Blake Thomas & his band/Jentri Colello; July 5, 2008; Café Montmartre

When Blake Thomas moved back to Madison after a sabbatical in Austin, he brought with him a half dozen songs all spilling out of a broken heart. It took a few more months to write the rest of the songs that would make up Flatlands, his third full length, and even more time to get into a studio to set them to tape. All in all it seemed like a long journey to this day, but also curiously like it happened overnight.

The first recording of the record was done on Labor Day ’07, all eleven tracks committed to tape in a marathon one day recording session that yielded pretty stunning results. Even so, it wasn’t deemed “done” until Eric Anderson added keyboard parts and the staggeringly talented Shauncey Ali added his trademark fiddle. Oh, and the “drunken choir” had to have their say. The soon-to-be-classic barroom shout-along “I Don’t Want Your Heart I Want Your Liver” needed their hootin’ and hollerin’ for that realistic feel, and they were more than happy to repeat their role for the CD release show.

The night ended with an encore of that song, complete with broken glass, since “the band” didn’t know any more songs. These days Blake usually plays solo, but the CD release show called for something special. The band assembled tonight represented for the most part the players on the CD, the only notable absences were Chris Boeger on bass and Adam Davis on guitar. Luckily Justin Perkins (who produced the record) and Josh Harty were available. Like any good CD release show, they played the entire record in order… which is the way Blake has always insisted these songs were meant to be heard.

A cycle of heartbreak and loneliness that followed him to Texas and back, Flatlands may be the most complete record of his career. While songs like “Please Cash This Check” find him at the depths of despair, he only recently seemed to realize it is a really sad song. “You’ve Got Me Feeling Like the Moon” is a stunningly smart simile of a story diagramming the hopelessness of that relationship. While the moon may long for the sun, they will never occupy the same sky, as he puts so eloquently in song, “You’ve got me feeling like the moon, who’s just longing for the sun. Sometimes we’ll meet up in the afternoon and I’ll chase if you run.” Sigh. At the record’s end there is finally a glimpse of happiness in the final track; “In the Morning” sees hope with the dawn.

Before the full band took the stage, Blake and Shauncey treated us to a few songs from previous releases. The gorgeous simplicity of these versions (especially the aching “Kaitlyn”) has prompted more than one person to wish for a whole album’s worth of just the two of them. Jentri Colello started the night promptly at 10 with her own batch of smart, beautiful songs. Her debut EP Bird of Prey, which captures five of these songs, will see a release show of its own next weekend.

The last piece of tonight’s puzzle was comedian Jeff Lang, who while not particularly funny, did emcee the whole event quite well. A few of his jokes elicited chuckles from the crowd, but I thought he missed a chance at the best punchline of the night when he claimed that unlike most comedians he didn’t make jokes about not getting enough sex, saying “it’s never been a problem for me.” To me “because it’s not funny” would have been a much better answer. In fact, it was Jentri who got the biggest laugh of the night with a Jeremiah Nelson joke, “Did you hear about the guy who wrote a book on penguins?” “He should have used paper.”

Ba-dum bum. Thank you goodnight.

Robbie Fulks & Friends Stars and Stripes Extravagonzo with special guest Romantica; July 4, 2008; High Noon Saloon

Despite having the best backing band in the Midwest and perhaps beyond, Robbie Fulks has been gradually moving toward playing more solo shows and away from the big rock full band show, but I guess Independence Day called for some fireworks. I couldn’t have been happier when Gerald told me that “& friends” was really just the band. I see Gerald every so often with Frisbie, but it had been far too long since I had seen guitarist Grant Tye or bassist Mike Fredrickson.

Based on his New Year’s Eve shows, I should have known that more was in store than just another show. He opened with an original downer anthem titled something like “America, It’s All Over” that had promoter Tag Evers interrupting the show to ask him to keep it a little more positive. It wasn’t long after that tonight’s challenge was introduced. Robbie’s lovely wife Donna who joins him on several duets (like tonight’s “Cocktails” among others) was challenged to create an American flag on her trusty sewing machine before they finished the show. She had cheated a little bit, her stars and stripes were pre-cut, but it still seemed like a daunting task. As the show progressed, Robbie would check in from time to time to see how things were progressing.

“Not good,” she confessed early on, admitting that she didn’t think all the stars would fit, causing Robbie to allow a few states to leave the union. “Who can we get rid of?” he asked before tossing a handful of stars across the stage. She continued to sew furiously (with very poor light I should add) as Robbie and the band tore through all the old (and some newer) favorites. When it came time to display the flag prior to giving it away in a trivia contest, I was amused to see that it had been put together backwards, the blue square of stars in the wrong corner. I’m not sure which contestant actually finally won, but I do know they all aced inquiries like “which president freed the slaves?” and “who was the first president?” Kelda Roys (who is running for state assembly in my district) was one of the participants and had the dubious honor of having an impromptu song about her endeavor written on the spot. The show didn’t end until early on the fifth of July, but everyone was still feeling quite patriotic.

Romantica seemed a curious opener for Robbie’s high-powered shenanigans, but then again I like both bands so maybe it worked out just fine. Lead singer Ben Kyle was as handsome and charming as ever, but nothing in their set of lovely originals could have prepared me for their cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” A gorgeous song in its original form, ethereal covers have been turned in by both Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley. In fact, Peter Mulvey, who does a pretty excellent cover himself, has claimed he will never record it because the latter “pretty much knocked it out of the park.” All of those versions have been moodily reverential, but Romantica chose to rock it out a little bit, and it proved a good choice. Kyle’s gorgeous voice was perfect suited for their stepped up version, and while it wouldn’t have expected it, it actually brought tears to my eyes. Damn. Play it again boys, please.

