I’ve been going to see bands in clubs on a regular basis since I was 14 years old.* That was 30 years ago, which means that I’ve been going to clubs for just a tiny bit more than 2/3 of my life. So it shouldn’t be surprising that—’ow you say—ze threel, she is gone, to say the least. Standing around in a smoke-filled club (this town still hasn’t instituted a no-smoking ordinance for bars and clubs, though there’s one in the works, I guess) on an uncomfortable floor and waiting and standing and waiting for the band to come on just doesn’t appeal all that much, usually. Add to that my recent decision to give up drinking completely, and a night at a club can seem very long indeed, even when it’s a band I like.
But “usually” is the operative word there, because sometimes I forget how transcendent it can be to go somewhere and see/hear a band live. Yeah, I’m old and jaded, so I almost never seem to be completely distracted from my feet hurting or the stench of cigarettes, and I’m pretty much always ready for the set to be over when it’s over so that I can go home and rest my feet and wash the smell of smoke out of my hair. But sometimes, for an hour or so, I can mostly forget those petty annoyances and lose myself in the music. Still. Even after all these years.
In the past few years, that feeling has hit me most often (not counting Twangfest, where all my usual rules and habits are suspended because I am Happy Twangfest Amy rather than regular Amy) at Grand Champeen shows. It’s hard to explain why sometimes, because Grand Champeen’s local performances—they play nearby Lawrence pretty often, always at one of two clubs owned by the same guy, and they have lots and lots of friends there, and those friends all buy them shots, so their sets in Lawrence tend to be shitfaced and sloppy. But still massively fun nonetheless, because Grand Champeen play with such sheer joy and reckless energy and so embody everything that thrilled me about live music to begin with that it doesn’t matter if they miss a chord or a lyric here or there, or even if their sets degenerate, as they sometimes do, into strings of goofy covers with audience members/friends taking over the mic. Grand Champeen are what live music—live rock music, at least—should be, and they’re still at a point where they’re continuing to get better all the time. (They’re also incredibly good guys, instantly likeable and bright and polite and charming, which shouldn’t matter but sort of does.)
I was at a Grand Champeen show about a month and a half ago, the weekend after my birthday, with several dear friends who had driven up** from St. Louis and parts east for the show, slightly tipsy and feeling a general sense of well-being, rocking out to Grand Champeen, and a phrase popped into my head, all unbidden: “This is my church.” Right at that moment, standing in the (smoke-free, not overcrowded) dive bar where there isn’t really a stage to speak of, it felt like I was exactly where I belonged. It felt like my religion, it felt like everything I believe.
I had a little variation on that feeling this past Saturday night, when I saw Son Volt play an outdoor show in a parking lot (not as bad as it sounds—the lot belongs to the wretched, vile Beaumont Club, which was a “hot new country” bar complete with line dancing and mechanical bull, back when “hot new country” was still a term that people used, but they did a pretty good job with the outdoor setup; it was crowded but not uncomfortably so, the sightlines were decent from almost everywhere, and the sound was remarkably good considering the environment).
Son Volt aren’t really Son Volt anymore, I guess, at least technically; the current touring lineup isn’t even entirely the same as the lineup that played on “Okemah and the Melody of Riot,” the Son Volt record that was released in July. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the “real” Son Volt a little, but really, it was only a little; the original Son Volt weren’t Uncle Tupelo, either, and we all adjusted to that. For me, Jay Farrar and whoever he has playing with him and wants to refer to as Son Volt is just fine.
And they sounded glorious. I’ll admit that the songs from the first three albums thrilled me the most (and the final encore, an expected but still stunning version of “Chickamauga,” thrilled me even more than that), but I was amazed at how wonderfully the new material came alive too. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since I love “Okemah,” which is guaranteed to be my record of the year, but I was, a little. There are a few songs on the record that I enjoy but don’t have extremely strong feelings about, like “Who” and “Atmosphere,” and both of those sounded just gorgeous live. And my favorites, like “Jet Pilot” and especially the Middle-Eastern-inflected “Medication,” were magnificent. I usually say that I have no objectivity at all about Jay, but that’s not exactly true: about half of “Sebastopol” leaves me a little bit cold, and though I like hearing those songs live, I almost never play the record. So, see, there’s a little objectivity. I’d also like to think that if he suddenly started to put out really sucky records, I’d be able to judge them on their (lack of) merits rather than letting him coast by on the strength of his past work. But right now, he’s still among my favorite artists ever and my favorite singers ever, and it had been way too long since I’d seen him, and for the hour+ that they played, I was completely transported. Sometimes, it’s good to be reminded that I can still have experiences like that.
(The next night’s show—two shows in two nights, almost unheard of for me, and not something that I care to repeat anytime soon—was not such a positive or transcendent experience. We saw Dwight Yoakam at the aforementioned, and despised, Beaumont Club, and though it was a fine performance, it wasn’t much more than that; I’ve seen Dwight four or five times now, I guess, and this was the least impressive of the shows I’ve seen. It was far from bad; Dwight’s the consummate professional, which can mean that his performances sometimes feel a little bit phoned in but also means that he sees his responsibility as an entertainer to charm and captivate the crowd, and he did. But the printed ($30!) tickets said the show was at 6:00 p.m., so we raced and rushed to get there by 7:00, only to be greeted by a sign on the door that said “Doors 7:00 p.m., show 8:00 p.m.”…which meant that we sat in the stupid club, Bill pounding overpriced beers and me nursing my $3 bottle of water, for two full hours before Dwight went on. Grrrr. Plus I was distracted by checking the @$# ! Yankees score on my Sidekick every thirty seconds for the first half of the show. Still, I can’t say it was a bad show; it just wasn’t transcendent, and if Son Volt reminded me of how transformative an experience live music can be, Sunday evening reminded me of why the thrill of live music is, in large measure. still gone. Most of the time.)
*I’ve been going places to hear live music for slightly longer—my first concert was Three Dog Night, in 1973 I think, for a friend’s 12th birthday party. A month later, another friend took a group of us to a concert for her birthday party: Deep Purple at Madison Square Garden. If their birthdays had just been reversed, I could at least claim that my first concert ever was Deep Purple, but alas, I’m stuck with Three Dog Night. I’m sure I thought they were great at the time.
**People here always say they’re driving down to St. Louis, and they talk about friends driving up from there. It is true that KC is fractionally north of St. Louis (less than a degree of latitude), but when you drive from one to the other, what you’re really doing is driving across. It’s almost a straight line on I-70 from one end of the state to the other. But nobody says “I’m driving across to St. Louis,” or even “I’m driving over to St. Louis.” Then again, they also say the number of the highway before the word “highway” here—so for example, US Highway 40, which also goes clear across the state (and beyond), is referred to as “40 Highway” (and if you’re a St. Louis native with the local accent, which not all native St. Louisans have, that’s pronounced “Farty Highway”).