Woods successfully incorporated both the saxophone and trumpet into their already well-established guitar-based sound at a wonderful sold-out performance in Brooklyn Saturday night.
Horns are a fixture on the new Woods record City Sun Eater in the River of Light which came out last month. It was the band’s ninth full-length. All of them have been great in their own ways, but this one has an exotic tilt that front man Jeremy Earl has said was motivated by a steady recent diet of listening to Ethiopian jazz.
As I approached the Music Hall of Williamsburg on North Sixth from the east, patrons clogged the sidewalks in front of several ritzy nightclubs in this ever-changing part of Brooklyn. It was a street party of sorts as people stood in hordes smoking cigs – and marijuana. Yet another high-rise is sprouting up near where North Sixth meets the river.
The buildup bubble in this neighborhood was perhaps punctured a little with news recently that the MTA would need to shut down the L train for 18 months (with plan B being sharply reduced service for a longer period) to work on an underwater tunnel damaged during Sandy. The hearty long-time residents who were here before the excessively extravagant development will adapt to the subway shutdown via bike – or bus – or ferry – or perhaps the G.
The invaders who thought money was all they needed to buy their way into a takeover suddenly find themselves in a pickle. Maybe this is good. Maybe this will weed out some of the gentrifiers – and bring housing costs for regular working people back to something that’s not insane.
Saturday night’s show at the MHOW was the final night of a 14-date leg of live shows for Woods. The band will tour off and on throughout the calendar year. This latest run of Woods gigs was disrupted midway through when the Levitation Festival in Austin was forced to cancel because of severe weather. Woods seems to have used the festival appearance (including their own annual gathering in Big Sur) as the centerpiece for touring efforts. The fests they choose seem to meet ideological criteria while providing a means of offsetting costs associated with playing more intimate dates across the country and in Europe.
It’s hard to imagine the complications Levitation organizers must still be wading through given the financial outlays needed to plan such an endeavor but Woods got word of the cancellation early enough such that they stayed in the Midwest and did a free gig during the unscheduled off day at a record store in Lawrence, KS.
Woods tour mates Ultimate Painting pressed on to Austin and did a couple of indoor shows.
All the way from London, Ultimate Painting was great in the warm-up slot Saturday night. “Sweet Chris” was especially sweet.
Woods went on a little before 11 PM. The special twist on this tour – and on this night – was the addition of Kyle Forester stage right. Forester alternated between saxophone and keyboard and brought zest and full body to the cuts from City Sun Eater. The enthusiastic hometown crowd reacted strongly to both The Take and Sun City Creeps. Forester also added some subtle comedy to the between songs dialogue, something the band’s regular members don’t typically engage in. He dryly and sarcastically observed the changing landscape on North Sixth. He also offered a heartfelt word of thanks to the band for inviting him on tour. Said Forester: “I do appreciate the trust that’s been put in me.”
Forester has played keys in the great but recently dormant NYC band Crystal Stilts. He has finished a new solo record and created a song and video that pays homage to Bernie Sanders.
For the trumpet lines on Eater tunes, Woods called Cole Karmen-Green to the stage. Karmen-Green is credited with the trumpet parts on the LP and he nailed them Saturday night.
John Andrews sat to the left of regular drummer Aaron Neveu and played on a second, more minimal drum kit. He was tucked out of view somewhat and contributed tambo, too. My pal Jeff D saw Woods in Nashville five nights earlier and said Andrews wasn’t present for that show.
There’s always at least one song from every new Woods record that you wonder why they skip it in the live setting. For this show, I was surprised not to hear The Other Side. The last record it was Twin Steps. I visualize these songs in my head in advance of the gig but haven’t seen them done live.
