That was a marvelous night!
I'm speaking, of course, of the Car Wheels on a Gravel Road Reimagined concert at the Kay Meek, which I wrote a well-received preview of here. For those who missed it, it repeats again on October 18th ("today" for some people reading this), and I do urge your attendance, because great as last night was, tonight's will be the more fully-realized, more confident set (tickets are still available, but not many!). The first night, taking place after one mere day of rehearsals, is fresher, maybe, more exciting, more dramatic, since it's the band's first time doing this material before a payin' audience; but the second night, now, will be informed by the experiences of the first. It's basically like everyone's had one more day to rehearse, but in the highest-stakes context possible: last night might have been the braver night, but tonight, they're coming to the material as salty, seasoned, tested-and-true warriors who know they can pull it off.
Another, weirder way of putting it: tonight will be the first time in history that this group of musicians has played this body of work in front of an audience for the second time. Given that, as I say in the Straight piece, the folk fest follow up is not by any means a given, it may also be the last time, and almost certainly the last time with exactly this permutation of musicians. So that's going to be a special thing. I wonder how many people go both evenings? Tonight will be the first time I've done that -- there were two great seats up front, and I pulled the gun without even waking my wife to check. I sure hope she doesn't mind! (If she does, some lucky friend will be getting a phone call from me!).
Damn was that a groovin' night of Lu, both on and off the album in question; I don't want to spoil anything, but the addition of a horn section to most of the songs meant we were getting the most soulful ("Shoals-ful?" Can I get away with that?) readings of Lu's catalogue imaginary. It's not exactly an unheard-of direction to push Lu's music, especially if you consider the Southern Soul album in the Lu's Jukebox series, but Dawson and Black deserve abundant credit no less for choosing that direction, especially given the readings of "Can't Let Go" by Dawn Pemberton, pictured above (who suddenly I'm enormously proud to have interviewed in my preview, because wow) and "Right In Time" as done by Regina McCrary. The night was full of high points, but surely these two songs were the highest?
True confession: I did not know Regina McCrary or the McCrary Sisters before this weekend. I mean, whattaya want from me, I'm just an old punk! But here's an interview about McCrary singing with Dylan during his Christian years. Reading it makes me want to track down the vinyl of Trouble No More and pester McCrary to sign it. I do have Saved and Slow Train Coming, but not the live album, which now seems a terrible oversight on my part as a collector, given that I actually love Dylan's Christian period, in terms of the passion of his delivery, and think some of the songs from it, especially "Gotta Serve Somebody," stand as the best things he did in the 1970s (that's a link to a performance with McCrary on it!).
(Actually, I bought that album on CD, but traded it with Bruce Stayloose for something else, because I wanted it on vinyl, then I never got around to it. Dumb!).
And while we're talking about Ms. McCrary (spoiler alert! You're going to find out what her second song was! Though -- hint, hint -- it won't come exactly as a surprise), I have a question that contains elements of a confession: Did everyone but me realize there was an allusion to snake handling in "Get Right With God?" Given that I once wrote a term paper on the topic, you'd think I would have noticed the opening lyrics, or at least remembered them ("I would risk the serpent's bite/ I would dance around with seven/ I would kiss the diamondback/ If I knew it would get me to heaven"). Suddenly I have two things to ask Lu about, if ever I get to talk to her: Don Todd and snake handling...
Writing about the rest of the night feels like it should come with a spoiler alert. I don't even want to tell you what Shaun Verrault, of Wide Mouth Mason -- another artist whose music I have completely ignored before this weekend -- did for his second tune. Like, seriously, stop and skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know, because otherwise, you might be able to guess what it was, even if I don't tell you; it was an amazing reading of a very relevant, very topical song, which I did NOT expect anyone would play last night, and in fact did not even remember existed in Lu's catalogue (click here if you were there and don't know that tune, or can't bear the suspense; it was written by Lu about exactly the person it seemed to be about). It was so powerful it bled over onto Lindi Ortega's follow-up (especially given her sassy red boots) and made her song seem topically-charged, too.
Not only did Verrault score the high watermark in terms of topical impact, he and Dawson's interplay during that song had me flashing back to watching Lou Reed and Mike Rathke leaning into and playing off of each other in Tokyo, when I saw Lou on the Ecstacy tour. You always know amazing things are going to happen when two guitarists stop facing the audience and start facing each other. So it wasn't all about horns and soul; there was some meaty rock guitar to the night, as well.
The other real surprise was Joel Plaskett doing "I Lost It," which is actually something he has covered before; he had a bit of an advantage there (nice of Dawson to assign him a song that was already in his repertoire!). But everyone was wonderful in different ways. In particular, the Eisenhauers (whose female vocalist reminded my wife and I of Dolly Parton), island duo Pony Gold, and Mercy Walker (the most wonderfully-named performer of the evening!) all were locals who I'll keep an ear out for. Mercy was the only one who confessed, rather sweetly, to being a bit nervous (and also the only person who said hi to her Mom from the stage). I'm guessing Mercy was the youngest person to perform last night; with her blessing, I've put one of her songs on Youtube, the only thing I shot video of, and a shitty video it is indeed, shaky and out of focus and all (there's a better clip of her doing one of her own songs at the Anza, here). But sometimes with a night like this, that's what's left -- a shittily-recorded Youtube video of a splendid moment. You really actually HAVE TO BE THERE, which... did I mention there were tickets still available?
If I had one quibble -- and alas, I tried to communicate this to him afterwards, which was a bit more awkward than I expected -- I actually would be more excited to hear Chuck Prophet, yet another person I had not been paying attention to before this weekend, playing his own songs than doing Lucinda Williams covers. I had a couple of Green on Red fans come out of the woodwork at me on social media, expressing amazement and enthusiasm that he was in town; they're champing at the bit for him to come back and play a full show here. I'm actually more of a Dream Syndicate man, myself (there's are a couple of overlaps between those bands), but if there'd been Chuck Prophet albums on the merch table, I'd have grabbed one, but actually being a Chuck Prophet fan is probably NOT the best reason to pull the gun on a ticket. For whatever reason, though I was content to hear Verrault and Plaskett do covers -- I'm not going to even look for Wide Mouth Mason records today -- Prophet is a songwriter I'd like to get to know from his own music, not cover tunes, however well-executed, so last night left me with an itch that did not get scratched, there.
...and that's all I'm going to tell you about what to expect tonight. I've said too much already. Boy I hope my wife isn't annoyed that I bought us tickets for tonight, too. There were two! Aisle seats! Up front! HOW COULD I NOT????
See you there? (There are fewer than 20 seats left as I re-type this, and it looks like there's a discount rate for people under 30, which there really were NOT many of last night...).
PS, Erika is delghted, so no calls to friends will be made. And hey, look at that, Regina McCrary is on BOTH Slow Train Coming and Saved, but under another name! Looks like I have something to get her to sign after all...! (Oh shit, she's on Shot of Love too... I don't have that... gotta call the record stores again... dammit...).
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