Jonny Bones, Matt Earle, Spencer Jo and Jesse LeBourdais: a howling night of acoustic punk with several surprises

You go to an acoustic punk show, you don't necessarily expect Cher and Taylor Swift covers. You might expect angst-driven autobiography and pointed social criticism, maybe a Billy Bragg cover, maybe the odd digression into ska (especially if you know that Jonny Bones is on the bill -- he ticked both the latter boxes last night). But Cher and Taylor Swift? 

Okay, there was only one Cher cover, in the set of Matt Earle, who made the comment that it was only after he agreed to play the show that he realized the bill entirely consisted of white dudes (Spencer Jo, though non-binary, did not rush to correct him).* Earle joked that it was in the way of the white dude -- my words, not his; I can't quote him exactly -- to not realize such a thing until it was too late, but to my mind, the way of the white dude is to not question these things at all. 

So Earle was off the hook, by me, the moment he acknowledged the situation -- though he further compensated by doing a set entirely consisting of songs by women and non-binary folks (we need a better way to say that, something that rolls off the tongue: enbies? nonbies?), kicking off with a very workable X-Ray Spex cover ("Germ-Free Adolescents"), which also helped towards the "white" issue. I can't list his full set, but he also did a song by a non-binary artist I had not heard before, Joanna Sternberg ("People Are Toys to You" -- both of these links are to the originals; I shot no vid of his covers of them). The Taylor Swift song he did was "Wildest Dreams" (earnestly delivered, I might add; there was no attempt to put down Ms. Swift, though there was some arch commentary about how there is "no escape" from her). It all was very enjoyable. There were, alas, a few guitar mishaps, with headliner Jesse LeBourdais acting as pit crew to help out, and even a flub in the Cher song, "Believe" (I asked Earle if it was okay if I posted it regardless, and he said yes, so it's here). It's still fantastic, a very inventive choice and a fun song to experience, especially since it's a genre of music I don't really pay much attention to; I'm not going to rush out to buy any Cher albums, but I appreciate the songcraft much more now (so thanks). I've been humming it to myself all day. 

I must say, though, that the high-point in Earle's set and his biggest and best compensation for white male hegemony came when he asked an audience member, a teenaged girl named Violet, relationship to the performers unclear, to come onstage and sing a song. The song was so great and Violet's delivery so gripping that I was preparing as I nursed my near-beer to proclaim Violet the greatest upcoming talent in Vancouver. She was the night's holy-shit-this-is-grrreat discovery -- so young and so gifted! Sadly, I learned (on checking in with her after) that it had been a cover, not an original, that she had done, of Julien Baker's "Good News" -- a very powerful song by an artist I was completely unaware of (Julien Baker has not trickled down to the white 50something male music geek demographic, so we owe Violet thanks for pointing the way!). So it was still great, even if it wasn't quite as great as I had imagined. Hearing these words from the mouth of a teenaged girl (even if it was a different girl than the one who wrote it) sent a chill down my spine -- from the song's second verse:

It's not easy when what you think of me is important
And I know it shouldn't be so damn important
But it is to me
And I'm only ever screaming at myself in public
I know I shouldn't act this way in public
I know I shouldn't make my friends all worry
When I go out at night
And grind my teeth like sutures, my mouth like a wound
When I stay up and throw my voice about you
Or less about you and more about
How I ruin everything I think could be good news

Earle took back over after that, joking about being "upstaged midset" -- but he kinda had been!

 

The other Taylor Swift song of the night was by Jesse LeBourdais himself, doing "Bad Blood." It fit his somewhat confessional/ personal style of songwriting quite well, actually, and sold me on the idea that Swift might actually have some decent songwriting in her repertoire, which I have found quite agreeably and easily escapable heretofore (last night is the first time I have knowingly listened to ANY Taylor Swift song to completion, though I'm sure I've encountered them while shopping or such. I  usually have my own playlists on my headphones in public, though, so I've been spared more than most, perhaps...). I am not so enthusiastic about the prospect of seeing MORE Taylor Swift covers at future such shows, understand -- I am hoping this goes back to being an aberration, am not trying to encourage the practice  -- but it was fun to see LeBourdais asking Earle permission to do a second Swift cover that night, and the songs both did fit their sets surprisingly well. 