Here’s the set list – MHOW – 5-7-16 (Derby night) :
Running time: 76 minutes
Morning Light
Politics of Free
Leaves Like Glass (Song ending segues seamlessly into the opening guitar wiggle on Hollow)
Hollow Home
Sun City Creeps
The Take (Intro briefly sounds like a duck call before Chuck’s bass line reveals song. It dragged slower than the record version before Jeremy’s absolute solo tear brought back the pace)
Shepherd
Suffering Season (Jeremy makes rare song intro by saying: “Alright, here’s an old one”
Cali in a Cup
Creature Comfort
With Light and With Love
————————————–
Moving to the Left
Military Madness (Painting’s Jack Cooper is asked to stage and sings a portion and plays guitar; Forester adds a great sax line)
The night before, I saw Sheer Mag at the Market Hotel in Bushwick. It was my first time at the venue since Todd P re-opened the place as a sanctioned establishment after a long, methodical effort to meet city and state laws and regulations.
Gone are the days of Todd P assuming risks associated with the noble presentation of shows outside cumbersome government parameters but Market Hotel remains a great place to see a show and retains many of the best characteristics pre-shutdown. The curtains have been drawn on the windows facing the elevated subway station at Myrtle and Broadway and the bar is fully stocked albeit a bit more pricey. I had two sixteen-ounce cans of Evil Twin Falco at $9 per but they were way more satisfying a cheap Bud.
Todd P was on hand with a Falco in his grip. He appeared to be gauging the sound on the new PA system making its debut that night. A private security company handled the door and I thought did a job representative of what Todd P’s traditional hospitality would call for but with the sanctioned-venue ban on outside alcohol.
While the show had long been “sold-out,” it was comfortably non-congested.
What made Market Hotel more legit structurally in terms of licensure and acceptance by the city? The only really major difference I noticed on this first visit in terms of safety/access was a second entry/exit.
Sheer Mag was great.
Singer/songwriter Christina Halladay lunged toward the crowd up front several times to emphasize parts of tunes that carried either anger or extra intensity as on Hard Loving: “She give me hard lovin’ baby – and I’m hard on you,” belted Halladay. The “She” in hard lovin’ references Halladay’s Mom who happened to be in the audience for this show, just two days before Mother’s Day. Between songs, Christina Halladay presented her mother with a wrapped bundle of flowers. Halladay grew up in Suffolk County. She is yet another great rock and roller who was nurtured in part by her choice to attend college at SUNY-Purchase. Sheer Mag is based in Philly.
My pal Jacques and his friends in France have booked Sheer Mag on an incredible early June triple-bill in Toulouse (White Fence and Cavern of Anti-Matter also will play). Two days after the Toulouse show, Sheer Mag performs at the This Is not a Love Song Festival in nearby Nimes.
Sheer Mag’s set at Market Hotel ran about 40 minutes. Since there is no back stage – or place for the band to duck out without walking through the entire audience – the moments preceding the encore featured a group huddle on stage.
Early in the band’s set, there were a couple of times that fans threw debris on stage. I couldn’t tell whether this was an act of hostility or perhaps a punkish demonstration of support. Either way, the band completely ignored it.
Tickets for both the Woods and Sheer Mag shows were priced under twenty bucks with fees.
-The impressive Kentucky Derby win for Nyquist failed to make the back pages of both big NYC tabloid daily newspapers. Bartolo Colon’s first career home run pushed the Derby winner off a page often reserved for whoever wins the Run for the Roses. The main Daily News story on the Derby was written under a byline that said: “Staff and Wire Reports.” In the days prior to the big race, both newspapers all but ignored it. Horse racing coverage in this city has pretty much vanished at the Post and Daily News unless a Triple Crown is on the line. Melissa Hoppert and Joe Drape churned out a few items in the race’s run-up for the Times but not a whole lot in the way of nuts and bolts. One of the most ridiculous storylines advanced by the few who were there filing stories from Louisville (including copy from writers Pat Forde and Katherine Terrell) was the notion that American Pharoah’s Triple Crown win last year had left the 2016 Derby with a “hangover” or somehow left us all feeling subdued or less excited going into this one. Bob Baffert started this silly idea and writers seemed to run with it. Baffert guided Pharoah’s 2015 crown run and came to this year’s Derby without a star runner. So, while he personally may have felt different this year vs. last – there’s no reason for him and the racing media to project that on the entire sport’s fandom. Each Derby brings a fresh crop and excitement about the race regardless of what happened the year before.