Author Archives: Roger Catlin

Rhett Miller always looks game for a show, whether or not he’s with his great band The Old 97’s, or even after experiencing vocal cord surgery. Kicking off his latest tour last week at Union Stage in Washington, DC, he came with his acoustic guitar and high energy gumption, his orange guitar case behind him spelling out his name, but also, crucially, the name of his regular band.

So instead of stressing his latest solo album, A Lifetime of Riding by Night, he tore into the classics from his band, from “Jagged” and “Won’t Be Home” to start to “Question” and “Timebomb” at the end. And a room full of longtime fans was happy to sing along at every turn. Fully three-fourths of the 21-song set were Old 97’s classics, and nobody was complaining.

As chief songwriter and singer for the band, Miller, of course, can carry off acoustic versions of them, given that the playing is aggressively energetic. And it’s fun to hear them presented in such close proximity. But it wasn’t as if the band, recently given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Music Honors, wasn’t missed. Driving acoustic guitar is fine, but it can’t provide the sonic blast that Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea, and Philip Peeples bring to performances.

Still, the ever-youthful-looking Miller at 55 did what he could to provide engaging stagecraft by wagging his locks or windmilling chords on his guitar. Impending holidays gave him an excuse to bring out a couple of songs the band provided for The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Holiday Special, portraying an alien band called Bzermikitoolok and the Knowwheremen, playing both “I Don’t Know What Christmas Is (But Christmastime is Here)” and “Here it Is Christmastime,” which Kevin Bacon sang in the special.

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One would hope that talented musicians with a following are adequately rewarded to sustain their art, without having to take on odd jobs.

So it may be a little dispiriting to learn that Jens Lekman, the Swedish singer-songwriter with a singular style, has augmented his career by playing more than 130 weddings over the years. Maybe he does it for the extra income, or perhaps he’s gathering material. Most likely it’s because he’s a nice guy with a disarmingly direct connection to his fans (he vows to respond to all fan emails on his website, and I can attest to his generosity in that he played a benefit concert for one of my daughter’s friends badly hurt in a car accident years ago).

At any rate, his time playing for couples on their big day led to more of his own creativity with his latest album, Songs for Other People’s Weddings. It’s a concept album about a fictional wedding singer, named J, who goes a step further by first meeting with couples, learning their stories, and writing new wedding songs just for them.

In the story, he meets a girl also identified with an initial, V, and follows her from Gothenburg, Sweden, to New York, only to see them break up. If it sounds like a good romantic yarn, that’s what the popular young adult fiction author David Levithan (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) thought as well. Together, they came up not only with lyrics and direction for the album, but Levithan also wrote his own novel with the same name, Songs for Other People’s Weddings, issued in tandem with the book.

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Jorma Kaukonen doesn’t turn 85 until next month, but the celebrations have already begun, with the first of a handful of concerts that cover his lengthy career alongside a half dozen notable and rotating guest stars. His hometown show at the Warner Theatre in DC brought his longtime collaborator Jack Casady on bass, along with Jim Lauderdale, Steve Kimock, Cindy Cashdollar, harmonica player Ross Garren, and drummer Justin Guip in various configurations.

Kaukonen is the giant around whom all the music revolved, though he began the show solo. With his white hair and beard, he resembles something of a sage of the guitar by now. And though the world got to know him as the wild-haired young electric guitarist that powered Jefferson Airplane, he sat to exclusively fingerpick his acoustic guitar, as he did when he started the offshoot Hot Tuna with his old high school buddy and Airplane mate Casady more than half a century ago.

Kaukonen’s vocals aren’t as smooth or supple as they once were—indeed, he’s prone to adding little grunts and un-huhms at the end of a lot of lines in the manner of the old country blues players he so emulates. The clear emphasis, though, is on the finger work, which is nimble as ever, flying through songs that inspired him—particularly those from the bluesman Reverend Gary Davis, three of whose songs he performed, including “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” “I first started playing this song at 19 or 20,” he said with a smile. “It has a lot more meaning to me today.”

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For her big headlining tour, singer-songwriter S.G. Goodman, whose music combines Southern gothic, indie confession, and art rock, set up recorded ambient music beds. The “transition tracks,” as she called them, were to play keep the sonic groove going between songs as she and her four-piece band shifted from one song to another, largely from her latest album, Planting by the Signs.

It was meant to create seamless atmospherics between her arresting, slow-burning songs. Also: “They keep me from talking.” But early on in her show at the Atlantis in DC, she had her keyboardist cut the tracks off. Goodman, who is equally entertaining as a droll raconteur, knew what she had to say would last longer than interstitial music.

She only had a few of these spoken segments. In the first, she admitted she was going to play a lot from the new album. In another, she tried to follow up on instructions for the disposable cameras she had distributed before the show in an effort to get some authentic, non-digital, visual record of her tour from the very fans in her audience for a promotional zine her record distribution company was doing to get attention for her latest work.

