Dave’s Photo Blog

Although my schedule is quite difficult, I have managed to see a fair amount of live music lately and this post is a run-down of some of the more interesting acts. Most of these performers are not local to the Boston area, although one is. Read on to find out which one and to hear my brief review of Calexico at the Somerville Theatre last week.

Let’s start with Calexico openers The Acorn. The dichotomy between these two bands was really interesting – worth the price of admission, I’d say. The Acorn is from Canada (Ottawa and Montréal) and plays an alternative folk style. The music has a lot of depth – a lot of layers to it. And they do not hesitate to get experimental, from the guitarist using a cymbal to slide down the strings of the guitar to chants and multiple percussionists. So it’s a bit of a journey, one that is quite interesting to watch in performance as you can obviously see all of the techniques being used. On many tunes, for example, the guitarist used an EBow for playing leads. This is a device that uses a battery to power up a magnetic field to vibrate the guitar strings without actually plucking them. They opened (I think) with crooked legs. This is a really nice song and worth a listen on their MySpace page. Some of the middle part of the set was a bit less accessible to the average listener, though. The dichotomy was that being from Canada, The Acorn was feeling quite at home in Boston. They had been touring with Calexico and playing down in the southwest and made no bones about telling the audience it felt good to be cold again, or something of that nature. This was the last performance they gave before heading home.

Calexico put on a very polished show. There’s some very good reviews with pictures and sets lists and things out there, so I won’t cover too much of that ground. The Phoenix review is pretty amusing, entitled, Calexico relaxes audience into near-coma. I was pretty surprised to see a lot of photographers taking pictures and a bit bummed I hadn’t brought my camera. I’m not used to being able to photograph a group like this without getting permission first. I’ll have to remember that for next time. There were a few remarkable moments, bordering on gaffes, from my perspective. Front man Joey Burns was clearly surprised and disappointed that the audience wasn’t on their feet dancing more and made a bunch of comments about it. But Calexico is not really up-tempo music. In fact, you wouldn’t necessarily think of it as dancing music for the most part if you were just listening to the CD. He also asked, at one point, how many of the people in the audience were from west of the Mississippi. He seemed quite surprised by the reaction. Being in the audience, it was hard to tell what the reaction was except for what I witnessed around me and that reaction was, like, what is he talking about, he’s in Boston? So the banter might need a little work, but the music was really, really nice. Very well performed with about the coolest drummer I’ve seen in a long time. At the end of the night he was using brushes to sweep the drums and the sound on those things was unbelievable. The two trumpeters were core to the sound and brought in that element of what they call, ‘desert noir’.

I also would be remissed if I didn’t thank Steve Yost for bringing me to this show. Steve is a drummer in several local bands, including Alter Ego, Kayo and my personal favorite (because I’m in it, but it’s just a practice gig) – The Buzztones.

On a more local note, there have been some very, very good musicians passing through local venues like the Lizard Lounge, Toad and the Burren. I’ve been fortunate to see some of these and thought I would pass along some tips.

First up is Betty Soo who played an early set at Toad on Tuesday night. Now bear in mind  that if you check out this web site you will hear Betty with a full band behind her. I saw her playing solo with an acoustic guitar and was really impressed by the depth of talent. Not only is her playing and composition strong, but her voice is really something else. In fact, the night before Toad she almost took the top prize at the Lizard Lounge open mic.

The performer she lost to was Caleb Hawley, from Harlem, New York, who won with the song Shades of Blue. It’s up on the MySpace, although the recording of that tune could be a bit better. So go see this guy live if you get a chance. Like Betty Soo, he has got it all going on - plays a wicked guitar and can really sing as well.

And finally we have Nicole Berke. She (piano and vocals) released a CD this year entitled Frondescence backed by Jesse Cafiero (upright bass) and Rory O’Connor (drums). And it is good, really good. She is playing in the Boston area, sometimes with the band and sometimes solo. The first song on this CD, Come On, is just a fun, uptempo almost pop song that pulls you in. The CD ends with Frondescence, a much more musically complex journey and one I won’t try to describe – just go listen to it. I plan on covering this trio at least one more time before the year is out, so check back for (hopefully) more.