The Blogg

On Tuesday I saw The Deb Callahan Band, a blues quartet (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) from Philadelphia. They were enjoyable, but inferior to the similar Sarah Ayers Band across the board. Afterward was Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials from Chicago. Lil’ Ed plays slide guitar and sings, his brother plays bass, and he has a drummer and a second guitarist who also sings lead on a few songs. Lil’ Ed is not quite the vocalist that Frank Bey is, nor can he match the intensity of Tommy Castro’s guitar work. (To be fair, I’ve never been a big fan of slide players.) However, he and his band put on a good, entertaining show. I believe this is the first time I have seen someone seriously playing a bass using only the tip of his thumb to pluck the strings. As befits this suboptimal technique, his playing was adequate but in no way remarkable. After being told they could play one song as an encore, the band decided to play two. In response, the festival cut power to the mains at 11:00 sharp. (When you’ve been successfully running a festival in the middle of a city for 25 years, I guess you have to take your commitments to the city pretty seriously.) The band kept playing, and you can hear just the sound of the monitors and amplifiers on stage for part of the last song.

I had a ticket to see Earth, Wind, & Fire on Wednesday night. On Tuesday afternoon I had the following conversation with my wife. Rachel: “Do you need this receipt for your Boston tickets?” Me: “No” Shredder: “Whirr Crunch Grind” Me: “… but I do not my ticket for tomorrow night” Rachel: “Your what?” Fortunately, the actual receipt remained intact, and for a $5 reprinting fee the box office was willing to replace my ticket. Quite a generous policy, since I could have just given it to someone else.

This time I arrived plenty early and got a spot at the very front of the plebe section, in hopes that I would be better able to hear the band over the excitement of the crowd. For a while that worked, but about a half hour in a very intoxicated, very loud woman moved up beside me. She proceeded to talk, yell, and whistle her way through the concert. It would have been bad enough if she was someone dragged along by a friend, but she seemed to know the lyrics to every song. If it was not quite clear enough how much of a jerk she was, for the encore her party decoupled the barrier separating our section from the more expensive seats closer to stage and ran through. As I was leaving the show I was amazed by the volume of litter people left behind; the entire field was covered in trash. Not a good night for my opinion of humanity.

Fortunately, the concert itself was quite good. The band is still very tight and Philip Bailey’s voice is simply extraordinary. What impressed me most about the show is that they really stretched out. I would estimate that at least a third of the concert was, or at least appeared to be, improvisational solos. There are not many headlining bands that would have the nerve to do that, nor many audiences that would put up with it. Of course, they also played through all of the hits that I wanted to hear, including “Shining Star”, “In The Stone”, “September”, and “After The Love Is Gone”.

My Thursday evening started at Americaplatz with Last Waltz Ensemble, a tribute to Bob Dylan & The Band. If I am going to listen to this music I would rather that Dylan were singing it, but they also did a good show. Next up was Ryan Shaw, a powerful young soul singer with a rocking band. I try to avoid watching American Idol at any cost, but I think this guy would fit right in there. His guitarist supported the melody well without getting in the way and impressed when featured. His bassist was truly exceptional, adding a very funky undertone to the music and playing a solo that could be “Portrait Of Tracy” for a new generation.

On Friday I saw Fusion Jazz Trio, which consisted of a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player. Their music drifted into the wasteland of “smooth jazz” a few times, but was mostly good, straight-ahead jazz-rock fusion. The most interesting part of the show was the bassist playing entirely with his fretting hand for a few bars while kneeling and shaking hands with a very young fan. Then I moved on to Americaplatz to see The Difference, corporate band of Air Products, inc. and, according to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, the best corporate band in America as of 2001. They did a set of mostly classic rock covers well executed. My night ended at Festplatz, where Mingo Fishtrap, an 8-piece funk band from Texas. They were also quite good, and filled the dance floor to capacity.

Saturday started with Eric Steckel & CTB at Americaplatz, continued with Todd Wolfe at Americaplatz, and then Eric Steckel & CTB again at Liederplatz. Todd Wolfe and his band played a very psychedelic blues-rock that was ok but not my thing, and you could hardly hear his keyboard player. I did not pay close attention to the first Eric Steckel show, but was front and center for the second. The place was so packed that I was lucky to have found any seat; I only did so because a couple with a baby decided to leave. I was quite disappointed that the first hour of the second show was exactly the same setlist as the first show. Surely they have enough material to have put on 3 hours of unique music. At 18 years old, Eric is at least as good as I remembered him, and Craig Thatcher was thoroughly enjoying playing along with his former student. In fact, he was much more animated for this show than he had been fronting his own band a few days earlier. If you like good rocking blues music with some excessive guitar histrionics, you should really check this kid out.

