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Hammer
Down
By
Erik Hage
Bill
Kirchen
The
Ale House, March 9
I’m
fine with the arenas and larger theaters in the area continuing
to bring in the pop music, with the occasional quality act
slipping through the cracks, as long as there’s Brian Gilchrist’s
Ale House, sitting on the quiet end of River Street in Troy.
Packing one’s self into the back room of the Ale House often
can feel like facing up to the furnace blast of raw rock &
roll history. It’s like some kind of lost portal where nothing
else matters for a moment and the musical past just folds
back on itself, taking you back to the deep roots of rock
& roll and honky-tonk—back to the heartwood, to a space
where only the heat of guitar, rhythm and words matters.
In recent years, Rosie Flores, Dale Watson, Deke Dickerson
and Eddie Angel have graced those boards. In a couple of months,
country neoclassicist Wayne Hancock will bring his act to
the room. Sunday night, though, it was all about Bill Kirchen,
who brought his twangy trucker heat, tear-sodden country,
and Telecaster-guitar fury to the place where the beer is
good and the wings and music are even gooder.
Kirchen, the onetime guitar alchemist of Commander Cody and
His Lost Planet Airmen, doesn’t need me to roll out his resume;
just be assured that names like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe
are on there. And just be assured that his work with the Airmen
alone is enough to make him an entry in the Big Book of Rock
& Roll.
Tonight, the old sat seamlessly with the new as Kirchen, looking
like some kind of elegantly bookish and aged turkey buzzard,
his ancient and stained Telecaster hung high on his lean frame,
began with a few tracks from his most recent LP, Hammer
of the Honky-Tonk Gods. Accompanied by only a bassist
and drummer, he showed that he still had songwriting chops
(particularly with the beautifully downtrodden “Rocks into
Sand”) as well as the vocal ability to settle his husk into
the most tragic and literate honky-tonk (Blackie Farrell’s
“Skid Row in My Mind”). He also pulled out numerous diesel-banging
tunes from his trucker canon. Mostly, there were those wild
flights of guitar, twanged out on the low end and thick with
Bakersfield, ancient rockabilly and western swing (as well
as something more primal—and a little bit scary).
But it was during a mini-reunion with local treasure (and
RPI Professor) John Tichy, his old bandmate from the early
’70s San Francisco heyday of Commander Cody, that this night
was elevated even higher. This wasn’t the show that everyone
else was getting; this was Ale House magic. And as the two
old musical allies ripped through a trio of Cody classics,
history folded back on itself, the sparks flew, and the gods
of honky-tonk, rock & roll, and R&B smiled through
the rafters, setting aside their ambrosia for a pint of Long
Trail and a few of Gilchrist’s hot wings.
Vintage
Squared
Soulive
Revolution
Hall, March 5
When brothers Neal and Alan Evans first joined forces with
guitarist Eric Krasno in 1999, the Woodstock-based trio struck
immediate success with a vintage soul/jazz sound, effectively
remembering, reviving, and revamping a formula popularized
in the ’60s and ’70s by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Richard
“Groove” Holmes, and Brother Jack McDuff. Nine years later
(to the day)—after international touring; festival dominance;
collaborations with Chaka Khan, John Scofield, Ivan Neville,
Robert Randolph, and members of the Roots; forays into hip-hop;
and, most recently, the addition of vocalist Toussaint (for
an album on the classic Stax record label)—Soulive brought
the whole thing full circle last Wednesday with a rare set
of t early material. No frills, no vocals—just vintage Soulive.
It’s a sneering funk that the band purvey. It’ll start with
a squint, but that ruffled brow gets the head bobbing, and
before you know it, the band’s sense of pocket has worked
its way down a listener’s body, enlivening his/her limbs with
polyrhythm, and invariably rendering the listener a dancer.
With “Steppin’,” the band’s longtime calling card, plunked
at the set’s second slot, an expected truth about Soulive
became apparent: There’s no such thing as warming up. When
the band are on, they’re on; and, like all great musicians,
the act of performance is inseparable from the act of living.
From opposite sides of the stage, the Evans brothers (on drums
and organ) pushed one another in ways only brothers can, generating
a groove so propulsive that Krasno seemed to levitate at times
above it all. With vintage effects and a sense of phrasing
somewhere between Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix (both of
whom Soulive are known to cover), Krasno is commonly mistaken
as the band’s leader. Instead, the band’s charisma is truly
a mutual one, owing as much to Alan’s charging drums and vocal
exhortations as to Neal’s baffling command of right- and left-hand
duties on the organ and clavinet.
While Toussaint was absent from the evening’s proceedings,
the trio became a quartet with the addition of alto-sax phenom
Sam Kininger, who was a regular collaborator throughout Soulive’s
early years. Lending a staccato, Maceo Parker-style sensibility
to material from the albums Turn It Out and Doin’
Something, Kininger stood as a fresh reminder of why this
is still heralded as Soulive’s greatest era. With tunes like
“One in Seven,” a stomp in 7/8 time, groove is the beginning
and end, but in between is a range of rhythmic and harmonic
complexity hitherto unknown within the genre. Even more, when
the signature riff from Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” surfaced
in the middle of a late-set clavinet solo, the gesture was
more than the cute tease most bands would have made it. With
a couple albums of authentic hip-hop production behind them,
Soulive have earned it.
After a couple newer tunes featuring Soulive’s burgeoning
sense for reggae, and an impromptu rendition of “Soul Power”
(with equally impromptu vocals offered by Kininger, Krasno
and Alan Evans), the band returned to the stage for an encore
that seemed to sum up nicely the band’s early career. Stevie
Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America” prompted “Do It Again”
before finally resolving in one of the band’s most infectious
and forward-thinking melodies on “Rudy’s Way.”
—Josh
Potter
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PHOTO: Julia Zave
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Risky
Business
Worcester,
Mass.-based metal band Bury Your Dead brought the thrash—and
the Tom Cruise references—to Albany rock club Valentine’s
on Tuesday night. Fronted by new vocalist Myke Terry, the
band mixed songs from their soon-to-be-released, self-titled
fourth album, with older material like “Magnolia” and “Vanilla
Sky.”
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