SON VOLT, THE STATE ROOM, Friday, July 19, 9 p.m., Sold Out
I fell in love with Jay Farrar’s voice what seems like a million years ago, when he and Jeff Tweedy split songwriting duties in Midwestern alt-country upstarts Uncle Tupelo. Seeing that band live in a sparsely attended Monday night show at the Zephyr Club sealed the deal, and I stuck with Farrar after Uncle Tupelo split and he started Son Volt while Tweedy went on to form Wilco. Son Volt has remained the most steadfastly twangy in the intervening years; even as Farrar explored some sonic experimentation via soundtracks and solo albums, there’s no way to hear that voice and not think of classic country. That is certainly true on the band’s latest, Honky Tonk, an homage of sorts to the country sounds of the ’50s and ’60s, slathered in pedal-steel and fiddle, that is a natural follow-up to the band’s 2009 effort, American Central Dust. Colonel Ford, featuring some of Farrar’s bandmates, opens the show.
The best thing I can say about the David Byrne and St. Vincent show at Red Butte Garden Monday night is that my expectations were sky high, and the duo–backed by eight horn players and a couple other musicians–met and exceeded those expectations at every turn.
Drawing heavily from the 2012 album they made together, Love This Giant, Byrne and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark delivered a funk-filled, energetic gig sans any opening act, simply hitting the stage and knocking out about two hours of non-stop excellence. Highly choreographed excellence at that.
Opening with a couple of Love This Giant‘s best songs, “Who” and “Weekend in the Dust,” they rarely let up from the start, pausing occasionally to chat up the crowd, introduce band members or simply reorganize themselves–a necessity considering every song was a full song-and-dance production. They dotted the set with songs from both Byrne and Clark’s solo careers, as well as some Talking Heads classics that clearly thrilled the crowd.
After those opening two songs, each performer took on a song from their respective back catalogs, reimagining them thanks to the incredible horn section. For St. Vincent, it was a stellar take on “Save Me From What I Want,” and for Byrne it was “Strange Overtones” from his semi-recent collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.
Talking Heads “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” came seven songs in, giving older Talking Heads fans reason to rejoice, and experience a horn-driven arrangement that was every bit the equal of the original. Clark shined right after on a winning take of Love This Giant‘s “A Forest Awakes,” one of the more ornate songs the duo crafted for the release.
As the show proceeded through Talking Heads’ “Wild Wild Life” and St. Vincent’s “Cheerleader,” Byrne shed his jacket and jerkily moved around the stage with the band in measured, not quite graceful, dance moves while Clark tried to keep up with the maelstrom going on around her.
“I Should Watch TV” and “Outside of Space and Time” led into the first of two encores–the first of which included excellent versions of St. Vincent’s “The Party” and Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House”–before the entire band returned for a kinetic version of Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere.”
With the crowd on its feet and the rain having waiting til show’s end before drenching Red Butte Garden, Byrne and Clark closed up shop having delivered an exhilarating show that I would go see again tomorrow. If that’s not a testament to a show’s value, I don’t know what is.
Brandi Carlile has built an audience of die-hard lovers of her rootsy folk-rock through her constant touring, and it’s been a blast to see her develop from a club-sized opener to a headliner capable of selling out a venue like Red Butte Garden.
She’s also a regular presence on the Salt Lake City concert calendar, so the real reason I traipsed up the hill to the Red Butte amphitheater Sunday night wasn’t for another dose of Carlile–which certainly proved worthwhile, as you’ll see below–but to scope out the opening buzz-band The Lone Bellow (pictured).
The trio has a sound that you definitely wouldn’t peg for Brooklyn. Based in the intricate harmonies between its three members–guitarist/singers Zach Williams and Brian Elmquist, along with mandolin player/singer Kanene Pipkin–and featuring more than a dash of countrified twang, The Lone Bellow’s indie self-titled debut has garnered some rapturous reviews. And after seeing them do their thing live, there’s no reason to think they can’t grow into a headlining act themselves.
From their own stomping, energetic “Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold” to a winning cover of “Angel from Montgomery,” the trio delivered a strong set that left them sweat-soaked and got some in the crowd of Carlile fans on their feet and dancing by the end. Strong versions of “You Don’t Love Me Like You Used To,” “The One You Should’ve Let Go” and “Teach Me to Know” rounded out a solid opening stint. I generally prefer my country with a little more grit, and The Lone Bellow certainly is more slick than rootsy, but there was no denying the harmonies between the three members.
Carlile and her band delivered a rock-solid show, as we’ve come to expect from the singer from her past visits. Delving into material from each of her albums, Carlile had the crowd on its feet immediately with her opening blast of songs including “Hard Way Home,” “Raise Hell” and “Have You Ever?”
Noting that Red Butte Garden is one of her favorite tour stops helped ingratiate Carlile to the crowd–that that she needed to worry about it, because the sold-out show was packed with her people, ready to sing along and dance. “What Can i Say,” “How These Days Grow Long” and “Dreams”–abetted by amazing harmonies from her bandmates and songwriting partners Tim and Phil Hanseroth–all hit their mark. Same goes for her stark solo, acoustic cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
When Carlile’s full band was on stage, the mix of guitars, banjo and cello were the perfect bed for Carlile’s pliable, strong voice that is capable of everything from rock ‘n’ roll growls to plaintive, yearning ballads and countrified helps. Her voice is the true star of a Brandi Carlile show, and it was in fine form Sunday night.
