The Collection’s Last Tour - The Emotional Mindfulness Singalong That You Didn’t Know You Needed & Now

Hot summer day under a tent in a field in rural North Carolina. A man starts strumming a mandolin in a chair. Soon like the misfit choir that they are, the members of the Collection slowly make their way to the stage for an outburst of communal chaos & sweaty songcraft. Think early Edward Sharpe or early Arcade Fire or Nathaniel Rateliff or maybe or possibly the Polyphonic Spree or a punk-rock-Up With People. We were totally mesmerized as David Wimbish & the shaggy shambolic band called the Collection brought it all. 

Hot summer day some-12-years-later in an iconic Nashville dive, the same communal energy bears a lyrical folk-pop polish. David’s vocals & words have always reminded me of Chris Martin, but why are we in this covered-in-stickers-&-graffiti clubhouse & not at the sold-out Ryman or Ascend. The competitive pop music market is home to cosmic accidents & market vagaries, this we know. It can be hard out there. Another brilliant folkie lyricist friend is right now selling customized songs & hand-written lyrics on social media just to make some bills, because they haven’t been paid yet for their first overseas gigs. 

It’s rough out there economically for the artists on the festival downcard. Constant touring in a van that will break down at some point can be rough on the mental & emotional health of the artists. Experts of the vulnerable expression & catchy melody may also be more likely to struggle with neurodivergence or addiction or strained personal relationships.

Despite this tsunami of risk, live popular music is the greatest mindfulness hack, it’s like a religion without being one. So it is with this night seeing The Collection. They have just dropped an self-empowering medicinal mental-health album called Little Deaths, but they have also said this is their last tour ever, with this current ensemble, with at least bassist Hayden & horn player Graham having worked with Wimbish for more than a decade. 

Is it possible for music to be extremely joyful but devastatingly heart-wrenching at the same time. This will be the case with the transcendent pop anthems The Collection has brought us for years, rendered in mesmerizing live performances, whose intense intimacy merges into greatness that is measured in excess perspiration. Because this music doesn’t just move ya, it MOVES YA as it grooves ya!!! 

The Collection catalog as streamed or downloaded from your service of choice is some digital dopamine. But even millions -- yes millions -- of streams does not make the rock n roll touring life necessarily sustainable without other side hustles. As popular as the Collection have been, this hasn’t necessarily translated itself into long-term career-sustaining suitcases brimming with cash. Now I am only speculating here at what appears to be an early retirement for the band, as-band. Their social media posts suggest the internal chemistry is strong, but it is time to move on. 

I only speculate about these facts for how impactful these songs about mental health struggles are when you think about what the hard work is like from the other side of the performer-audience veil. Here is someone singing, jamming, tearing it up on stage, leaving it all out there on the stage, speaking from the heart about suicidal ideation & simply saying “you are worth it” through a song that says “I am worth it.”

The exuberant combination of keys, horns, guitars, bass, & drums convey that kind of over-the-top cup-runneth-over heart swell of orchestral pop, but it is held down every time by David Wimbish’s vocal intensity & confessional or therapeutic or theologically mystical lyrical messages that folks love to sing along with. When this tour is over, David assures us his solo career will continue. But if The Collection as The Collection are through, please try to catch them on this run, which goes through October. Please check out their entire catalog that is out there to stream. 

Collection tour dates:

Sep 4 Wed - New York, NY

Sep 5 Thu -Philadelphia, PA

Sep 6 Fri - Vienna, VA

Sep 7 Sat - Elkton, MD

Sep 21 Sat - Graham, NC

Sep 27 Fri - Columbus, OH

Sep 28 Sat - Cincinnati/Covington, KY, United States

Sep 29 Sun - Louisville, KY

Oct 1 Tue - St Louis, MO

Oct 2 Wed - St Paul, MN

Oct 3 Thu - Omaha, NE

Oct 4 Fri - Denver, CO

Oct 5 Sat - Salt Lake City, UT

Oct 7 Mon - Portland, OR

Oct 8 Tue - Seattle, WA

Oct 10 Thu - Albany, CA

Oct 11 Fri - Hollywood, CA

Oct 13 Sun - San Diego, CA

Oct 14 Mon - Phoenix, AZ

Oct 16 Wed - Taos, NM

Oct 19 Sat - Austin, TX

Oct 20 Sun - Dallas, TX

Oct 22 Tue -  Jackson, MS

Oct 23 Wed - New Orleans, LA

Oct 24 Thu - Memphis, TN

Oct 25 Fri - Atlanta, GA

Oct 26 Sat -Asheville, NC

We Carry On (TOTR 373)

 

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, August 31, 2024
-special guest interview & co-host Matthew Black

