The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle - Redlight - Monday, April 2, 2012

The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle – Redlight

Monday, April 2, 2012

Wander into the Redlight for the intriguingly named New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle. Gathered into the corner are Lyman Lipke on bass, Josh Cook on tenor sax, Blake Angelos on piano and Julian McDonough on drums. Julian thanks the capacity crowd for coming out to hear jazz on a Monday night and says “this is not your ordinary wedding set jazz. You might not like it. That's ok. We love you.” 

They kick everything off with Brandford Marsalis’ Impaler. Walking bass, rolling sax. Starts off swinging like a beautiful gate, getting louder, perfectly rough around the edges like a Zen rock garden. Josh’s sax arpeggios rolling off each other, stacking up within the music, dropping into Blake’s piano solos, burning up the keys. Lyman’s bass and Julian’s drums steady as a clock at this point, fast and with sharp attack. Julian looks happy as the sound gets more aggressive, drumming with obvious joy. 

This music is exceptional, like nothing you have heard in Bellingham, intricately structured Jazz played with tremendous talent and passion. By the time they get to another Marsalis piece called Wolverine, there is a sense that the band getting to know the ground: comfortably walking around, talking to each other, stepping away from the center, Julian breaks into a solo. There is a blue electric energy pulsing in the room. Lightning barely contained. You feel the ground has cracks it. Volcanic. 

By the time the group breaks into a George Garzone song, what is most evident is how much joy and sheer delight they have with their relationship to the challenging and difficult – but beautiful – music. When someone in the crowd yells out "knife fight" and the band erupts into a sudden musical chaos followed by a swinging elevator ride on LSD version of The Girl From Ipanema. Halfway through that someone else yells out another knife fight and more chaos, followed by a smoking version of Satin Doll. Thus the mystery is revealed behind The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle.

The next piece is Brandford Marsalis Jabberwocky. Josh’s Sax kicks the bed off the frame. The music driven by an eccentric pulse, staccato riffs knifing through the room, Julian’s drums working through difficult sentences with odd punctuation. The group fills in exclamations and interrogatives that are seemingly misplaced, commas and dashes, then run ons and every participle is dangling and ing ing is going on and on in a beautiful spasm of the sheer joy of unbounded music. The meaning is between thought and expressions, always somewhere beyond, always elusive but tied down to the mast of an occult melodic structure known perhaps only to the musician, evocations of the sublime. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Into the second set. Humpty Dumpty. Josh’s sax is on fire. Molten. There is a synchronistic synergy between drum and bass. Blake’s piano is rolling down the scales like a pachinko ball, always bouncing into the unexpected, attacking the complicated piano structures with a sweet nonchalance. Breaking into a Julian solo with uncanny syncopation, erupting into virtuoso displays of rhythm before they all come back around into the "normal.” 

Segue into the Thelonious Monk standard Well You Needn’t.  An amazing bass solo by Lyman. Beautiful. Hands hitting the strings like swallows over a telephone line. Flutterings and snaps. Then Julian with the mallets on the drums. Just perfect. The essence of musical wit: brief like a broken haiku. Each player seems to be positing musical questions to the others, riddles, weird musical propositions, inside jokes.

Outside of the Blue Horse, it has been hard to discover great jazz, challenging jazz; true to its roots in that it is improvisational, spontaneous, alive, cut loose; but this is it. Here’s to hoping the Redlight keeps up The New Monkey Knife Fight Improvisatory Struggle every Monday night. 

The Librarians with Jan Peters at the Honey Moon - March 31, 2012

The Librarians with Jan Peters at the Honey Moon 

Saturday, March 31, 2012


You can never go wrong with The Librarians. Anytime I have ever seen them, they are always laid-back, relaxed and beautiful performances. Always intimate and always engaging. The show in the warm presence of the Honey Moon on the sweet new sound system was no exception.

Carly James' voice sounded like a relaxed Neko Case. Hypnotic. A voice you hear as you wake up from a dream and try to figure which reality it was from. Kevin's guitar playing framed and accented perfectly, purring like a cat under the covers. Ivy's percussion was right on, perfect volume for the room and turned throughout the music like pebbles in a Zen rock garden. Sitting in on keyboards was the always excellent Jan Peters, who traded off solos and filled in the spaces with grace and charm.

But the night belonged to Joel Ricci. His muffled trumpet was full of a mournful and sublime sound that worked its way through every song with pure grace. Simultaneously reminiscent of Miles Davis and Calexico. During the convivial drinking song about Route 66, he walked out into the crowd, toasting with one hand, playing trumpet with the other. Another great show by one of Bellingham's best bands.

