Month: June 2012

Todd Snider

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Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables

Concert Catch-Up Week, Day 1: Todd Snider

I have a confession to make. Promise you won’t be mad if I tell you? Pinkie swear? OK, here goes… I’ve been holding out on you. I’ve been to some amazing concerts — 3, to be exact — that I’ve yet to tell you about. Uh oh, you look furious. C’mon, you said you wouldn’t be ma… oh, you just have to sneeze? Gesundheit!

To fix this grave injustice, I’m declaring a Concert Catch-Up Week. Over the next 5 days week or so, I’ll be offering quick recaps of the wonders these eyes have beheld in the last few weeks, starting with Todd Snider — the second of two acts that opened up for Justin Townes Earle on May 22 at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, VA. With all due respect to Jeff Tweedy, whose cantankerous-cuddly routine made his show at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville a few years back one of the best and funniest shows I’ve ever seen, Snider’s set was fucking hysterical.

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Sun Kil Moon

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Legislation and sausages. These are the things we’re not supposed to see made, lest we become too grossed out to enjoy them… but I’m not convinced. One of my good friends has gone on several tours of Smithfield meat packing facilities, and that dude still cooks one helluva pork butt. Hell, he cooked an entire pig last 4th of July, and from what I can remember (we started drinking cooking at like 5 something in the morning, and the pig was on the grill for a solid 12 hours), it was delicious!

In some ways, live music fits with that tired legislation/sausage axiom. The artist walks out onstage, the show happens, the crowd cheers, the artist disappears, the crowd goes home, and (excepting the superfans who travel with the band or try to get backstage) that’s that. There’s safety in that routine. Most concertgoers get to remember performers as conquering heroes who walked offstage to lusty applause, not as regular people who get heckled sometimes and feel lonely on the road.

But Sun Kil Moon’s beautiful new album, Among the Leaves, pulls back the curtain on Mark Kozelek’s life as a touring musician, with a bluntness that rivals a stroll through a Smithfield kill floor (yes, I most certainly am proud of having worked “beautiful” and “kill floor” into the same sentence).

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Wilco

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The Incredible Shrinking Tour of Chicago

Do you like books, but find it to be complete bullshit that they don’t play songs and YouTube videos for you? Me too! I blame that a-hole, Johannes Gutenberg. Movable type? More like type that’s just sitting on there on the page, putting me to sleep. Amiright or amiright?!?

THANKFULLY, Wilco is here to save the day (they did say they’d love us, baby). The group has released an iBook entitled The Incredible Shrinking Tour of Chicago, documenting a 5-show mini-tour of their hometown that took place last December. The book is free of charge, and includes set lists, photos, audio from one performance of “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” and a YouTube video of the band rehearsing “The Weight” with Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe. It’s a really slick experience, one well worth checking out, even if you weren’t in attendance at any of those 5 December shows.

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New Music Advent Calendar

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I know it’s the beginning of June, but this past weekend got me thinking about Advent calendars. I’m convinced they’re magic. How else can you explain a poor, helpless piece of chocolate, with only the tensile strength of a perforated paper door to defend it, surviving the terrifying clutches of a sugar-crazed child’s hands for 25 whole days? You might as well be playing Jenga with Milk Bones on your dog’s nose.

So why was I thinking about Advent calendars? Is it because I’m one of those people who celebrate half Christmas? No siree Bob; my perception of time is way too poor to figure out when that even is. Is it because I’m turning into that creepy kid from Bad Santa? No, but let’s be honest — I’d grow that blonde ‘fro in a heartbeat if I could. The real reason is that three of the Richmond-based bands that I follow on Twitter, White Laces, The Snowy Owls and Hoax Hunters, are in the process of recording new music, and they’ve been tweeting from their respective studios about the proceedings.

These bite-sized missives have ranged from progress reporting to tantalizingly cryptic musing to revelatory pictures, and I can’t tell you how much I love this stuff. Even though they lack the chocolaty treats of a real-life Advent calendar (which is probably for the best, given that I somehow manged to eat both Popeye’s and Burger King for lunch this past Sunday), these brief hints have ratcheted up my excitement one notch at a time, and I can’t wait for the running-downstairs-on-Christmas-morning feeling I’ll get when the fruits of the labor they describe become available. In order to spread this excitement, I thought I’d do a quick roundup of some of the tweets I’ve seen recently. Call it a New Music Advent Calendar. The best part? You get all 25 at once! Let’s get started …

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The Lumineers

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[Editor’s Note: A little while back, I gently asked my friend Travis if he would do a guest post when he hit his much-anticipated 100-concert milestone. I couldn’t be more excited about what he wrote (if the benediction at the end doesn’t leave you a little verklempt, you may want to check your pulse). Without further ado…]

By TRAVIS HOFFMANN

I had to say goodbye to my horses. It just had to be done. Buffalo Bill would be proud.

A few years ago, I was trolling through my stack of concert ticket stubs (I’m currently working my way through a mild case of hoardism), nostalgically reminiscing about each concert fondly as I thumbed through. Or in the case of one particular show, where a particular tween high on ecstasy (not as high as whatever this guy is on though – yikes!) kept wanting to incessantly hug me, maybe not so fondly. Out of pure curiosity, I decided to count them. I ended up with 66. Shit, I thought, as I looked at them again, I really haven’t been to that many shows in the past few years (8 shows in a 3 year span??!!). What the hell had happened? Had I lulled myself into some kind of boring and pathetic 9-to-5 routine? Had I stopped participating in one of the pure enjoyments that gave me such great pleasure? Fuck dat, I knew what I had to do. I had to put my thang down, flip it and reverse it. And the only way I knew I could ensure that I actually got back at it was to set myself a firm goal: 100 concerts before I turned 30. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was guaranteed to be a whole whopping load of fun – I’d essentially have to do about a concert a month for the next 3 years, but I was excited like all get out.  I didn’t really care about the actual number – the 100 or the 30 – they were just both nice even numbers that my tiny brain could remember easily. Hell, in the past month since show 1-0-0, I’ve been to three more (200 by 40 anyone? Just kidding honey).

Concerts are time capsules of unique musical goodness, snowflakes of the stage – each their own little piece of individuality. Along this journey I’ve learned that attending a show is the epitome of being able to completely immerse yourself in the moment. Something it seems we rarely get to do in this day and age of instant-gratification-need-it-now-no-I-will-not-wait-5-seconds-for-this-to-download culture. For as long as I can remember, music, and more specifically being at a live show, has been my preferred vice when I need/want release from all the worries/concerns/stresses that happen to creep up in the course of everyday life. The band Reptar sums this construct up perfectly with their Twitter bio: “we play music that makes you wanna dance and feel all your emotions.” Like any good vice, it’s a balance – wavering on the edge of an addiction – but that’s a battle I’m more than willing to address when the time comes. Or maybe I’ll just go see a show and leave that worry behind.

Alright, enough with all that mumbo-jumbo, let’s talk about this 100th show.

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