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December 30, 2005
* "a winding ribbon with a band of gold..."
Back in my days as the nightclubs columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer during the 1990s, I used to finish every year by writing a column that recapped my favorite shows of the past twelve months. Seeing as how our new January-February 2006 issue of ND features our third annual critics' poll of the year's best records, but no such listing of live shows -- and seeing as how these blogs are specifically intended to traverse territory not covered in our print edition -- it seemed appropriate to revive my auld lang syne tradition.
Keep in mind that, unlike album lists, which cover records that are theoretically available to everyone, live-show lists are inherently much more subjective, simply on account of geography. Further, I'm intending this list to represent not necessarily the ten best shows I saw in 2005, but rather, simply, the ten most memorable musical moments I experienced in a live-music setting this past year.
[I'm excluding a couple of things here, in the interest of subduing self-promotion and because I've already devoted previous blog entries to them: 1) the string of ten ND tenth-anniversary shows we presented across the country in September; and 2) the house concert my wife and I hosted in November featuring Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell.]
Though living an hour or so away from a major city has brought down my attendance figures from those good ol' days at the P-I (when I routinely went to around 150 shows a year), lesser quantity doesn't seem to have translated into lesser quality, judging from the images that remain imprinted in my mind. Here's hoping 2005 was as good to you on the nights you ventured out to a big show, trekked off to a festival, or just ambled on down to the corner bar....
10. Hem, Tractor Tavern (Seattle, Washington), January 28. I'd seen them a couple times before, in D.C. and in North Carolina, but this performance by what I'd have to call my favorite band of the past two years was by far the best. Touring behind a new album, Eveningland, that ranks with the best works of the first half of the decade, Hem kept me mesmerized throughout the night with an endless stream of achingly beautiful melodies rendered exquisitely by a seven-piece lineup behind their subtle yet spellbinding singer Sally Ellyson.
9. Raul Malo, Crowne Plaza (Austin, Texas), March 19. A few years ago, for no apparent reason, I suddenly got the old J.D. Souther song "You're Only Lonely" stuck in my head and subsequently spent a couple days wandering around record stores trying to find a copy of the song (eventually I sat down and learned to play it myself on guitar). What a joy, then, to hear that tune delivered solo acoustic on this night by Mavericks leader Raul Malo, perhaps the finest pop vocalist of his generation. Malo also played many other selections from a record of covers he recently recorded but which is now apparently hung up in record-company limbo. Here's hoping it sees the light of day sometime in 2006.
8. Avett Brothers, Merlefest (Wilkesboro, North Carolina), April 29-May 1. There's something reassuring and invigorating about the way these non-purist bluegrassers have been so well received at a festival known in part for its traditionalist reverence. Much of the Merlefest crowd comes to see the seasoned regulars such as Sam Bush, Tim O'Brien, Jerry Douglas, and, of course, festival founder Doc Watson -- but they also appreciate hearing some new faces taking the music in different directions. The Avett Brothers boldly charged into the future with their three sets on three different stages, harnessing punk-rock energy for the benefit of string-band sound. Beneath the brash intensity of their performances is a sincere dedication to the sanctity of good songs and good singing, and that makes all the difference.
7. John Wesley Harding & Friends, Bagley Wright Theater (Seattle, Washington), September 4. So John Wesley Harding wrote a rather bizarre novel dealing with royalty and gender-bending in early-19th-century England, and somehow managed to get a major publisher (Little, Brown) to put it out. He wrote a bunch of songs to accompany the text, and presented them onstage during Seattle's annual Bumbershoot festival in this most unusual of performances featuring a litany of special guests (including Kelly Hogan, Kurt Bloch, Scott McCaughey and Robyn Hitchcock). It seemed that the songs were as long as the book itself; how the singers in particular managed to memorize all the lyrics for what was essentially an exclusive performance is beyond my comprehension, but it was amazing to watch it all unfold onstage.
6. Alejandro Escovedo and Jon Dee Graham, Tractor Tavern (Seattle, Washington), April 8. Escovedo had been absent from the road for more than a year, recovering from complications of Hepatitis C, so it was no surprise that he sold out two nights at one of his favorite venues in one of his strongest markets. The real treat was the presence of his long-ago sidekick Jon Dee Graham, not only as a guitarist in Escovedo's first-rate backing band, but also as a solo opening act.
5. Michael Fracasso and Ana Egge, Sunset Tavern (Seattle, Washington), October 5. Two other singer-songwriters with Austin backgrounds (Egge has since moved on to the East Coast) took the stage of the smaller Sunset Tavern just down the street from the Tractor in front of a rather small but attentive audience, and easily won over the room. I still remember the first time I heard Fracasso's achingly beautiful "Sleepless Nights" for the first time 15 years ago; when he played it to end his set on this night, it transported me back to that same place, and feeling.
4. Country Dick Montana ten-year memorial, Casbah (San Diego, California), November 7. A longtime friend from the Seattle scene, Gary Heffern, returned to his old San Diego stomping grounds to play this show with his old punk band the Penetrators, for whom Country Dick had served as drummer in his pre-Beat Farmers days. The event, which marked the 10-year anniversary of Country Dick's death onstage at a show in Canada, was sold out with lines down the block -- on a Monday -- as seemingly an entire music community that hadn't gathered all in the same place in two decades reconvened to remember their beloved long-gone friend.
3. Christy McWilson, Treehouse Lounge (Poulsbo, Washington), July 30. Turning 40 on this night wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without the musical companionship of Christy McWilson, best known for her long tenure as the leader of Seattle alt-country band the Picketts. The Treehouse is a tiny little bar above a restaurant in our hometown on the other side of Puget Sound; McWilson's journey over to our neck of the woods was mainly just a kind gesture on her part, and a welcome shot of big-city entertainment in our small bayside burg. Special treats were short sets by her guitarist Mark Notermann and the aforementioned Gary Heffern.
2. Crooked Fingers, Crocodile Cafe (Seattle, Washington), April 23. I'd seen them a month earlier at South By Southwest in Austin, and while that show was a tour de force that featured a cameo by Australia's Laura Meyerratken (who sang on the band's splendid 2005 album Dignity And Shame), this one was ultimately more special, as it was the culmination of a long spring tour. When the show was over, the band just wasn't quite ready to call it a night, so they all gathered in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the audience, and sang a few more songs completely unamplified. It was a perfect ending to a vividly memorable night.
1. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Paramount Theatre (Seattle, Washington), October 14. It had been a typically magnificent Welch & Rawlings show up until that final moment, filled with Welch's poignant songs and singing set to Rawlings' precise yet inspired musicianship (not to mention his vocal-solo turn on "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"). But all notions of time and space faded away for those final ten or fifteen minutes, from the moment they launched into "I Dream A Highway" until its final notes gently faded away. The duo remarked later that it was only the third time they've ever attempted the seventeen-verse song, which closes their landmark 2001 album Time (The Revelator), in concert. I'd always dearly wanted to hear them play it, but figured it was really too much to expect of them, given the preparation and concentration that it would seemingly be required. On this night, though, they pulled it out, ostensibly just on a whim because they loved the venue and the mood struck them. I'll be forever grateful to them for providing the musical highlight of my year.
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