On the last day of the festival I checked out the Sensational Soul Cruisers at a very wet and rainy Americaplatz. In addition to a full Motown-style band, the Soul Cruisers has four lead vocalists. While not quite what I was expecting, they were very polished. They had been scheduled for two sets with a half hour break in between, and while lightning caused an early closure of the stage, they were able to revise the schedule to play for nearly as long as originally intended. I then made my way over to Volksplatz to see the Blues Brotherhood, the local tribute to the Blues Brothers band and movie. I’ve seen them before, and they continue to be a competent but not fantastic band held together by good choreography and banter by “Jake” and “Elwood”. We made it to the Volksplatz trolley stop by 10:50, but at 11:20 no trolley had arrived and we began the long walk across the river.

For the second year in a row, I had a fantastic time at the festival for very little money. I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Musikfest in the newspaper and local blogs recently, but I have almost all positive things to say about it. I am very lucky indeed to have such a mostly free event so close to home. Now, to try to catch up on all the work I did not do during the last 10 days …

After spending part of nearly every day at Musikfest last year, hearing some great music, and eating some delicious, overpriced food, I had every intention of doing the same this year. So far I have been successful, although I’ve been arriving later than originally planned and trying to keep my concession purchases to a minimum.

On Sunday I went to Americaplatz in time to hear the Sarah Ayers Band (Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Drums). I had seen the band last year and gave them a fairly lukewarm review. I do not know if the change was in their personnel, their philosophy, or my tastes, but this year I thought they were excellent. Sarah has a powerful voice that is equally effective clear and pretty or raspy, but this I already knew. She had a great rhythm guitarist who put a psychedelic vibe over everything, although he was not an incredibly flashy lead player. It would probably be as accurate to say he plays the wah-wah pedal as to say he plays the guitar. Her bassist was also quite talented, and had a great growling tone that I would love to emulate. They played mostly well-written original tunes.

Next up was the great Tommy Castro Band, 5-piece (Vocals / Guitar, Tenor Saxophone, Trumpet, Bass, Drums) blues / rock / soul band that recently won Contemporary Blues Album of the Year at the Blues Music Awards (formerly the W. C. Handy awards). As anticipated, they blew me away. It took a couple of songs before they got the mix right, and even then I would have preferred a bit more of the bass and vocals, but it was close enough. They played a bit more than an hour and a half, with interruptions for a 15-minute break and replacement of a busted snare drum. Castro’s guitar playing is hot, and he knows how to work a crowd, but I find his vocal stylings to be just good enough. The rest of the band are good musicians who mostly stay in the background, as would be expected of professionals backing one of the biggest touring performers in the genre.

On Saturday I went back to see the last half hour or so of B C & The Blues Crew, another band that I recalled as being mediocre. In this case, my opinion has not changed in a year, although they did a nice stripped-down version of “Tequila Sunrise”. I was really at Banana Island to see Geoff Achison & The Souldiggers. Geoff may be the most unique guitarist I have ever heard. He started out doing
some remarkable things on acoustic guitar, a bit like Michael Hedges, and then continued these crazy techniques on electric as well. I can remember seeing the following things: detuning the instrument while playing it, lots of harmonics, slapping and tapping, pushing down on the strings behind the nut, varying picking from right beside the bridge to over the fretboard, and picking while simultaneously and continuously adjusting the volume and tone knobs on his guitar. Apparently he came up with these techniques while trying to imitate sounds heard on records but without knowledge of effects. Some may say that his playing depends
too much on gimmicks, but I found it all quite musical and entertaining.

It seems that Achison is old-school, and “The Souldiggers” consists of whatever session musicians he has hired to back him in the region where he is currently playing. In this case, he had previously played with drummer Chris Pagano and bassist Evan Wagner a few times 6 months earlier, but then did this gig after a brief rehearsal that afternoon. Given that, the two were consummate professionals. They kept firmly in the pocket through a set of unusual and challenging material that was practically unknown to them. At times, you can even hear Geoff yelling out the next chord to them as he is apparently improvising an ending. Unfortunately, the bass was mixed rather low. They played mostly originals with a few covers that had been significantly re-arranged. Although the music was steeped in the blues, the cliche that it “defies categorization” applies well. Songs were generally long and composed of multiple sections and guitar soundscapes.