-archive drops after live episode

Matthew Black - Everything is Terrible and No One is Okay
Matthew Black - I Will Hold Your Hand 
Interview segment with Matthew Black
Extreme - More Than Words 
Yusuf/Cat Stevens - Moonshadow
Billy Joel - She’s Got a Way 
Paul Simon - Outrageous
The Innocence Mission - When Mac Was Swimming
The Beatles - If I Fell
Interview Segment with Matthew Black
Matthew Black - The Day That Leonard Cohen Died
Matthew Black - A Long Time Coming
Matthew Black - All I Need
Indigo Girls - Get Out The Map
Joe Pug - Hymn #101
Paul Simon - Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War
Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day
Simon & Garfunkel - Keep the Customer Satisfied
Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra - Lost
The Avett Brothers - January Wedding
Matthew Black - We Carry On
Matthew Black - Rest Your Head
Peter Gabriel & Soweto Gospel Choir - Down to Earth
Crosby, Stills & Nash - Helplessly Hoping
Joe Pug - Exit 

Sweet Tea (TOTR 472)

 

-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, August 24, 2024

-listen to the audio archive here:

Stream episode Sweet Tea - TOTR 472 by Teacher On The Radio podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Allman Brothers Band - Leave My Blues At Home

Drive-By Truckers - Ronnie and Neil

Drive-By Truckers - Greenville to Baton Rouge

The Red Clay Strays - Ramblin

The Red Clay Strays - I’m Still Fine 

The Red Clay Strays - On My Knees 

Pony Bradshaw - The Long Man

Pony Bradshaw - By Jeremiah’s Vision

Pony Bradshaw - Going to Water

Cravin’ Melon - Sweet Tea

Cravin’ Melon - Hey Sister

Cravin’ Melon - Can’t Find My Way

Jupiter Coyote - Real Thing

Uncle Mingo - Little Baby Brother

Blue Dogs - Walls Come Down

The Grapes - Water to Wine

Widespread Panic - Pilgrims

Futurebirds - Movin’ On 

Futurebirds - Easy Company

Futurebirds - Soft Drugs

Susto - Hard Drugs (Live) 

Susto - Black River (Live) 

R.E.M. - Fall On Me (Live)

R.E.M. - Cuyahoga (Live) 

Tedeschi Trucks Band - Bound for Glory 

You Don't Understand Me (TOTR 471)

 

You Don’t Understand Me (TOTR 471)
-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, August 17, 2024
-you can listen to the audio archive here: Stream episode You Don't Understand Me - TOTR 471 by Teacher On The Radio podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

The Raconteurs - You Don't Understand Me
Jack White - Bless Yourself
[conversation with guest Rick Quinn]
Jack White - What's The Rumpus?
Son House - Death Letter Blues
David Johansen & The Harry Smiths - Oh Death
Bob Dylan - One More Cup of Coffee
The White Stripes - Sugar Never Tasted So Good
The Raconteurs - Top Yourself (Bluegrass version)
Jack White - Sittin' On Top of The World
Led Zeppelin - The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair
MC5 - Looking at You
The Gories - Be Nice
Soledad Brothers - Going Back To Memphis
The Greenhornes - Wake Me, Shake Me
The Go - Summer Sun Blues
Blanche - Garbage Picker
The White Stripes - Rag and Bone
The Raconteurs - Store Bought Bones
The Dead Weather - I Cut Like a Buffalo
Jack White - I'm Shakin'
Jack White - Old Scratch Blues
Jack White - It's Rough On Rats (If You're Asking)
Jack White - Archbishop Harold Holmes
Jack White - Love is Selfish
Jack White - A Tree on Fire from Within
The White Stripes - My Doorbell
The White Stripes - 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues

Show some love for the opening band: a reflective rant, remembrance, & plea for respect

 

Recently, my friend & one of my favorite regional folk singers hired a backing band & borrowed an RV to go out on tour as the opening act for one of my other favorite artists, a truly remarkable songwriter & ace guitarist, with a deep catalog & stable career of countless streams & regularly packed mid-size venues. A few weeks before that, they were opening for an even more successful country star at massive amphitheaters. 

At some of these shows on both tours, the crowds were disrespectful of my friend, & sometimes my friend would get really rattled by that fact. Their interaction with rude fans made some fans uncomfortable & the topic got some traffic on Instagram, & my friend wrote a reflection on the entire experience for their Patreon.

I doubt I can convince anyone not to talk during the show or to be more respectful of the opening artists, but I want to talk about it. I want to talk about my love & respect for the opening bands who go out on tour as support for the more popular artists. 

While it should not matter, because all opening acts deserve respect, love, & good compensation, I should probably name names. With this story, it’s about my friend who performs as Adeem the Artist (they/them), & I should note that they are an openly queer artist. In this instance, they were opening for Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit in Dallas, after an extended western jaunt that included Montana, the PNW, & northern Cali. 

