The “Other” Bowl
“I’m so glad we still have the music thing in this world. Music hasn’t lost its head,” said Iris Dement, opening for Big Thief at Libbey Bowl
When Santa Barbarians speak about the bowl, they know exactly what they mean: the Santa Barbara Bowl, née County Bowl, the grand, historic, nationally known haven at the elbow of Anapamu and Milpas. But, alas, there is another significant Bowl in the area, a smaller capacity bowl in a smaller town, which has been zooming larger in cultural importance of late.
Ojai’s Libbey Bowl is a magnetic place to hear music in the great outdoors, as longtime fans of the Ojai Music Festival well know (present company included). But the programming agenda has expanded and gotten hipper of late, as this late-to-the-party visitor has discovered, most recently at memorable shows from Big Thief and Kamasi Washington.
As for Big Thief’s organically commanding show on Sunday — the second of two nights there — Adrianne Lenker is some kind of folk-rock-punk-and-now-country guru in the making. Is there any question that this is one of the finest — and then the best way, roughest — bands in the land?
Lenker is a true poet, in words and musical deeds and open attitudes, with her head in the clouds and the soil and on the street. And now, in the twang zone. What we heard at Libbey Bowl was the unveiling of yet another chapter in the Big Thief saga, which goes back over six albums to its formation in Brooklyn in 2015. Most of the music here came from an instantly lovable forthcoming triple album, Horsepower (a fitting moniker for a country album), featuring veteran singer-songwriter Iris DeMent and “pedal steel guitarist to the stars and in the stars,” Greg Leisz — both of whom thankfully graced the stage with their earthy eminence.
Coming back for a fatty “encore” segment of old faves, Lenker and gang called on such tasties as “Vampire Empire,” “Incomprehensible,” and a mash-up of “Los Angeles” and “Spud Infinity,” with Liesz rejoining the party. On top of her other attributes, Lenker is also an expert at “wigout guitar,” as she showed late in the show with a skronky wall of guitar noise and feedback that helped clean out our brains. Thanks, Adrianne. We needed that. As Dement informed us, “music hasn’t lost its head.”
Two weeks earlier, Kamasi Washington brought his inspired entourage to the Libbey Bowl stage and easily lured an audience of jazz-and-more fans into the special trance Washington has mastered. One of the few jazz artists whose appeal has extended into a broader audience, without watering down his vision. That vision touches on a variety pack of influences — the ‘70s-colored “Afro Jazz” of Donald Byrd, post-Coltrane intensities from the tenor sax-wielding leader, subtle hip hop-warmed grooves, and other contempo-retro vantage points on how jazz, soul and vibe elements can mesh and come alive for the ears of the many. He has played Coachella, not incidentally (not to mention Campbell Hall).
And it all came outta the L.A. jazz fringes: a thriving, though not necessarily jazz-world-visible, enclave around Billy Higgins’s Crenshaw-based World Stage. On that front, some inspiring family/cultural lineage lives on in this band, with his saxist father, Rickey Washington, in tow.
On Grand on State
There’s always something popping and swinging in the elegant digs of Grand on State, including locally grown music becoming re-localized. Last Saturday, we caught wind of the return to town of superb flutist-musician Norma LaTuche, who grew up here, moved to N.Y.C., and has lived in Los Angeles for many years, but now has a new footprint in her old hometown.
She will be showing up at the Grand on upcoming Saturdays and made her official-ish debut with a band led by GoS domo Brian Mann (on the in-house Steinway grand and well-played accordion-ology), bassist/baritone Kim Collins, with a rich, deep voice, and expert drummer Dick Wells. The quartet-in-progress took on embraceable standards, including “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Night and Day” and “The Nearness of You,” with LaTuche sounding smart and soulful in improviser mode, and pushing the envelope of conventionality on the “out” coda of “Wave.”
LaTuche and Co. were serving up the “dinner set,” while the main course was the L.A.-based singer Liz Cole, joined by the stellar comrades of pianist Josh Nelson — certainly one of the most potent and sensitive jazz piano voices on the West Coast — bassist with the subtle and knowing touch David Piltch and drummer Aarón Serfaty. Cole’s band mostly covered the waterfront of usual real book standards, nicely, but also took intriguing detours into an obscure beauty she transcribed off a VHS from her youth, co-written by Bill Charlap’s father and mother, Moose Charlap and Sandy Stewart, and (she thinks) titled “Dreams Do Come True,” on just voice and piano. She also called up, and paid due tribute to, a tune by Blossom Dearie.
