Bob Mould Band/American Rebels; June 16, 2013; Grandma’s Sports Garden, Duluth MN

Sometimes I’ll go see a show in spite of where it’s at, other times I go to a show because of where it’s at. I wouldn’t normally travel six hours to see Bob Mould, but when he’s playing somewhere as unlikely as Grandma’s Sports Garden just an hour north of my family cabin it seemed worth the drive. If you’ve never been to Duluth the fact that the legendary rocker was playing a place with Grandma’s in the name may seem strange. Grandma owns Duluth, the original grill & saloon has spun off a number of other satellite spots in its hometown, including Mexican and Italian cuisine, and a few beyond, while long distance runners know Grandma as the sponsor of the annual marathon. The Sports Garden is exactly what it sounds like, a giant sports bar full of TV screens and arcade games. Despite the large stage, it still seemed an unlikely place for a show. The fairly generic opener was likeable enough and seemed to have a few fans of their own, I’m pretty sure a table full of their relatives was sitting next to us. Hands down, the best thing about them was the girl bass player who completely rocked.

I thought I would spend most of the show watching drummer Jon Wurster. The omnipresent musician, who also plays with the Mountain Goats and Superchunk, is uproariously funny on Twitter, in addition to being totally adorable. And he was adorable, but I found myself paying more attention to bass player Jason Narducy. I’d seen him once before with Mould at the Majestic in Madison, but Michelle assures me that was a terrible show. I do know that I don’t remember him being that awesome. I’m not sure if it was his Fonzie-surpassing cool or his wicked playing, but I was pretty much hypnotized. Which leaves Mould himself who seems to be having the time of his life, and with a career as long and storied as his, that’s saying something. Michelle said the show she’d seen in Detroit a few months back was the best she’d ever seen him. Ever. And that’s going back twenty years. And it seems to be the band that’s responsible. “You guys are the longest running band I’ve had,” he observed, shaking his head, “I wonder why that is?” No drugs or alcohol seemed to be the answer.

I don’t know much of Mould’s music, I didn’t recognize anything other apart from the most popular of Sugar tunes, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the show. In fact, my friend Ryan Hembrey, who was doing tech work for the band for two Minnesota dates, took a picture from the stage where you can see me in the audience. I appear to also be having the time of my life. Yes it was an unlikely combination of location, venue and artist, but it was definitely a good time.

American Rebels

Bob Mould

Josh Rouse/Field Report; June 14, 2013; City Winery

One of the highlights of SXSW this year was seeing Josh Rouse from the front row at the Paste party on Sixth Street; my biggest regret was only seeing him once. I got home from Austin and I bought this ticket, even though I’d heard that the City Winery was a terrible place to see a show. Those reports are exaggerated. No it’s not a rock club, it’s an upscale, sit down venue. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to sit. Especially when you happen to know the people right next to you. I bought the ticket I did because it was closest to the stage, I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear “Hey, isn’t that Kiki?” as the hostess showed me to my seat. I don’t even remember where I first met these guys, but it is worth noting that I have also shared a table with them at the Old Town School of Folk, which works the same way, and ran into them in the middle of a baseball field during a Bob Dylan show in Schaumberg IL. I ordered a beaker of wine and the braised duck tacos. Sure, my tab was forty bucks, but the tacos were good and the wine, which lasted till the end of the show, was made there.

I paused after two tacos so as not to be rude when Field Report was playing. I didn’t have to wait long to finish my meal, they didn’t play any more than twenty minutes and we argued over whether it had been four or five songs. “Well, there was the slow one, and then two more slow ones, another slow one and then the last one, which was slow,” joked my tablemate. And while he’s not far off, slow and mellow should not be confused with boring. Lead singer/guitarist Chris Portersfield has an intoxicating voice, and their songs a dreamlike quality aided by the skilled, completely unassuming looking, musicians in the band. I hope the Milwaukee band is given more time at other stops on the tour because they deserve it. It may have just been luck that the relatively new, buzz gathering, Field Report snagged this tour gig or it might have been destiny. Portersfield opened their set by explaining he had won over his wife by giving her Rouse’s Cold Blue Stars for her birthday, even though she was dating someone else at the time. I’m not surprised, Rouse’s third record is pretty amazing.