I already know from following them on the socials & belonging to their fan group on Facebook that this tour has included multiple vehicle mishaps & emergency repairs. I don’t know how much their monetary take is each night, but since Adeem hired a full band (as opposed to often working solo acoustic), all this affirms my honest guess that Adeem was losing money on this tour. Opening acts obviously understand the transaction that exists for the wider exposure & the hope to make new fans & sell merch.

Here is an extended excerpt of their reflection; I share it all, because it’s important:
“Sure, let’s talk about it. Last night in Dallas after we played middle of a heart, I tried to tell a heartfelt story of a human interaction I’d had last time I was in Dallas. People got louder to speak over me so I stopped the story and played a song instead. How am I going to tell a story if I keep getting interrupted with people chattering at my volume level?

A couple songs later, in the middle of Rotations, the talking and laughter escalated to the point of distraction for even me.

This is a job I like and want to have but it’s taxing. I’m away from my family for almost a month and we’re driving somewhere upwards of 10 hours a day then unloading and setting the stage and checking the sounds and setting up the merch and then the set and then we touch each other and hug and say hi and I write weird little notes on your records.

Sometimes we’re waking up at 5 am after sleeping at 2 am. Again, it’s labor we love to do and it’s a privilege to have the work. However, that’s the condition I’m in last night: road worn, away from my family, feeling the weight of injustice, of political pandering to war criminals juxtaposed against protests in the streets.
So, when people’s volume escalated so far above mine in the midst of a song about my kid who I miss so much it hurts, I snapped. People paid money to be in this theatre. We drove a long way to be here. We have 40 minutes. Please don’t shit on the art for those 40 minutes.

It’s disrespectful to the artist & to the art form & it’s disrespectful to the experience of the other people who also paid their hard earned money to be here and feel all of these feelings and be in the room together in shared space for a moment.”
Reading this story reminded me of another situation with a queer opening artist, thirty years ago. Let’s rewind to Thanksgiving weekend 1994, I was a 27-year-old college senior & local journalist, & found myself backstage in the cavernous catacombs of Cobo Hall. Yes, that Cobo Hall of Detroit Rock City & KISS ALIVE renown. This was one of the many Almost Famous moments I had as a young writer, six years before that film was released.

A gritty pop punk band that had emerged from the East Bay DIY oasis that was the Gilman Street scene in Berkeley was suddenly all over our commercial “alternative” radio 89X in Detroit, & the bleachers were brimming with white teenagers from the suburbs. Not long ago though, Lookout Records was sending me the vinyl of their first record, because I edited a hippypunk fanzine of modest notoriety. Then, they were gigging at our tiny concrete storefront punk clubhouse the 404, a much smaller & scrappier version of Gilman Street. That band, of course, is Green Day. 
When the smash album Dookie hit, everything changed. The explosion from underground to ubiquitous was seemingly overnight, & Green Day continues to boast a wildly successful career without compromising the anti-authoritarian values of their earliest days. 

I wasn’t at Cobo that night to cover Green Day, though. I had already been writing for our local alt-weekly about the opening band Pansy Division, an unapologetically queer punk group that was part of the fledgling “homocore” movement. I was there to meet & hang out with the singer Jon Ginoli. Their gleeful cover of the Nirvana staple reimagined as “Smells Like Queer Spirit” is catchy & courageous & stands the test of time. I can also hear their song “Femme in a Black Leather Jacket” as fresh as ever. 

The Bay Area had a queer punk scene, & we had developed our own solidarity with that at 404, then the Trumbull Theater (later known as the Trumbullplex). About 5 years before that night, I spent about a month living in the aforementioned  East Bay, & one day we headed over to the city for an all day punk show sponsored by the Homocore fanzine. It was headlined by Fugazi, but the second act on the bill was Operation Ivy. The live sets were beyond thrilling & mesmerizing. It was pure punk rock bliss. Down the card, Dave Dictor of MDC did an acoustic set in drag as Box Car Darla. The sense of community at that show, like at many of our 404 shows, was more than welcoming & affirming, it was the new inclusive utopia that we were fighting for in the rest of the world.

The LGBTQ rights movements of the early 90s felt so vital & visionary & real. The sacrifices & activism of the Gay community during AIDS, despite tragic inaction from too many sectors, wrought a fierce militancy & loving community. It’s not like homophobia wasn’t real & murderous but the movement seemed so determined & so hopeful. Because I believed in the moral arc of the universe trending  towards justice, I really couldn’t have imagined that 30 years later, we would be experiencing another anti-queer panic, the bigoted backlash that we continue to see to this day.
I say all this to give added context to the shockingly awful reaction that Pansy Division received at Cobo Hall that night. 

