Back in August I was excited to see the Mountain Goats were finally coming back to Madison. It had been years (four? five?) since John Darnielle and company had last played Madison, filling the cramped Catacombs with college kids eager to hear his smart, wordy songs. While the last couple shows I had seen were lackluster, I was still looking forward to a Mountain Goats’ show I didn’t have to drive to. Then Jon Dee’s new booking agent contacted me about having him play the house the same night. Oh well, sorry Mountain Goats, guess I’ll have to wait four more years.
In July ’08 Jon Dee fell asleep driving back to Austin from a gig in Dallas. Everyone from the state trooper who found him to the paramedics said he should have been dead, but it turns out he is too ornery to die. The first time I had seen him post-accident was several SXSW gigs back in March. The short sets seemed perfect for the still-recovering musician. A Saturday night show at the Saxon Pub found them packing up instead of coming back from a break. At Fitzgerald’s American Music Fest in July he talked more than usual during his early evening set, leading some to yell “shut up and play.” Note to that dude, never tell Jon Dee what to do. In the days leading up to the show at the house, he told me not only did he want to play Kiki’s House of Righteous Music, he needed it.
And what a show it was. It wasn’t the most polished show ever, but for sheer emotional intensity it would be hard to beat. Bass player Eric had played his first gig as a Fighting Cock just the night before in his hometown of Kansas City. The fact that they drove from Kansas City to do this gig was perhaps the best evidence that Jon Dee really wanted to play here. Having exhausted his exhaustive list of back-up bass players, Jon Dee eventually remembered “the guy who played with the Gaslighters that one time” (the band is actually the Gaslights). He sent him the CD and a list of other songs to learn, noting that they might not play any of them. Luckily Eric had seasoned Fighting Cock Joey Sheffield behind the drum kit to lead him through the set.
This was supposed to be the CD release show for It’s Not as Bad as It Looks, but as it turned out the official release date from Freedom Records has been pushed back to early 2010. Still, he had a box of the CDs they had given him for this short tour to sell after the show. Early in the night he had told me that he was only going to sell ten and save the rest for Chicago. By the second set he had relented and I sold every CD out of the box in just a few minutes. Sorry Chicago. If I had a dollar for every time a musician told me they thought their new release was their best yet, I’d have at least twenty dollars. But in this case it just might be true, and it has some pretty formidable competition from Summerland and The Great Battle. Most of these songs had been written before the accident, and in fact played for the first time live at the house last May, but somehow they seemed to have gained intensity since I first heard them.
The first three songs of the set were the record’s first three tracks which included the affecting “I Said” which he wrote for his oldest son Roy after he got his heart broken for the first time. It didn’t make me cry, since sad songs seldom do, it’s the amazing ones that kill me, but I heard a few folks in the audience got a little misty eyed. Tonight’s audience was raptly attentive to his stories, no one would have thought of telling him to play instead. Surprisingly most of the record is very upbeat. In the light-hearted, autobiographical “(Let's Get It) While It's There,” he directed the “I said maybe Kiki” at me after saying he would “maybe even dance." In "My Lucky Day" he names off the songs on the radio during a road trip like they are playing in his head right that moment. The aside he threw in tonight, a snide “all eleven minutes” after naming “Cortez the Killer,” was hilarious and indicative of his good mood.
For the second set he came back solo, first playing the pseudo-spiritual “God’s Gonna Give You What You Need” on lap steel before playing a handful of requests. He likes to say that “if you know my songs well enough to request one of them by name, I’m damn well gonna play it.” For the former he asked all of us to clap and stomp along, threatening that if we let up, he would too. I don’t think anyone would have begrudged him quitting early, but he played a second set almost as long as the first. I missed hearing “Airplane” and “October,” but no complaints here; it was still one of the best Jon Dee shows I’ve seen. Every show he does at the house reminds me how lucky I am, now more than ever.
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