I wasn’t expecting to hear much from his first four records, an arc that peaked with 1972, a near-perfect record, but he surprised me. The gorgeous title track from Stars showed up in the middle of the set, as well as three tracks from the decade old 1972 which were scattered throughout the set. Those songs along with a surprising “Dressed up like Nebraska,” from his debut record of the same name, were my favorite moments of the night. The inclusion of the latter on a New Music Monthly sampler was what got me listening to Rouse in the first place, and hearing those opening notes was like stepping into a time machine. The trio from 1972, “Flight Attendant,” the hooky “Love Vibration,” and the wistful title track, made me so happy I thought I would cry. I didn’t, but I did sing along to every word, especially the backing vocals to the second where the band echoes his “You people all know what I’m talking about” with “yeah, you people all know what’s he’s talking about.” Rouse smiled and encouraged the crowd to join in.

As much as I loved Rouse in the beginning, I fell out of love over the course of the next four records, the first couple (Nashville and Subtitulo) I listened to only a handful of times, the next I didn’t even bother buying. It seemed he had gotten boring. Tonight he played a handful of songs from those records which seemed to support my earlier assessment. Only “It’s the Nightime Baby” stood out for me, though the rest of the crowd got pretty excited about them. He’d moved to Spain at this point and didn’t play the States much, I didn’t miss him. I thought we were done. That changed when I saw him at the Yep Roc 15th Anniversary shows in North Carolina. I went from ambivalent to swooning in three minutes after he opened with “1972,” a song I’d had stuck in my head all day. I downloaded his last record, I contributed to his Pledge Music campaign, and I haven’t stopped listening to the new record since it came out.

My Best of 2013 list is already shaping up to be quite a battle. I declared Water Liars the early winner, but that was before the Features released their record, before I discovered the Veils and Ezra Furman. With Ha Ha Tonka and Chris Mills both releasing excellent records, that I’ve been lucky enough to hear already, later this year, who knows who will come out on top. I do know that Rouse’s Happiness Waltz has a pretty good chance, especially if I go purely on play amount. “This Movie’s Way Too Long,” “Julie Come Out of the Rain,” “A Lot Like Magic” and a reworked version of “Simple Pleasures” were all great. Sure his music tends toward the easy listening side of the spectrum, but it is too damn good to lump in with that crowd. Other than one patron who didn’t seem to realize that the City Winery wasn’t the sort of place where you kick off your flip flops and put your feet on the edge of the stage, the audience was engaged, respectful and enthusiastic. The City Winery was the perfect place to see Josh Rouse. So perfect in fact I wish I’d gone both nights.

Field Report

Josh Rouse

Czarbles/Control; June 12, 2013; Shitty Barn

In the previous two years that the Shitty Barn had been presenting shows I’d only made it to one, a Friday night show with Southeast Engine. This was not my fault, most of their shows are on Wednesdays, and Wednesday is my volleyball night. The Pirates were taking this summer off, so I was now free to attend all the Shitty Barn shows I could possibly want. Owner Chris Staples looked surprised to see me again so soon. “You aren’t going to be able to get rid of me this summer,” I told him. And while that wasn’t exactly true, I am looking forward to taking in several shows before the fall session starts.

The Shitty Barn does a good job of mixing up their schedule between local and touring bands. Last week’s show featured Arizona’s Walter Salas-Humara along with Milwaukee’s Wooldridge Brothers. This week it was two Madison bands, the nearly decade old Czarbles and the relatively young Control. The line-up makes sense; the former is a ridiculously tight instrumental trio who focus on precision rhythms while the latter hopes to be there someday. No, just kidding. Control is also a well-oiled machine, c’mon, with a name like that they kind of have to be, but they are looser with the occasional vocal (though not much for lyrics) courtesy of eternally happy drummer Luke Bassuener or charming bassist Matt Rajala. They also made for a good match since neither plays very long (with music that intense I don’t know how you could) and I was home more than an hour earlier than the week before.

I enjoy watching both of these bands, but neither is one that I would listen to without the visual. It’s a good thing Staples isn’t one of those people. Last year when All Tiny Creatures played, Czarbles bassist Matt Skemp handed him a CD from his other band, explaining “not many people like this.” Staples must have taken that as a challenge because he fell in love with it, and here we were tonight. Unlike the other shows I’d been to out here in Spring Green, which is an hour plus from my house, I actually knew a lot of the other concert-goers, many of whom are also in local bands. It was good to see them spreading the love on a stormy night. With rain falling outside, there wasn’t a fire outside, but there just might have been one inside.