She also spoke about the stark contrast she was finding (and everyone in the audience knew) between the “hellhole” descriptions of cities like DC that her mother feared, and the quite opposite actuality.

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Dave Alvin donned a huge Stetson hat for his show at the Hamilton last weekend.

He has worn many hats, figuratively, since making himself known through blistering guitar work in The Blasters 45 years ago. There was a long solo career that alternately dipped into traditional folk, the mythos of California, and the joys of band work over a dozen albums. He filled in for a bit in the punk band X and its country offshoot, The Knitters. And he’s been touring with his Texas friend Jimmie Dale Gilmore, with whom he’s recorded a pair of satisfying albums.

He’s out now with yet another outfit, The Third Mind, a kind of supergroup of strong Golden State musicians whose logo and approach lean on the psychedelic. And while electric guitars, improvisational jams, and a proximity to the Grateful Dead ethos are part of it, the main conceit of the band, Alvin says, was to go into a studio with seasoned enough musicians that when you decide on a song to cover—usually from the rich vein of San Francisco folk-rock of the late 1960s—everybody immediately dug in.

It was an approach used by Miles Davis in the studio—turn on the tape and see what happens. And though what they do isn’t jazz, the same free approach applies for The Third Mind, whose band title even suggests: Don’t think about it, let it flow. Already, there have been three studio albums from the group since 2020, though touring hasn’t been as common because of the band members’ demands elsewhere. So it was a delight to see them in a DC club, conjuring uncommon approaches to deep nuggets being brought to light.

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There’s no fanfare when Destroyer takes to the stage. Indeed, bandleader Dan Bejar looks at the crowd warily before turning to his six-piece band to begin conjuring its unique sound.

Nowhere near as metal as its name might suggest, Destroyer has instead traveled intriguing roads of pop and poetry over 14 albums to create its own kind of shambling majesty. At their stop at the Black Cat in DC on a Tuesday night, they concentrated on the most recent output of their 30-year history, quite naturally emphasizing four from its latest, Dan’s Boogie. That’s another misleading title, of course, because what they come up with is no mere barroom hootchie coo.

On record, the Destroyer sound of late is sophisticated, a smartly navigated pop of strong melody and a touch of electronica, over which Bejar’s musings intersect, with a kind of observational poetry much more thought-provoking than the lush musical bed would indicate. “Your entrance was its own Red Scare,” he began, amid the grandeur of the opening, “The Same Thing as Nothing at All.” “You quote unquote the French au pair.”

Later comes the sung chorus, “The chandelier struggles to light up the night / Pride comes before the fall / to have loved and lost/is the same thing as nothing at all.” The Pet Shop Boys come to mind in some of this, in part because of Bejar’s penchant for arch and detached spoken word in his Canadian tenor. There’s a certain weariness at the center of it, belied by the buoyant melodies that often build to crashing chords.

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Looking like none other than history’s John Brown, with his long grey beard and wild hair, returning to Virginia to raise cane, the artist known as Iron & Wine actually has a smooth and intellectually frisky approach to his music.

In his fine show with I’m with Her on a steamy night at Wolf Trap, Sam Beam, who goes by the name Iron & Wine, brings a chamber folk backing to his striking songs. Instead of retribution, he brought a benediction to open with the repeated chorus of “God, give us love in the time that we have” from a 20-year-old song “On Your Wings.”

Religion would come up occasionally as he went along, but was overtaken by rural scenes and memory, singing of cornfield crows, baling wire, and autumn leaves. There’s a specificity in his songs, and unexpected philosophical turns. As such, there’s a playfulness, too, using a vocabulary unique in his particular realm of alt folk.

The sound was enhanced considerably by his band, with Beth Goodfellow’s tasty touch on drums, Katie Ernst on bass and backing vocals, Rob Burger on keyboards and Lauren Baba on violin. They all worked under some duress, due to the 80-degree temperatures after sunset with ample humidity. “You guys have to get your A.C. fixed, man,” Beam deadpanned.

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Joan Osborne is one of hundreds of artists who have sung the music of Bob Dylan. In her case, she included a version of his then-recent “Man in the Long Black Coat” on her Grammy-nominated debut album Relish 30 years ago. Dylan noticed and invited her to duet with him on a remake of “Chimes of Freedom” for a TV miniseries. They’d share the stage for a series of shows with the Grateful Dead, and he’d remain a touchstone for her recordings ever since.

In 2017, she recorded a full album of Songs of Bob Dylan and toured to promote it, bringing a cast of guest stars with her. One night’s recording, which featured Robert Randolph, Jackie Greene, and Levon Helm’s daughter Amy Helm, was released in April as Dylanology (Live). So Osborne is on tour to promote that—again with a stellar band, but not the same one on the record (and for that matter, repeating only three songs from the live album).

