Concert review: Alan Evans Trio and the Rhythm Section Road Show throw funk fiesta at the Old Rock House, Saturday, May 5

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The opening act went on an hour later than announced; presumably waiting for the Cinco de Mayo crowd to bring their fiesta to the Old Rock House with them. Once the party got started though, there was funk for all.

Alan Evans is the drummer from the band Soulive, which was founded by his brother Neal Evans and himself in the late 1990s. Their upbeat, power grooves gained them notoriety on the funk/jazz scene, and Soulive still has a strong following. The Alan Evans Trio is Evans’ own offshoot project consisting, again, of an organ, guitar and drum lineup but with Evans in a leading role with Danny Mayer on guitar and Beau Sasser on the Hammond organ.

It’s a comfortable setting for Evans and that comfort shows in their music, which never falls far from Evan’s roots. Mayer comes from the On the Spot Trio, which has an established position of its own on the funk scene. Sasser has played with no less than Maceo Parker, Melvin Sparks and Medeski, Martin, and Wood among many others. Currently, when not playing with Alan Evans, Sasser leads his own organ trio.

Led by 88.1 KDHX DJ Andy Coco, the Rhythm Section Road Show opened with a set of jam rock funk, that brought everyone off their feet and onto the dance floor. The Roadshow this night was Teddy Presberg on guitar, Coco on bass, Kyle Honeycutt on drums and Chris Stevenson on organ. Songs featured in the set included “Flash Mob” by Teddy Presberg and a funkified rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Your Time is Gonna Come.” They did a great job of opening the night and warming the crowd up for the Alan Evans Trio.

Once the Alan Evan’s Trio hit the stage and were ready to play, Evans called out to the crowd: “Do you want us to play quiet or loud?” The audience yelled out, “Loud!” in reply, which brought on a drum fill opening and the trio’s first song. They followed the opening song with “Authoritay,” the first track from their new album “Drop Hop.” This was followed by the crowd getting together and dancing while the grooves propelled a meager but very-involved audience while being blasted by some very loud funk.

The night went on and we were bombarded with explosive drumming, soulful guitar solos and masterfully orchestrated organ playing. The Cinco de Mayo spirit seemed to be in effect among the crowd as well as on stage. My initial expectations going into the concert were to find a serious funk jazz trio laying down some serious music. It being Saturday and Cinco de Mayo it seemed they might have sacrificed the seriousness a bit to bring the party to the Old Rock House. Not particularly my cup of tea, but it’s what worked for the crowd so I cannot fault them for it. It was definitely a fun night for everyone there.

Posted by | May 6, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Ray Wylie Hubbard deals a royal blues flush at the Old Rock House, Saturday, April 28

Ray Wylie Hubbard at the Old Rock House in St. Louis, April 28, 2012

Roy Kasten

St. Louis music fans showed true dedication last night as heavy rain, hail, lightning and damaging winds couldn’t keep a solid crowd away from the Old Rock House to see legendary Texas-based singer and songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard.

On a night when a tent outside a bar in downtown St. Louis left one dead and 17 injured and tennis-ball-sized hail broke windshields across the region, Hubbard rained down a mix of country, folk and blues to warm up a mostly middle-aged audience, still wet and cold from the storm.

Unfortunately the severe weather kept me from arriving on time for the early 7 p.m. start. Why so early you ask? The venue had scheduled another event immediately following this KDHX-welcomed concert; one that incorporated a back drop of black and neon-green decorative snakes wrapped with what looked like metal dryer vents that extended from the stage to a light rig above. It was upon that backdrop that Hubbard — dressed in a long-sleeved black t-shirt over blue jeans with a stocking cap pulled down tight — took the stage in front of a large group loyal fans packing the venue to about three-quarters full.

On tour to support his new album “The Grifter’s Hymnal,” the prolific Oklahoma-born songwriter’s 11th album in the last 20 years, Hubbard performed several new songs including “Henhouse” (a tune he co-wrote with Hayes Carll), “Red Badge of Courage” (a dedication to troops in Afghanistan who listened to his music on recon missions) and “Count My Blessings” (a track inspired by fellow songwriter Slaid Cleaves’ “One Good Year”). With honest lyrics that speak to the hard-working American, Hubbard’s weathered voice gave credence to the stories and lyrical imagery he painted throughout his 40-plus years in music. Upon hearing his songs, one need not question that he’s lived through some hard times yet continued to persevere.

Throughout the 97-minute set, Hubbard switched between acoustic and electric guitar as he played a country and blues mix that had the audience moving and grooving. He would add flourishes of slide guitar and sometimes just keep the beat going with his thumb plucking the open strings. Accompanied onstage by the solid drumming of Rick Richards, Hubbard was in a relaxed, easygoing mood and seemed to have a great time interacting with the crowd. Richards — a spectacular timekeeper with a great bass drum foot and a simple set of snare, floor tom, bass drum and tambourine — provided a solid backbone while Hubbard sang, spun yarns and entertained.