Control

Czarbles

Marchfourth Marching Band; June 9, 2013; Marquette Waterfront Festival

With rain threatening all day I hadn’t planned on going to the Waterfront Festival, so I’m glad my sister told me we should go see the Marchfourth Marching Band because it was a sight to behold. In fact, former Isthmus editor Marc Eisen stopped me on my way to the beer tent and said that “Madison will never be cool until we have a marching band like that.” To be fair, that means a lot of other cities aren’t cool either, because I have never seen anything quite like it. Unlike Mucca Pazza, the unwieldy large Chicago ensemble that also wears mismatched, retro uniforms and uses electric guitars in addition to the standard brass and woodwind instruments, Marchfourth throws a circus into the mix with stilt walkers and acrobats adding to the fun on and in front of the stage.

They started the show by asking everyone to take a few steps back. The reason for that was apparent as soon as the stilt walkers came out from behind the stage. Being four feet off the ground on a pair of stilts would be frightening enough, but these two made it look easy as they danced and high kicked on the rain soaked, uneven ground. On the next song a hula hooper joined the band, spinning two hoops on every body part over the course of a catchy song. Impressive, but it got even better. A second girl did the sort of tricks you see circus performers do on a rope dangling from the big top, but instead she did them on a pole held in place by one of the stilt walkers, or sometimes on the stilt walker himself. The two girls and two guys retuned for the next song as marionettes and puppeteers respectively for a live action puppet show that turned into a revenge fantasy with the controlled becoming the controllers.

Throughout the spectacle it was sometimes difficult to concentrate on the music what with all the action (not to mention the fear of someone breaking their neck) going on in front of them, but they were worth paying attention to. The baker’s dozen of musicians varied widely in age, from an impossibly skinny blond boy who looked like he was still in high school to the trumpet player who could have been his grandfather (you know, in other words, my age). No matter what their age, they all certainly had style from their creative outfits to their colorful make-up to the tattoos some of them showed off. Everyone was given a chance to step forward from their risers in the back for a featured solo, while the drummers kept everything going.

This was their second year in a row at the Marquette Waterfront festival and I can see why they were invited back, this is entertainment for all ages. I’d like to think that booking them in the first place makes us at least a little cool.

The Features/Traveling Suitcase; June 8, 2013; Crunchy Frog, Green Bay

For some reason the Features have been skipping Madison. This was the second time in the last nine months they have played the Crunchy Frog since stopping there the first time with J Roddy Walston & the Business in March of last year. When I confronted bass player Roger Dabbs at the merch stand about the perceived snub after the show he didn’t really have an answer, “Must be routing?” he theorized unconvincingly. More likely it’s because Green Bay seems to have taken quite a liking to the band. The enthusiastic crowd was better than what Madison had managed the last time I saw them here. And who can blame the Fox Valley fans? The Features are one of the most consistently entertaining live bands touring right now. So much so that I was willing to make the two and a half hour drive by myself, even after a hectic traveling week that included seeing eight shows in eight days in five cities. Add one more to the list.

Their new self-titled record is really pretty great (my best of 2013 list is going to be real trouble to sort out). The first single “This Disorder” is hypnotically catchy, while slow hummer “Every Beat of Your Heart” is the one that gets stuck in your head for days. “Fox on the Run” is another subtle winner. In fact, I love every song save for the Depeche Mode indebted “Ain’t No Wonder” which sounds uncharacteristic coming from a band that has always sounded ahead of its time. They probably wouldn’t have even played it if it hadn’t been for a trio of fans, really big fans, who had apparently asked for it ahead of time. “We’re going to try this song,” lead singer/guitarist Matt Pelham announced before adding, “we don’t usually play it, so it’s probably going to be a disaster.” It wasn’t of course, and while I’m still not sold on it, hearing it live did make me like it just a little bit more. They leaned heavily on the new record, but also played all the greats from previous release Wilderness like “How It Starts,” “Golden Comb” and “Big Mama Gonna Whip Us Good.” They went back even further for the addictive “Temporary Blues” and the haunting “Lions.” Early in the night Pelham commented that “I hope it sounds OK out there, because we can’t hear a thing up here.” The audience roared their approval, and he laughed it off and the show went on.

I though the web site listed three bands (but also no start time) so I was very happy when opener Traveling Suitcase announced near the end of their set that the Features would be up next. The Appleton band was a pleasant surprise. Their sassy female lead singer was also the drummer, which made them definitely more interesting. They also did a few songs with other arrangements, such as a jazzy number with just keyboards and a duet with just the guitar player and his acoustic.

I briefly considered the all-you-can-eat midnight-to-three Cranky Pat’s pizza buffet in Neenah on the way home, but knew that it would be a really late night already. Besides, I would have gotten there at the tail end of it. I pulled into my driveway at 4 am, happy to be home, but even happier that I had gone to the show.

Now, please Features, come to Madison OK?

Traveling Suitcase

The Features