Closing out the latest Joan Osborne Sings the Songs of Bob Dylan tour at the tasteful Hamilton in DC, Tuesday, she was flanked by a formidable female front line. On one side was Cindy Cashdollar the slide and dobro master who’s played with everyone in Austin, where she lived for 23 years, to Woodstock, NY, where she now presides. She added just the right coloring to tunes, and a bit of authenticity—she played on the original Dylan recording on “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” on Time Out of Mind, as well as the live version here.

On the other side of Osborne was Gail Lynn Dorsey, the distinctive bassist who has played with everyone from Tears for Fears and The B-52’s to David Bowie for nine years; her last appearance in DC was singing “Life on Mars” at a David Bowie tribute performance of his Blackstar album a year ago at the Kennedy Center. Besides providing a solid and palpable bottom to the night’s Dylan repertoire, Dorsey also showed some strong, soulful vocals by taking the lead on “Lady Lay Lay” and dueting with keyboardist Will Bryant on “Shelter from the Storm.”

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PHOTO: RYAN BAKERINK | There’s never a power shortage when Bob Mould comes to town. With a snarling guitar and yowling voice, he continues to electrify audiences just as he did 45 years ago when he was fronting the potent Twin Cities trio Hüsker Du. Back at the Black Cat in DC, where he’s played solo shows in the past, he was back in top-notch trio form with longtime backers Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums.

In a blistering 27-song set that seemed to charge by in no time, Mould played with a fervor and simplicity that echoed his earliest work, or that of his ‘90s group Sugar. On the current swing, he’s blending the sharp, simple songs from his latest album Here We Go Crazy with an equal half dozen from its 2020 predecessor, Blue Hearts. Still, the solid set began with a pair from the 2012 album that first constituted the present trio, Silver Age.

At 64, with a silvery, well-trimmed beard and professorial black horn-rimmed specs, Mould looks very down to business. But he’ll attack his guitar with a backspin riff that may unleash a sudden one-man mosh pit across the stage, evoking an inner passion.

At one point, he unspooled a windmill on his instrument, putting him in the tradition of rockers going back to Pete Townshend and Keith Richards. He hinted at one point that the sudden cutting of the air conditioning may have been to aid his vocals (if so, he wouldn’t be the first singer to request that accommodation). “Hot enough for you?” he asked the sellout crowd, adding, “The hotter it gets, the better I sing.“

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Alejandro Escovedo’s solo return to The Hamilton in DC Saturday began with the ferocity and volume of his earliest punk days, about which he was singing. It ended with songs performed so softly, and without amplification, you practically had to hold your breath to hear.

It was the last night of a three week solo tour just before a full band slot at the New Orleans Jazz & Pop Festival May 1. And already he was ruminating about his next big project: looking back at 50 years in music, in song and story. Therefore, a big chunk of his solo show had to do with introducing songs, or groups of them, with detailed reminiscence of all the scenes he got to be part of.

That included opening the final Sex Pistols concert at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom and checking in with fellow Chelsea Hotel resident Sid Vicious before he was taken away in cuffs. Those stories took up the first several minutes of his set before he finally dove into a trio of songs that defined that era (and were written decades later), “Nuns Song,” “Chelsea Hotel ’78,” and “Sacramento and Polk.” The feedback in his guitar and the distortion of his voice through one of those vintage harmonica microphones helped recreate the aggression of those gritty songs.

Even when he switched to acoustic guitar, his songs had a strange electronic undertow, possibly pre-taped, that he has credited to Portland, OR. producer Brandon Eggleston. Lest you think he was dependent on surrounding electronics and effects boxes in lieu of a band, however, Escovedo unplugged entirely for a couple of songs he meant to sing while strolling through the audience. Logistics of the club meant he only just walked around the stage unamplified instead (and on only one side of the stage since his rig of guitars prevented him from strolling to the other side.

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Since it first formed 35 years ago at the University of Buffalo, Mercury Rev has gone through a lot of phases before settling into the kind of poetic grandeur it gave its high water mark, 1998’s Deserter’s Songs and that continues to inform their latest work, last year’s Born Horses.

It’s the kind of big, synth-washed saturation with guitar embellishment and booming drums that would satisfy an arena crowd. It was strange and wonderful, then, to see Mercury Rev in the first week of their tour playing a club as small as the Atlantis in DC. Bringing the same kind of theatricality to their performance that they’ve brought to their sound, the touring quintet assembled on stage to the strains of Ravi Shankar and an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry audiobook.

Frontman Jonathan Donahue, in a double-breasted coat, cap, and ascot, looked like a Pied Piper, using elaborate arm motions to swim through the sound or suddenly crouch to conduct or simply present the forces on either side of the stage, conjuring up their sounds like a wizard.