Havilah Rand and The Ames at the Redlight – Saturday, March 31st, 2012

Havilah Rand From the soundtrack of the movie "Leading Ladies"

Havilah Rand  and The Ames at the Redlight

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Havilah Rand, briefly returned from Texas via Thailand, stands in the red-toned atmosphere of the Redlight surrounded by a standing room only crowd. The first song opens with Blake Angelos’ plaintive piano. Then Havilah’s smoky honeyed voice is there like an old friend, comforting and beautiful. Behind her, her longtime accompanist on guitar, Phil Sottile seems to spin evocative threads of musical meaning out of the tapestry of time. She tells us that most of these songs are new, composed on her travels, but like all good music, they have a quality of always having been a part of her sets. They sound right and true, centered and connected. With the song, “The Rest of Your Life,” there seems to be more sensuality to her voice, a depth of experience that I haven’t heard before. Her guitar playing, overlooked at times because of the strength of her voice, is exceptional. 

She follows with the songs, “Peil” and one called either “Six Petals” or “Lies.” Both are extraordinary and fresh, performed with easy talent. After the forth song, there is a sort of new vulnerability, an openness, something unidentifiable in her singing, some artifact of travel, of being unhoused, extraterritorial. It creates a strangeness in the music that instantly locks the listener in, that resonates with authenticity and lived experience. “Bengalese Butterflies” sounds perfect – especially Phil and Blake shining in between Havilah’s singing. On “Spider,” Phil’s playing is particularly haunting and evocative. 

Setting down her guitar for the last song, she simply stands there and sings. With talent. With grace. Smiling. Her voice full of freedom.  

http://www.havilahmusic.com/

Year of the Rat by The Ames live at The Jet 1/4/13 from Lively Sound on Vimeo.

Next up are The Ames, a three-piece with Michael Lanz on drums, Dan Swan on bass and Sam Carlton holding down principal vocals, piano, banjo, harmonica and kazoo. They start off with a song called “Scratch the Night:” a percussive piano driven piece with drums and bass underneath. Sam Carlton’s voice moves easily around early Tom Waits, Britt Daniels from Spoon and aspects of Jeff Tweedy. But it is unique and interesting, dynamic unto itself, engaging. Everyone seems to get on the same pony with the song, “So Many Ways I Can Make Your Skin Bleed.” After that, no one in the crowd was going to leave until the band stopped playing. 

“Rusty LaRue” demonstrated a fine sense of narrative songwriting and you had to imagine Fred Snodgrass smiling. Then Sam shifted from piano to banjo, picking the strings with a unique skill that made it sound as if a guitar was playing underneath the voice of the banjo, making the instrument do things it doesn’t normally do. Aspects of Bela Fleck. Nice. 

The second half of the set was marked by a sort of gypsy style klezmer kazoo song, waking up the midnight crowd. Then the song, “Fish Out of Water.” A lamp in the window behind the drums and beautiful beautiful playing in silhouette. A lonely song aching with nostalgia. And as with all good music, you didn’t want any of it to ever end.

http://theames.bandcamp.com/

The Good Time Girls Present: An Old West Variety Show - Blue Horse Gallery - Friday, February 17th, 2012

The Good Time Girls Present: An Old West Variety Show - Blue Horse Gallery

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Count on the irrepressible Good Time Girls, Marissa McGrath and Sara Holodnick, to stage a variety show in the manner it might have been performed in an Old Western town. Regardless of whether or not they are talking about brothels, serial killers or Bellingham's Historical Identity, the Good Time Girls consistently manage to educate and entertain in best ways possible.

The tables at the Blue Horse are littered with cards and gold coins. An old piano sways drunkenly just off stage. After a short welcoming introduction by Sara and Marissa, the evening gets off to a nice start with a beautiful woman singing a jazzy song about all the clothes her man bought her before he abandoned her. As the song progresses, off goes the clothes down to a tasteful peignoir. Everybody seemed to stop talking around then.

Next up Liz Jennings performed a dramatic reading of a Robert Service poem. “O haggard, haunted, hidden One / What see you in the dying year?” Absolutely beautiful. Following her is a haunting fiddle piece by Eric Chabot that seems to transform all the lights to lambent flame and fill the outer dark with a lonely apprehension. It put a stillness in the room that lent considerable authenticity to the notion that you might actually be sitting in an Old West Saloon. Then the beautiful, bountiful Dirty Bird Cabaret appeared out the wings like a flamboyance of flamingos, taking over the Blue Horse, frolicking amidst the crowd and shaking it all over the stage. After that, what more could anyone do that take a quick break.

Liz Jennings returned to humorously explain melodrama with ample crowd participation. She had the crowd in the palm of her hand. Marvin kept up a beautiful sonic atmosphere on the piano working through several ragtime pieces with grace and ease. At one point, a drunk man, a Gen. S. Casey, from backwoods East Texas stumbled on to the stage and attempted to recite a tedious poem by Charles "Bonesy" Jones about moral luck and stricken jack rabbits. Thankfully, he was shot and kicked off stage by one of the Good Time Girls.