The evening's other interesting trend was to have songs involving wolves and/ or howling. This is a bit more in-keeping with your average non-female acoustic punk show and manifested in both LeBourdais' set ("We Howl," which is online as co-performed with his - niece? - Ruby)  and Spencer Jo's set (re: "Howl," his opening track), which made me wish Jeff Andrew had been around, too, to do "The Last Wild Werewolf;" hell, there's a whole wolf-themed concert to be had, which could also involve Jeff's cover of the Rebel Spell's "Last Run" and Gerry Hannah's "Cold Kechika Wind," a song from his prison tape that he sings from the point of view of hunted wolves...

 

LeBourdais remains a powerfully compelling performer and songwriter; his other songs included a song about the reaction of noobs to life in the downtown eastside ("Water Street"), a song about the leftover feelings following the death of a friend (no, not "You Were a Rifle," but rather "Worst Day," about the passing of Edmonton's Ben Sir), a song called "The First Time I Screamed," and a new song called "Hold You Down" which I happened to shoot a clip of. LeBourdais was funny, passionate, chatty, and raw. Was very glad to see him again -- it's been too long.

Opener Jonny Bones, meantime, is someone I'd like to write about more at some point, a man of many talents, with three projects to speak of (one of which, the Bone Daddies, is now apparently defunct, though he covered one of their songs last night). He also hosts midnight movies in Maple Ridge and - didn't he act in that Evil Dead musical? Does he have a radio show? I don't know all he does, but he does a lot. I have called him "the Joe Strummer of Maple Ridge," and I wasn't entirely kidding. The high point of his set last night was his song about immigrants from hell, which, fear not, is about us white folks and our impact on North American Indigenous peoples, though the title made me ask him if he knew Atilla the Stockbroker's "Libyan Students from Hell." The actual title of Bones' original is "Wreckonciliation," and it is online. I also shot a clip of Bones last week at the Mr. Chi Pig annual celebration of life, with his band the Still Spirits. Someone should write more about this guy, and Maple Ridge should make more of him (I mean this both ways: more people of his kind should be produced, and the town should appreciate him more than I suspect it does). 

It reveals more about me than about the bands that played last night, however, that my favourite moment came during Spencer Jo's set. Spencer -- who has grown a moustache since the last time I saw them, pre-COVID, at the Black Lab -- had a few stories about working with a publicist; they also did an antifascist song aimed at the trucker's convoy and the people who abused their Mom for wearing a mask during COVID; and several other tunes as well (including two duets with Alien Boys' Sarinn, one of which I caught on video, "Midnight Calls," on Spencer's new album; Sarinn was in fine form and not the only Alien Boy in the room). 

But I perked up when Spencer mentioned they (ie., Spencer alone, not Spencer and Sarinn) were going to do a song by someone whose name they were unsure of, offering a couple of guesses, one of which was correct, Bascam Lamar Lunsford. At which point someone with a weird wet voice blurted from the audience with a truly spastic level of enthusiasm, "Holy shit, are you going to do 'Mole in the Ground?'"

...That someone being me, suddenly feeling a bit self-conscious. It was, I believe, the only song in the evening from The Anthology of American Folk Music and the only song written about by Greil Marcus (in Lipstick Traces, his intellectual history of punk). It was also the only song that had a lyric stolen by Bob Dylan (cf. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," particularly the bit about railway men drinking up your blood like wine), and the only song that also got covered by the Holy Modal Rounders. I think Spencer may have been a bit startled by my mangled weird blurt. They explained further that they'd re-written some of the lyrics ("I've been in the pen with the rough and rowdy men" became "I've been on the road with the rough and rowdy toads," for instance) in the spirit of collaborating with his daughter, Norah, whose name replaced Capie's (or Tempie's or whatever Lunsford is singing) in the original. I think Spencer said something about having heard someone comment that it is not possible for a child to really get to know their parents, but they were going to do his best by including Norah in such things; anyone who tries to create bonds with their kids by covering "Mole in the Ground" -- hell, anyone who feels spoken for by wishing they were a lizard in the spring, who feels they can be represented by such lyrical imagery -- is all right by me. 

It was a fine, fine night. Too few people were there, but this created an easy, intimate, trusting vibe in the room. And by the way, Noelle says Trooperfest 2 was a big success and gave out some stickers of Trooper. I should fi=\]d mine and tuck it away in a record or something. But not this one! 

*Note: Bree, who put together the bill, while appreciating the article, points out that she's a woman, and that "we had asked women to play but they were unavailable." I thought that it ended up a pretty gender-diverse night, when all was told!