Keep watch on the Grand. Next up, tonight (September 24), stellar and rising young pianist Caelen Cardello brings his trio into the space everyone hopes will continue its trek into the slipstream of go-to, elite jazz club stops on the West Coast.
Tales Unfolding in the Art Saloon
Good things can survive, and thrive, despite challenges along the way. Case in point, the “Tales from the Tavern” series is on the brink of celebrating its milestone 25th season. Led by siblings Ron and Carole Ann Colon, the series brings noted Americana artists, singer-songwriters, and other purveyors of song and tales for two seasons a year at the vibe-y Maverick Saloon.
Often, the artists in question are well-known veterans on the scene, and with “Tales” history themselves (including the upcoming artists on this fall season: Jimmie Dale Gilmore/Butch Hancock on October 7, Kim Richey on October 14, John Gorka with Michael Manring on October 21 and John McEuen and his Circle Band on November 11).
But last Wednesday, the focus was on a newcomer to the series, and an act worth knowing about, being the duo Black Feathers. Married in life and music, the British Sian Chandler and the Irish Ray Hughes summon up a lovable and emotive, and tightly harmonized sound together, generally of a moody and melancholic spirit, but with plenty of humor on the sides and between songs. I sense good future “Tales” material here.
From the “Had to Be There” Files, Great Organ Division
On the plus side, pipe organ geeks have greater access to recordings of the instrument than ever before, one of the positive windfalls of digital music access. On the more sobering side of this obsession, this art form and ancient musical tradition is unusually tied to the instrument/site relationship — with the building itself, often a church, serving as the resonating body. And these special sites are few and far between.
So when I heard that the literally entrancing organist-composer Sarah Davachi would be concertizing on the organ (or “great organs”) at the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, one of the most impressive organs in America, I knew a pilgrimage was in order.
Especially in such a divine setting, devotee’s special brand of almost drone python-based minimalism mystified the room in a deep way. The specific occasion was a “release show” for her new and enveloping two-disc album The Will of Tongues (hear here). On that album, she conjured several slowly evolving solo organ pieces, including “Canto Duo,” “The Second Tuning,” “Four Narrow Forms,” and “Night Horns,” and opened the concert with a short segment for the brass quartet Diapason. The timbral family relationship of pipe organ — a reed instrument — and brass was celebrated and made clear, in real time and a very real space.
As expected, the overall effect was transportive and time-elasticizing, even though our watches clocked two hours spent in this contemplative escape zone. More, please.
TO-DOINGS:
Jazz-seekers alert: This is a big weekend in the extended neighborhood. A short four-hour drive away, we have the Monterey Jazz Festival, which gets my vote as one of the great jazz fests on the planet, and it has bragging rights as the world’s oldest continuous jazz festival. The roster is stellar and includes an exclusive Herbie Hancock/Ron Carter duo on the theme of their old boss Miles Davis (at 100), and Montecito jazz legend Charles Lloyd, celebrating 60 years since his smash hit “Forest Flower,” recorded on that very Monterey stage.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Carpinteria — the intimate and cool Piano Kitchen, next to the Carpinteria marsh — impressive British/N.Y.C. trumpeter Alexandra Ridout makes a local stop on Monday, September 28 (so you can catch it after the drive home from MJF). Must go check out
Also to check out on this rather crazy-busy week in town: Mali-an musician Vieux Farka Touré, son of famed guitarist Ali Farka Touré, SOhO on Friday, September 25; Alabama Shakes at the Santa Barbara Bowl, on Friday; the launching of the great series ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!, with son jarocho from Los Vega, giving free concerts at Isla Vista School, Guadalupe City Hall and the highlighted Marjorie Luke theatre Sunday climax; country legend Marty Stuart, and his Fabulous Superlative at the Lobero, on Tuesday, September 29; Robert Plant in his latest Americana project Saving Grace, at the Arlington on Thursday, October 1; Jose Gonzalez, kicking off the UCSB Arts & Lectures season, at Campbell Hall on Saturday; and, tonight, September 24 at Carillo Rec Center, a blues blast by Nick Moss, part of the Santa Barbara Blues Society party.
Can I get a “whew”?
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