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Posted by | April 29, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Dar Williams (with Caleb Travers) spins a few yarns at the Old Rock House, Tuesday, April 24

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There are a million tired clichés that can be used to describe singer-songwriters. Tuesday evening at the Old Rock House Dar Williams put on a performance that was neither tired nor clichéd.

The evening started with Caleb Travers sneaking on stage and easing into his first tune before I realized he was there. Travers is a St. Louis native guitar picker and singer-songwriter that mines tunes from the same vein of love, loss and traveling as artists like Fred Eaglesmith or John Denver. He was joined on stage by Ross Christopher, whose harmonies soared and violin added a tasteful touch to the songs instead of feeling tacked on.

A few songs into his set, Travers mentioned that it was good to play a short opening set for “people who give a shit.” I can’t speak for the rest of the crowd, but I’m pretty sure that part of it was his own energy coming back at him. It was apparent that Travers and Christopher have worked together for a while, as they were choosing what to play on the fly. Along with tunes from Travers’ most recent album they performed a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love” that would surely get the stamp of approval from Phil and Don themselves.

Dar Williams hit the stage just after 9 p.m. and put on a performance that was part folk song, part conversation and all entertaining. Williams spent just as much time talking to the crowd as she did playing her music, relaying stories of her past, encouraging us to plant gardens with our neighbors and reminding us of the small things that define particular moments of our own pasts. Her banter was very engaging and brought more meaning to the songs she performed, much like other singing storytellers John Hammond, Jr. and Mary Gauthier.

A large portion of the songs she played were from her new album “In the Time of Gods,” but despite their newness they were all familiar and comforting, like a favorite pair of slippers. Williams’ voice was robust and fantastic. She used those skills to her advantage, most notably on her tune “Summer Child,” in which she playfully wandered across the breadth of her vocal range without getting lost or misplaced. She ended the set with an encore performance of fan-requested “The Babysitter’s Here,” which brought more than one tear to the eyes of the audience.

I spent my drive home trying to think of someone to compare her to, and the only person I could think of was Dar Williams herself. She’s spent the last 20 years traveling the world telling her stories — and fortunately for us, she has managed not to lose herself or her love of what she does.

Posted by | April 25, 2012 | Concerts | 2 Comments 

Concert review: Hanni El Khatib wins with fuzz, funk and a whisper at the Old Rock House, Tuesday, April 17

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Blame belated Tax Day, the Cardinals home game or Willie Nelson’s set at the Pageant for the small crowd at the Old Rock House for Los Angeles garage punk/bluesman Hanni El Khatib.

Their loss. El Khatib with drummer Nicky Fleming-Yaryan and multi-instrumentalist Hayden Tobin brought their A game, despite having to give the small audience some encouragement.

Local openers Via Dove played straight up Stones and Zeppelin-tinged rock ‘n’ roll like they were in an arena. Their solid 30 minute set was too short for the momentum they created. An hour after they finished, New York trio the Sundelles offered a tight set of surfy pop filled with heavy bass and ringing guitar. Their originals surrounded a Pixies-influenced take on Big Star’s “13.”

El Khatib opened with the dark “Garbage City.” While the band signaled some issues with drum levels, the too-loud beat actually worked with the song, lending heightened heat and intensity to an opening dedicated to urban downfall.

The band maintained the intensity through a blistering “Come Alive.” Much fuller and richer than the recording, which is a drum-and-guitar chant, the band changed it to a full-on bombastic charge. Until the last line, delivered a cappella by El Khatib: “‘Cause ain’t no love like a love like this, ’cause a love don’t exist when a boy wanna play, so.” Fiery and fast, the juxtaposition of silence and noise made a sharp display of lust and rage.

El Khatib continued to toy with silence and breaks through the set. Unlike many of his garage contemporaries, he doesn’t rely just on the sheer power of noise and volume. While the set didn’t lack in either, its real power came from El Khatib’s deft use of silence amid the chaos. In “Build. Destroy. Rebuild,” a startling yelp ending a one-second instrumental pause had the power to surprise and ultimately give the brief, sparse song emotional depth.

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Posted by | April 18, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: A tour-tested Delta Spirit (with Waters) comes up rock ‘n’ roll aces at the Old Rock House, Tuesday, March 20

Delta Spirit at the Old Rock House in St. Louis, March 20, 2012

Kate McDaniel

When the buzz surrounding a band is in the air the electricity is palpable. Last night at the Old Rock House, high excitement ensued as Delta Spirit had the St. Louis audience thoroughly humming in unison.