Among the other highlights were “Closer to You,” “Keep Your Heart Young,” “If I Live to Be 100” and a pretty true-to-the-original cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”
DAVID BYRNE & ST. VINCENT, RED BUTTE GARDEN, Monday, July 15, 7:30 p.m., $55
David Byrne has collaborated with artists from all over the world since embarking on a solo career after his time in Talking Heads, and while his work with Brian Eno is arguably the most successful, his recent effort with indie-rock chanteuse St. Vincent (real name: Annie Clark) ranks right up there. Love This Giant, released last year, is a remarkably strong collection, and remarkably cohesive as well, considering the two traded music and lyrics across the Internet in constructing the thing. The brass-heavy collection makes for an interesting live show, which last year featured eight horn players, a keyboardist and drummer in addition to Byrne and Clark on guitars. Anyone who saw Byrne in his last visit to Red Butte Garden knows the man loves a theatrical production, and I’m anticipating the same for this show, which should feature a few Talking Heads and St. Vincent tunes, as well as a whole lot of Love This Giant.
Going into the Rodrigo y Gabriela show Friday night, I knew virtually nothing about the duo other than what I’d read–two Mexican guitar players, one man and one woman, and they broke into the public consciousness via the unlikely move of transplanting from Mexico City to Dublin.
Having now seen Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero do their thing live, it’s obvious why their music allowed them to not only break out in Europe, but go on to find an audience around the world. That audience clearly extends to Utah, even though Friday’s show at Red Butte Garden was their first appearance in Salt Lake City. A large segment was on their feet from the opening notes, ready to dance and rock out, and in my immediate vicinity, I spied barefoot hippies, mohawked punks and middle-aged beer-bellied yuppies equally enthralled by the musicians on stage.
Rodrigo y Gabriela proved that instrumental, acoustic music could genuinely rock; their love of thrash metal like old Metallica and Slayer came through in some of their furious riffing. Even before they started, the pre-show music selections indicated this would be anything by a mellow night of classical or jazz guitar, even though both genres regularly make their way into the duo’s music. Safe to say, the pre-show playlist was likely the first time Accept’s “Balls to the Wall” or Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name of” rang through the beautiful confines of the Red Butte Garden amphitheater.
The energy of those old guitar-heavy classics carried over to when Rodrigo y Gabriela took the stage and tore into selections from their self-titled debut album and 2009’s breakthrough, 11: 11. They played plenty of new songs, too, as both performers were sure to mention. And Gabriela was reassuring in introducing some new songs, asking the audience to put up with the unfamiliar.
“It’s good to keep your mind open,” Gabriela announced, “from a more universal perspective.”
Aided by a worthy light show and cameras that projected their fleet fingerwork to a screen behind the stage, Rodrigo y Gabriela put on an endlessly entertaining show. It was all the more exciting having gone in cold, with little experience of their music. That definitely won’t be the case next time they come around, and I’ll be there for sure–Rodrigo y Gabriela is not the kind of show you want to miss.
There were a few years in the late ‘80s when the teased hair, tight jeans and rock t-shirts lining Ogden’s Washington Boulevard gave it the air of a satellite Sunset Strip. And that scene was common across the country during the era when so-called “hair-metal” ruled the sales charts, the radio and MTV airwaves.
I was far from a full-fledged metalhead back then, but you can bet I was planted in front of the TV for Headbanger’s Ball once a week, soaking in every new clip from the likes of L.A. Guns, or Poison, or White Lion, or Anthrax.
Among the onslaught of testerone, Lita Ford’s videos stood out from the pack, and not just because the blonde bombshell was, shall we say, excessively easy on the eyes. Far more important than her looks were Ford’s guitar chops, and the former Runaway’s hook-filled tunes like “Kiss Me Deadly” and her power-ballad collaboration with Ozzy Osbourne, “Close Your Eyes Forever.”
When the hard-rock/metal scene took a commercial dive with the arrival of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Lollapalooza nation, Ford didn’t stick around for the fall, instead retreating to family life for a while before returning to the road a few years ago to play festivals and tours with other rock ‘n’ roll survivors.
On Saturday, Ford hits The Depot in Salt Lake City for a show that is the culmination of the day-long, biker-friendly “Ride for Life” benefit for Ronald McDonald House, playing with RATT. She is still touring in support of her strong Living Like a Runaway album released in 2012, and Ford will release a new live album this fall.
“It’s recorded in our hometown, Los Angeles,” Ford said of the new live disc in an interview. “It was a small club we played after coming off the Def Leppard tour. We wanted to do it for our local friends and fans, they needed something personal, so we gave it to them. We recorded it all in one go. It’s high energy, and classic!”
Ford played in Salt Lake City on that Def Leppard tour—it was the first show of the tour, in fact—and she remembers distinctly that it was “hotter than hell! We went on as the sun went down and the heat index was in the triple digits. The audience was burning up, too.”
Expect more of the same this weekend, even though the show will be inside the air-conditioned Depot. You throw a bunch of bikers who have been riding all day in a room, ready to party, and you have the makings of a scene. And it’s one Ford is looking forward to.
“I love the bikers!” she said, noting past gigs in Sturgis and at the Bike Festival in Daytona.
Undoubtedly, Ford will once again be one of the only ladies in the room Saturday night. One thing that hasn’t changed since the ‘80s metal heyday is that—despite the pioneering efforts of people like Ford, her former Runaways bandmate Joan Jett and a few others—hard rock remains largely a boys’ clubs.
“It just goes to show ya that playing a heavy sound with amazing musicians, singing and fronting the band, how difficult it truly is,” Ford said of the lack of other women on the hard-rock road.
Lita Ford and RATT play the “Ride for Life” show Saturday at The Depot at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door, and available at The Depot Website.
Daniel Nailen 