The Dirty Birds seemed to appear from nowhere at regular intervals, lighting the crowd on fire and being generally appropriately inappropriate. After Eric Chabot returned to the stage and played another sublime piece, Anneka Morgan took the stage to sing an opera piece that had Arthur, the owner of the Blue Horse, considering making one night of the week an opera night. Anneka’s singing was terribly beautiful and happily sad, executed with elegant talent. Marvin’s accompaniment was subtle and perfect. The evening seemed to gather around the moment, time fading, as a beautiful woman poured out her soul through a song on a stage some Old Western town.







Sarah Goodin - Honey Moon - January 27, 2012

Sarah Goodin - Honey Moon

January 27, 2012

Sarah Goodin has a voice that will break your heart. It is a voice that opens songs up like a lost jewelry box full of forgotten memories. It is a voice that curls right up in your ear like some favorite childhood animal and suddenly gains access to all of your heartstrings. She is standing there under the soft light at the Honey Moon unassuming and humble in all her words of introduction and thanks. And then, it is as if someone poured honey from the most beautiful and saddest bees in the world directly into your skull and filled you full of the sweetest sorrow you have ever known. It is just beautiful and heartbreaking and everything the music should be. Redemptive. Pure. Without it, life would be a mistake.

 She starts off on the shining new sound system at the Honey Moon with a conversation stopping a cappella interpretation of the eerie eden ahbez song Nature Boy. That was it: from the first few words of the song, the room became utterly quiet to listen to Sarah sing. She is one of those rare singers whose voice conveys warmth, vulnerability and strength at the same time. There is a natural intimacy to her delivery that makes you feel as if she is singing directly to you. As she eases through a beautiful set of songs, Red Right Ankle by the Decemberists (plaintive evocations in “we are bound by symmetry”), Man in the Long Black Coat (like you are hearing it for the first time), Traveling Woman by Bat for Lashes (aching with sorrow) up to Cole Porter’s You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To (the spectre of Billie Holliday), there is that rare and stunning quality that all great singers have: it is as if each of these songs are hers. Each is performed with such authentic beauty that it takes you just a moment to realize that they are covers. But it doesn’t matter, really. She just owns them all tonight. The stillness and reverence of the crowd in the packed room is impressive. There were points during her performance of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah where the crowd is just brought to a point of utter stillness by The Voice. Her guitar playing is deceptively accomplished, the perfect accompaniment.

 She sang several originals that wetted your appetite for more. She mentioned a forthcoming EP set to arrive sometime in March. She could’ve sold one to everyone in the room this night. One of her originals, No Matter What They Say of Love, sounded like a waltz out of a fevered dream of nostalgia, the ghost of a piano and vast rooms full of mirrors, the whisper of a thousand dances long since completed, memories floating through her melody like the pages of a love letter lost in the wind. Words fail. Her voice and the music transcend. Beautiful.

https://www.facebook.com/SarahGoodinMusic

Sarah Goodin at the Black Drop Coffeehouse

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown – December 23rd, 2011

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown
December 23, 2011 - source

Black Breath, Leatherhorn, Beattofuckingdeath – Shakedown

December 23rd, 2011

Beattofuckingdeath. The Germanic Teutonic pulse thundering under Set H’s sticks. Jeff Debock dedicating songs to Jon Benet Ramsey, himself, berating the crowd to get fucking stupid, reeling into the crowd gathered around their set-up in front of the stage, moving from surreal banter to full throated scream. Short explosive pieces, not songs, more like deconstructions of silence, Zach’s guitar creating violent feedback laden odes to the joke of the world. Debock dressed in an outlandish Antarctic pimp suit careening around like a skeletal windmill covered with meat, a psychotic pinwheel spinning off sprays of blood/ rage filled vocals into the crowd, all seeming like they would like to take a step or two back. You wonder, maybe worry, that Debock is holding razors in his hand, ready to gut the first row because they aren't being "rowdy" enough.

The redemption of Leatherhorn. Hooded figures working obscurely on the stage drenched in blood red light, skull lamps glowing in either side. Like a chainsaw through sheet metal, Leatherhorn begins. Jeff’s vocals rise up operatic over the metal, moving through time changes, melodic warps and slides. Driven by Clapper’s relentless bass and Noah’s machine gun artillery drumming, they launch into “Meet the Beast.” This is war music. No quarter. Just beautiful slaughter. A musical analogy to the annihilation of the listener. Sean and Nathan’s guitars spit hot white arc light from the welded metal. Imagine all the lost souls in hell given one last chance to play their pain. Picture a horse ridden to death and then kicked to a bass beat like the thunder of the Gotterdammerung.