Last summer Delta Spirit opened for My Morning Jacket at the Pageant giving them entry to a whole new group of fans. As their third self-titled album hit the street within the last week, the 25-35 year old St. Louis fan base knew what was up and came out to support the band on this headlining date. Evidenced by the audience crowding on to the floor as the band was about to take the stage, leaving the middle and rear sections of the venue sparser. The smokers, lounging outside on the patio furniture, crowded around side doors to the patio just off the floor to get a good view and enjoy the evening.

As the San Diego-based group began their set around 9:20 p.m., they started with “Empty House,” the lead track of their new album. Fresh off their trip to Austin for SXSW and playing only their second show of the tour, the band was bathed in incandescent light from their brand new light rig. The display contains four large black triangles in the form of a larger overall triangle with large round lights mounted down each leg of the triangles. The band’s back lit setup gave warmth to the stage and stood in stark contrast to venue’s own house set up of LED lights.

Early in the set Vasquez, appreciative of the crowd’s early energy, said, “It’s great to be back in St. Louis.” He continued by pointing out a 6 or 7-year-old girl in attendance calling her the “cutest girl in the audience — she is so cute. Every song is for you tonight.” The girl, sitting on the shoulders of her dad near the sound board, beamed as she clapped along to the songs.

Vasquez’s warm, singular-sounding voice meshes well with the music the band creates. Luckily, the electric piano of Kelly Winrich was high in the mix to counter the guitar tones of Vasquez and William McLaren. Drummer Brandon Young plays with a wild, loose abandon of a lead instrument that only works as Jon Jameson’s bass holds things together.

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Posted by | March 21, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Andy McKee redefines the art of the guitar at the Old Rock House, Monday, March 5

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Last night at the Old Rock House, Andy Mckee‘s exhilarating performance gave fans a sense of awe for both what can be played and composed on a guitar. It was incredible to see harmony, percussion and melody all come from the same instrument and person.

Andy McKee is a guitarist whose roots are definitely in the style of the great modern pioneers of finger-style guitar such as Michael Hedges, Don Ross and Preston Reed. McKee was first widely recognized in the music community when he placed as a top finalist in the National Finger Style Guitar Championships of 2001. His YouTube performances, however, have garnered more than 100 million views with some having attained the first, second and third spots of the top-rated youtube videos of all time. When asked if YouTube was a component in why he tours, McKee responded “YouTube is absolutely why people are coming to the shows.” His fame is definitely the result of circumventing and redefining the normal channels of how music gets to listeners.

The Old Rock House was packed with a mix of young, old and everything in between. From the discussions of fanned frets and alternate tuning it was obvious that much of the crowd were guitar players with no predominate subculture making up the rest of the dedicated fans. McKee bounded on the stage and all the bubbling conversations dropped off as if coordinated by the crowd in advance and were promptly replaced by excited anticipation that grew into applause and shouts.

He began his set with the title track to his “Art in Motion” album and followed it with what is probably his most popular song “Drifting.” McKee then began the first of many retuning sessions between songs. My initial reaction was annoyance. But McKee’s personality resulted in being as entertaining as his playing and by the end of the night, I could not recall any other times he had stopped to tune, retune or detune.

McKee’s performance was a cornucopia of atypical guitar acrobatics. His songs were incredibly technical with bass lines, percussion and melody all coming out of the same instrument and same musician, yet they remained beautiful and moving. His performance of “For My Father,” which he wrote after his father passed away in 2005, was very evocative. McKee’s rendition of Don Ross’ “Tight Trite Night” was exhilarating and pushed the audience to be drawn back in as the concert was coming to a close.

McKee uses his guitar as an entire orchestra with thwacks, whacks, thumps and knocks played at the same time with many of the guitar’s melodic and tonal qualities. He has clearly come up with his own methods to realize the sounds and rhythms he hears within him solely on the guitar.

He closed his set with “I Will See You Again,” which incorporates a long portion during which the guitar is repeatedly strummed — something not seen too often during his playing. Once finished, McKee jumped off the stage and the fans made room for him to pass through, congratulating him for his performance as he passed on his way towards the entrance to talk and hang out near the merch table.

He certainly struck me as a very amiable person whose stellar ability to play guitar is also reflected in his persona.

Posted by | March 6, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review and set list: The Del Fuegos scorch the Old Rock House, Thursday, March 1

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Had any unsuspecting music fan walked in for the Del Fuegos performance at the Old Rock House on Thursday night they wouldn’t have had any inkling that the band they had paid to see had not played regularly together in 25 years.

This is the type of reunion show that music fans ache to see: four guys that put aside their differences to play music together for the fans and not a mailed-in performance for the cash grab. These shows are especially sweet for a fan like me who has owned the band’s four studio records for a long time, but never got a chance to see them live.