On Sunday I went to Liederplatz for Frank Bey & The Swing City Blues Band. Frank Bey is quite a vocalist, and would be worth the price of admission to see even if it were not, as in this case, free. His backing band of BGVs / Tambourine, Saxophones, Trumpet, Keyboards, Guitar, Bass, and Drums were good bug not great, which is reasonable for a regional cover band. The keyboards were way too loud in comparison to the other instruments, and the keyboard player kept using awful patches like spacey bells. Give me a simple electric piano or organ sound any day. Like most of the other performers I’ve seen so far they were labeled as blues, but their music branched out quite a bit into soul, rhythm & blues, and other musical styles. They did not really swing much at all, so that part of the name seems a bit disingenuous. An abnormally large percentage of their setlist seemed to be in 6/8 time. Overall, a very enjoyable performance.

On Monday I made it to Americaplatz in time to hear just two songs from The Mayor & His Cabinet, a classic rock cover band fronted by former mayor of Bethlehem and current executive of Lehigh County Don Cunningham. They are not great, but they put on a decent show. Afterwards was Craig Thatcher & Friends, a regional band playing blues and classic rock. Thatcher himself plays guitar and sings lead vocals, while his friends handle Saxophones / Harmonica, Keyboards, Bass, Percussion, and Drums. The band is remarkably good, and I would like to see more of them. The last part of their set that I was able to see was a series of covers from the career of Eric Clapton, which were spot-on. The band sometimes does shows that are all Clapton tunes, and Thatcher himself even looks quite a bit like Clapton from a few years ago. Unfortunately, I had to leave in the middle of “Layla” to make it to the ticketed Boston show.

We (my father and I) had to wait in line to get into River Place to have our bagged folding chairs and my backpack checked. Annoying, but not a significant problem until my turn came up. I was told that I would not be allowed to bring my 4 D-cell Maglite into the concert venue. If you do not know the area, it would have been impossible for me to take it back to where I had parked without missing half of the concert. On the advice of my father I hid it in some bushes, but had little faith that it would be there when we returned. Remarkably, no one had taken it. When I returned I thought I was about to be removed from the line again as the security guard felt all through my bag. Strangely, he acknowledged that I had a camera but left me through in spite of the “NO CAMERAS” signs where tickets were being collected. Thankfully, my digital recorder was in a pocket, which apparently do not get checked.

I am guessing the reason my flashlight was deemed objectionable is that it could be used as a weapon. Indeed, I carry it because in addition to light it also provides a deterrent to any would-be muggers roaming the streets of south Bethlehem. But why should they care to keep weapons out of this one venue while leaving the others alone? Much more seriously, they must be aware that much more dangerous weapons could be, and probably were, smuggled in. Anyone could have carried a knife or small handgun on their person and no one would have blinked an eye at them. Given the sheer number of people involved, it is a virtual certainty that there were dozens of pocketknives on the premises. Finally, if they are going to prevent people from bringing in articles from an unpublished list of contraband items, the least they could do is hire one more person to work as a claim checker, taking things that need to be left outside, labeling them, giving their owner a unique tag, and at the end of the show redeeming those tags for the confiscated items.

The concert started rather strangely. As we were walking in the keyboard player was riffing on “Smoke On The Water”, presumably as part of a sound-check or warm-up. When he finished a guitarist started playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” ala Hendrix, and halfway through the band joined him and it became the first song of the set. Impressively, the band was able to faithfully reproduce live the songs meticulously crafted in the studio 30 years ago. They played through all of the hits you would expect to hear and some deeper cuts from their back catalog, and sounded good. Notably, the guy they apparently found through youtube does indeed sound just like Brad Delp.

I had one problem with the concert, besides my treatment at entry: it was not loud enough. I am not one that requires ear-splitting to be satisfied, but when you are at a rock concert and the yelling and clapping of the people around you can almost completely overpower the music, something is terribly wrong. I do not remember having this problem last year, but there were not nearly as many people at those shows. I realize they probably cannot boost the levels of the speakers hanging off the stage without making the expensive seats unusable, but a second sound tower for those of us sitting in the way, way back would not be too much to ask.

For those readers who know me personally, contact me if you are interested in recordings of the Tommy Castro Band, Geoff Achison & The Souldiggers, Frank Bey & The Swing City Blues Band, Craig Thatcher & Friends, or Boston. If you do not know me, get an account on Dime-A-Dozen and wait patiently for me to seed them there.