted time. They performed 13 songs in around 150 minutes in Chicago, but only 9 songs in around 125 minutes at Wuhnurth. This confirmed what I had already suspected; Papadosio meandered way off course during a few of the songs and ladled on a heaping pile of jams. As a music festival junkie, this is what I like to see from bands. I love to see that they take the festival experience and turn it into something that you likely won’t see in an indoor venue. They take great efforts to create a one-off, completely unexplored musical journey. Papadosio is charging up the live music ladder with this goal in mind and a style that is unabashedly intense & fiendishly unique. I think the summer of 2011 is going to be another big one for this rising beast of sound.
View from the control tower