The four original members — Dan Zanes on guitar with his brother Warren on lead guitar, Tom Lloyd on bass and Woody Giessmann on drums — are taking the chance to get out on the road and give it another shot with a tour of the towns that received them best all those years ago.

Zanes acknowledged from the microphone that they are an oldies act at this point: “We may be an oldies band, but you’re an oldies audience, but we’re only going to play a 90 percent oldies set.” No one in the smallish audience seemed to care. The band ripped through three-minute songs about love and loss as the fans, mostly in there 40s and 50s, came to see the songs they remembered. For their effort, the boys from Boston delivered the goods with both great chops and good cheer.

Pulling material almost exclusively from their first two albums, “The Longest Day” and “Boston, Mass.,” the Del Fuegos played a tight 90-minute set of their soulful, roots-rock material that demonstrated these guys are complete professionals. Dan Zanes took the center position singing and dancing with his guitar as his brother Warren Zanes, to his right, added spot-on guitar solos, while Lloyd and Giessmann held down the back beat with more roll than rock.

From the opening notes of the perfectly chosen opener “Sound of our Town,” the band had the crowd excited and ready for some nostalgia. The dance floor started to fill with women twirling around in their dresses like a younger version of Stevie Nicks. Zanes acknowledged the dancers and advised that St. Louis was a progressive stop for the band. Zanes praised the crowd up front: “This is our first tour in over 20 years and first time we’ve had dancers before we had to start begging.” He continued by saying he hoped that the show would see “men dancing comfortably by themselves.” By the end of the show, he had that wish fulfilled.

Early in the set, the Zanes brothers got into a little brotherly tête-à-tête on stage, alluding to their longtime differences in Dan Zanes’ lion share of the songwriting on Del Fuegos albums. Dan announced his brother Warren wrote the next song and that he had albums for sale in the back as well. Warren chimed in to advise that prior to the tour he wondered if he would have a mic this time and was “it going to be turned on?”

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Posted by | March 4, 2012 | Concerts | Comment 

Concert review: Bass Drum of Death pounds its way into the Old Rock House, Friday, March 2

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The room smelled like cigarettes, perfume and cold air. The pre-concert hum of the Old Rock House crowd, waiting on Bass Drum of Death, was punctuated by a guy telling the girl next to me that he was actually, right then, in the middle of composing a blues ballad. Really now? She sipped her drink, politely.

Then the band came through the small crowd, hopped on stage and gave everyone, this girl in particular, the relief they’d been waiting for.

Almost at the exact moment headliner Bass Drum of Death played its first note the sound guy, ever devoted to his board, stepped out for a smoke. A sign of confidence in how things would sound, or indifference to the show? My vote is for indifference because that’s how I felt at the end, too.

Guitar, bass and drums. Simple. The crowd responded within three seconds, whooping, raising glasses of beer in the air. There were moments of exuberance like this but they were few in the hour-long set. The band is, in a nutshell, what every fucked middle schooler wants to be when they grow up. Thrashing around on stage, strangling their guitars, banging their heads. Their sound is tight and loud. Their sound is chaotic and brave. Their performance was boring.

I hate coming to this conclusion because in my mind, it’s quite hard for a show to be boring. There’s an enormous amount of energy that’s generated when an audience and a band collide during a live performance. There’s an exchange of understanding that what’s about to happen is singular. When that musician on stage looks out at the audience that is an invitation.

Last night at Old Rock House in an odd, yet perfect space that invitation was not extended. Perhaps it was lost in the mail somewhere between here and Mississippi? I’m not saying that the music wasn’t great, it really was. At times fast, with nice bass underneath the intricate guitar, overlaid with some really smooth echoing vocal effects that complimented the rough guitar and unrelenting drums. Each of the musicians did their part in making a really great musical whole: the bass surged forward at times, shaking things up, while the lead guitar was pleasantly loud and scratchy when it needed to be and the drums kept it all together. Lead singer John Barrett even let out a nice little scream or two that jolted the zombie-like audience out of their beer bottles and brought the show back to life. But it wasn’t enough.

Last night there was no exchange. At least, none that I perceived. The highlights included a Ramones cover that closed the show and a chick who yelled a marriage proposal to the lead singer. At least she didn’t yell “Freebird.” Though as clichéd as that is, I can’t help but smile thinking about it.

I’ve always thought of myself as a sound person as opposed to lyrics person. But last night I discovered that without the connection you get to make during a live show, sound just isn’t enough. The performance was static. With their heads down, Bass Drum of Death played. Maybe this was a part of the act? If so, it didn’t resonate with me. Would I go out and buy Bass Drum of Death’s newest album? Hell yes. Am I going to go out of my way to see them live again? Probably not.

Posted by | March 3, 2012 | Concerts | 1 Comment 

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