Lightning burning into the brain, frying out neurons. There is good metal and great metal. Then there is apocalyptic metal. Leatherhorn: cutting the head off of the pale horse, calling down the wrath of the gods, destroying mountains metal.


http://leatherhorn.bandcamp.com/


Black Breath wastes no time. Volcanic rumblings from Elijah’s bass and Jamie’s drums. The sound of flesh screaming across metal strings, pounding like the last heart beats of a dying world. Mark and Eric’s guitars wailing through arpeggios, the ghost of complex classical music buried under the rumbling of enormous machines, Segovia and Bach spinning in their graves until the earth catches fire.

Fresh off a European tour, Black Breath’s sound is tight and professional. Polished. Practiced. Cut down from the raw like a diamond. Neil launches into one song after another. No waiting for applause. A relentless onslaught of beautiful noise. They have a sound you want to call heavy, but it is heavier than that. A black hole of musical gravity. Dense compaction, music reduced down to a singularity. A still point of a burning universe.

Imagine a theater of anatomy constructed of sound, where a corpse/song is being dissected with sardonic enthusiasm. What is irrelevant is thrown splattering against the walls, what matters is held up like the still beating heart of a recently slaughtered animal. Primal music. Driving towards the necessity of sacrifice, of any sort of intense gesture, authentic act for the times. The music is out to crucify everyone here, nailing the flesh to the walls of the Shakedown. An aural assault, notes piercing through the skull to impale the brain on violent hooks, songs suspended over the crowd like the Cherokee sun dance practitioners, hanging in the dark shadows of the Shakedown, dripping blood, eyes rolled up in the skull, dreams of violent ecstasy. Sort of music Georges Bataille would play while desecrating corpses.


http://blackbreath.com/

Mo-Down at the Shakedown: The Gallus Brothers and Crow Quill Night Owl, Dirty Bird Cabaret, Owen & His Checkered Past, The Good Time Girls - December 3rd, 2011

source

Mo-Down at the Shakedown: The Gallus Brothers and Crow Quill Night Owl, Dirty Bird Cabaret, Owen & His Checkered Past, The Good Time Girls

December 3rd, 2011

So this is the event where men shavedown their faces at the beginning of the month, then grow out and groom their moustaches until the end of the month where the best moustaches are celebrated and awarded. Team MoLove promoted the event, along with the ebullient and pulchritudinous Good Time Girls, as a means of promoting awareness of prostate cancer and also to benefit Mount Baker Planned Parenthood.

The Shakedown has been transformed into a twisted Western saloon, with the Good Time Girls and the Dirty Bird Cabaret dressed in full-out 1890’s attire. Some genius welded together a beautiful mustache ride / see-saw (now above the bar at the Copper Hog) and several were taking “rides.” There was also a photobooth set up to one side to record the mustached moments.

Owen and His Checkered Past set the perfect musical tone with mandolin mountain blues. Owen up there with a suitcase kick drum strumming out a tight staccato rhythm singing in a clean backcountry front porch style reminiscent of Doc Watson or a long lost descendent of the Carter Family. The sound is excellent. Lyrics absolute 21st century. Name checking Derrida during the excellent song, “Upstanding Citizen Blues.” Later, Roger comes up with a banjo and closes out the set with people on their feet dancing like it was 1899.


http://owenandhischeckeredpast.com/

The Good Time Girls then corralled all the mustached men onstage for a best mustache contest. About a dozen guys all with fine examples of facial hair do their best. But one guy towards the end, with a somewhat unimpressive ‘stache, unbuttons his shirt and then just the top part of his pants to reveal a perfectly shaved mustache in his pubic hair. Of course, there’s your winner.

The Gallus Brothers and Crow Quill Night Owl embody the spirit of a timeless American style music. You imagine a troupe of traveling musicians, well rehearsed, singing songs that are as comfortable and familiar as an old pair of boots. Working songs that walk into your brain like an old church hymn and then proceed to tell the entire congregation of mind the dirtiest joke they know. All with a disarming smile. Devin Champlin playing guitar with old time expertise and Lucas Hicks doing his usual magic with the spoons and other percussive items. Kit Stovepipe on guitar and Alex on banjo add depth and the mystery of sublime accompaniment.

http://gallusbrothers.blogspot.com/
http://thecrowquillnightowls.bandcamp.com/

The Dirty Bird Cabaret was also full swing, dancing on the bar, kicking up the bloomers, hanging from the rafters, gyrating on upturned glasses and being generally provocative and beautiful. Along with the Good Time Girls and the general assembly of everyone having a great time, the Shakedown Movember was a great event for good causes. Here’s to more events the celebrate facial hair.