The Drive By Truckers/A3/Alejandro Escovedo and Lucinda Williams; July 3, 2008; Summerfest, Milwaukee

I was seriously considering driving to Michigan just to see A3 at the Rothbury Festival, whose jam band heavy line-up gave the impression of a sort of Bonnaroo junior. While three days of camping at a hippie-centric festival with a $200 ticket price just to see A3 do at most a 45 minute set didn’t really sound like a lot of fun, I was still considering it. It had been eight years since A3 toured the States on the La Peste tour, and that (tragically) sparsely attended show at the Metro may have been one of the best I have ever seen. So it was with surprised disbelief that I read they were going to be at Summerfest, and on a day I was already planning on going. OK sure, I was going to have to miss Paul Thorn who was next door at the Harley stage at the same time, but I was finally going to see A3 again.

I can tell you this with certainty; there is no way I am waiting eight years to see them again. A plane ticket to the UK is not only likely, it is necessary.

Alabama 3, or A3 as they are known here after being sued by the country band Alabama (c’mon), is best known for the song “Woke Up This Morning,” otherwise known as the theme song to The Sopranos. Despite the popularity of the show, most people looked at me blankly when I mentioned their name. On their website they claim “that song bought someone a swimming pool, it just wasn’t any of us.” Perhaps in an attempt to make the connection and draw a few more people into the half-full Miller Oasis, they opened with that song, the band strutting on stage, Miller products in hand, like they didn’t care that it was 6 pm, still light out and that they were playing for only a couple hundred people.

If you looked up “cool” in a UK dictionary, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a picture of A3’s dashing leader Larry Love. Impossibly thin and impeccably dressed in a long gray duster which hid a lacy black shirt, cigar in one hand, MGD in the other, he was arguably the focal point of everything that was going on. Lithe and agile, with a smooth growl of a voice that drew shivers every time he opened his mouth, I found it hard to take my eyes off him. That is, unless Devlin Love was singing. There was always a strong female vocal presence on the records, but this was the first time I remember actually seeing a girl with them. And her I would have remembered. Dressed in a black and silver sparkly dress, the tiny, perfectly adorable, girl had a voice like Tina Turner and she was certainly not afraid to use it, especially on songs like “Bulletproof” from Power in the Blood, which finds her proclaiming, “up against the wall, snipers on the roof, thought I was a goner baby, I'm bullet proof” with conviction. .

Surprisingly, for the most part they drew their set list from the awesome first record Exile on Coldharbour Lane, even though they have released four full lengths since then. I’m not one to argue, with songs like “Hypo Full of Love” and “The Night We Nearly Got Busted,” that has always been my favorite. The country flavored “U Don’t Dance 2 Techno Anymore,” has been a mix tape staple of mine for years, though I was disappointed that the Reverend D Wayne Love did not deliver his rambling monologue which ends “One night she took this funny little heart shaped pill, and just died right there on the dance floor, and now she don’t dance to techno anymore.” Then again, since not much he said was intelligible anyway, maybe I’m not so disappointed. Whether intentional or not, I am pretty sure the Reverend has never done one thing that was good for him. Even though he really doesn’t do much, the band wouldn’t be the same without him.

Summerfest is not usually the best way to see a band, but from their opening Sopranos theme to closer “Hello I’m Johnny Cash,” A3 put on a truly amazing show. I was the only one of our crowd who had seen them before, and half of them had never even heard their music, but the opinion was unanimous, they all loved them. Hopefully they won’t wait 8 years to get back to the States.

A3 were the best show that day, but there was no shortage of great music. Alejandro Escovedo put on an electric performance just as it started getting dark. Touring behind his new rocker Real Animal he put on a high powered show that turned up the energy from previous shows. The interesting thing was that he did it with the same band he always has, notably Wauwatosa native Susan Voelz and ridiculously handsome cellist Brian Standefer. I was holding out hope that Chuck Prophet (who is all over Animal and had been in Chicago the day before) might show up to play guitar, but the only special guest was Lucinda Williams’s guitar player (no slouch himself). As far as Lucinda’s set, a long day of drinking and listening to music had shortened our attention spans to the point that we only made it through a few songs before we decided it would be prudent to get on the road. She had already played “Passionate Kisses,” so I didn’t protest too much.

The honor of the second best set of the day goes to the Drive By Truckers. I’ve long believed them to be one of the top five live bands in the world, so it is hard to believe that they could have been bested by a bunch of Brits. It was definitely a solid set from a band that never lets me down, that’s just how good A3 was. Early on they played Pete’s favorite “Uncle Frank,” a song that doesn’t show up in their sets all that often. I was happy too since “Sinkhole” and “Shut Your Mouth and Get your Ass on the Plane,” my favorites from Patterson and Cooley respectively, were part of their near two hour set. They alternated songs for nearly the entire time, only breaking that pattern to allow bassist Shonna Tucker to sing her sweetly heartbreaking “I’m Sorry Huston.” As opposed to their show earlier this year at the Pabst which featured new material in the first half of the show before giving way to older stuff later, this afternoon show had a nice mix throughout.

As always, Patterson seemed to be having the time of his life, grinning from ear to ear from start to finish. “18 Wheels of Love” was again prefaced by the story of his divorced mother marrying a truck driver that is as much a part of the song as the song itself. The health report on that driver, Chester, is still good as he miraculously recovered from a heart condition that should have killed him. Unfortunately “Living Bubba” doesn’t have such a happy ending, Patterson claimed they should play this song more often than they do in salute to a musician afflicted with AIDS who played hundreds of shows in the year before he died.

It is unusual to see what should be a headlining band at 3 pm on a Thursday at Summerfest, and I still don’t know how we got so lucky, but I’m certainly not complaining. Today’s music selection brought back my faith in a fest that I had lost interest in years ago. Thank you.