One was the only other original member of the band, Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak, in shades, playing an electric guitar that wasn’t so much individual notes or even chords, but more a cascade of glistening effects. Opposite him was the booming drums of Joe Magistro. Behind them, also in shades, were a pair of multi-instrumentalists, mostly working a pair of synthesizers, though Jesse Chandler also picked up an occasional sax or flute to bring something different to the mix.

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The cheers went up when Mike Watt loped on stage with his bass and his cane, en route to his chair. The beloved bassist from the Minutemen, Firehose, and endless collaborations, at 67 is a punk rock mainstay and hero, who despite the chronic knee problems that require the cane, still lays it down with verve and force, as he showed with the experimental power trio mssv, at the Pearl Street Warehouse in DC Friday.

The improvisatory outfit is led by bespectacled Knoxville guitarist Mike Baggetta, who first managed to convince Watt and no less than rock drummer Jim Keltner—who worked with Ry Cooder, most of the solo Beatles and was drummer for Traveling Wilburys—to join him for his solo album Wall of Flowers in 2019.

It worked so well, they wanted to tour but because of Keltner’s other studio commitments, he was replaced on the road, and on subsequent group recordings by Stephen Hodges, an accomplished drummer in his own right, who had worked with Watt on his album Contemplating The Engine Room in 1997, and had played on several records behind Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, John Hammond and others.

To open the Pearl Street show, Hodges joined in the spirit of experimentation by dragging chains across his drum kit, adding to the string improvisations conjured up by Baggetta and Watt. It was one of several spots on the setlist that began with space for improv before they settled into any structures of a song. And even then, the tunes took some wild swings in dynamics.

For all the hit-and-miss variations, Baggetta restarted their second song of the set after a false turn. “It’s our first gig in DC,” he explained. He wanted to get it right. Maybe because that song seemed perfect for the nation’s capital: “Hypocrite.”

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Patterson Hood has written hundreds of songs in his life, the best of which he’s performed with his band Drive-By Truckers for nearly three decades.

His latest batch were largely biographical musings, covering his coming of age period in Alabama. Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, his fourth solo outing, was eventually played in its entirety during the first of two sold out shows Saturday at The Atlantis, the cozy 9:30 Club anteroom in DC.

That it was “hours until” his 61st birthday Monday only seemed to further stoke his giddy nostalgia at his past, telling stories of being raised by grandparents and a great uncle in lieu of his teenage parents, all the parties he used to sneak into, the neighbors and adults he looked up to, the curve of the rural roads, and the general magic of childhood and the promises of adolescence. That he told the essence of his fondly-remembered stories before doing the songs kind of robbed the tunes of any surprise, but the thematic continuity of the show made it feel whole.

Hood sat for the entirety of the 19-song set, mostly playing a vintage Harmony acoustic that in its diminutive size made him look even bigger than he was. As on the album, he wasn’t strictly solo, but surrounded himself with able musicians.

Eschewing by large measure the rocking electric guitar crunch of his primary band, he relied instead on the buzzing drone of synth, a bit of mellotron, some sax and woodwinds, from the four piece touring band he called the Sensurrounders—two of whom were from Drive-By Truckers.

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Long-running rocker Chuck Prophet never lost his capacity for writing engaging tunes or shaking up his style as he does it. For his latest venture, Wake the Dead, he’s wedded his laconic lyric observations with the bright rhythms of cumbia, the Latin American musical style that originated from Colombia. With baselines not so far from reggae and stinging guitar that could be a kin to surf, fueled by a percussion-assisted beat, it’s a thoroughly pleasing, danceable sound to frame his familiar voice.

But with his show at The Hamilton in Washington on a frigid winter night last week, dancing was not possible. The space in front of the bandstand where fans have bopped for previous shows by Prophet and the Mission Express was blocked by gold circle tables extending all the way to the stage. Which may have made it more comfortable for the frankly older crowd on hand. But, like the all-seated duo show with his wife Stephanie Finch at the Kennedy Center last year, it kept the show from reaching quite the celebratory heights his band shows usually hit.

Nonetheless, the rock-cumbia connection bookended the set through some tasty covers—a bilingual blast of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” to open, and a can’t miss closer of Sam the Sham’s “Woolly Bully” as the final encore. The latter best employed the keening electronic organ and raspy vocals of Mario Cortez, amid his myriad percussive instruments.

As on the Wake the Dead album, he and two members of his usual band Mission Express, guitarist James DePrado and drummer Vincente Rodriguez, are augmented by a couple members from the Salinas, Calif., cumbia band ¿Quiensalve?—guitarist and keyboardist Alejandro Gomez and the multiinstrumental Cortez. And with the newly added bassist for the tour Mike Anderson, they’re touring as Chuck Prophet and His Cumbia Shoes.

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