Years later, frontperson Ginoli remembers: “Actually, when we started out, we were well accepted in our native San Francisco. Up until we started getting in front of mainstream audiences. It wasn't until we got the tour with Green Day that things got weird. They gave us such an opportunity to play in front of big crowds. But their audiences weren't as accepting as ours were. We came to play Detroit, in a big arena. Now, there was always a mixed reaction when we opened for them. But that night, everybody turned on us. There was constant booing and throwing things.”

Billy Joe Armstrong was aware of all that. Check out this bit from The Advocate in 1995: "I think Pansy Division is the kind of band that saves people's lives, "Armstrong says matter-of-factly. "They're catchy, and they're really educational. They're honest about their sexuality, and that saves lives. Sometimes it gets kind of ugly because there are a lot of ignorant dorks out in the audience, and they start throwing shit at Pansy Division," he continues, discussing the tour. "I was kind of discouraged watching the audience flip them off. I kept thinking, Shit, these people are the people who are here to see us?"

Later that cool November night in Detroit, Pansy Division parked their rented U-Haul box truck at the Trumbullplex where a bunch of us lived. This gritty DIY anarcho-punk counter-institution has been a part of the Detroit scene for decades. We lived there, we booked shows there, we had vegetarian potlucks there, my kid took their first steps there, we had a massive ‘zine library there. It was part of a national movement of community centers & autonomous zones & underground venues that were all across the continent. 

Hanging with Ginoli, he shared that Pansy Division only got $500 per night on that tour. No wonder they wanted to stay at the punk house instead of a motel. No idea how much of that 500 went into food, gas, & the rental truck but it wasn’t free. No idea what the receipts for Cobo would be back then or what Green Day’s cut was, but then as now, the opening band position can be a kind of internship, with all the economic realities that this implies. When we see even modestly successful artists, I think we might have the idea they have it made in the shade, as far as finances go. But for upstart acts in all sectors of the scene, the struggle & hustle are real.
Rude audience behavior traverses every genre, age group, demographic. But I do want to note, though, that hearing of Adeem’s experiences opening for Isbell, it immediately made me think of Pansy Division opening for Green Day, different generations of queer artists abiding their visibility & values no matter the cisgender heteronormative realities we might encounter out on the road. 

But with folkies talking sensitive truths between songs, it only becomes more obvious. Loud music might drown out the defiantly oblivious, who have to shout into their friends’ ears to be heard over the din. 

When I was only in middle school, I saw the Rolling Stones at the Richfield Coliseum near Cleveland. Etta James opened the show. I was not the only white suburban teenager in attendance who did not understand the importance of the Stones bringing Black blues artists out on tour with them. Now even after decades of studying this stuff as a fan & even scholar, the relationships remain problematic. The Stones should be required to pay some kind of reparations in their choice of opening acts, but not unlike with Pansy Division’s paltry cut opening for Green Day, the Stones were reputed to never pay their openers very well at all. 

But in a very different way, the Stones were the interns to the likes of Etta James, not the other way around. Issues of gender, race, class, & economic exploitation are always there, whether or not we want to see them. These days, after the passing of Charlie Watts, the Stones hired a Black drummer in Steve Jordan. But they call him the “touring drummer” & exclude him from band photos. 

I find talkers at shows to be the worst, not just for the artists, but for my experience of the show as a fellow fan. We all have our unique triggers & pet peeves, because cell phone use, for example, doesn’t trigger me like the jabbering does. But for the low pay that many opening acts earn & the extra hacks & hustles they endure to make it work, the very least that audiences could do is shut up & listen & buy some of the openers’ merch if it is in the personal budget.

Hope this meditation & rant isn’t too provocative, keeping in mind that it’s just from one superfan’s perspective, a fan & part-time rarely-paid music journalist who breaks the Almost Famous code & tries to make friends with the band, at least the opening band.  

Andrew/Sunfrog
August 2024

A Mighty Blessing: The No-Name Old-School Circuit-Riding Gospel Blues of Jack White

 

My particular Jack White fandom is a broken mirror in an abandoned lot, a snarling & smoky venn diagram with the rest of my life. My whole life -- but especially the early 1990s in the midtown Corridor of Detroit, Michigan & of course the mid-2000s in Nashville, as music city continued to nurture its shredding, if stylized, harder rock side. 

According to biographical snippets I can glean about early Jack, back in motor city, we visited the same coffeehouses, bowling-alley-rock-clubs, & even attended the same university at the same time, although I was a twenty-something senior, & he would have been a freshman who never matriculated. We both revered the Gories & the garage-punk thing that would later deconstruct the first years of the next century. Turns out that post-post-modernism was primitive AF, & we shared something primal about that, because decades before Jack was featured at the gala re-opening of the historic Michigan Central station, that was one of many scary sites for urban spelunking, that rebellious, adventurous kids just could not help exploring. 

But I don’t have a proper Jack White origin story, because I left Detroit for Tennessee in 1995, just before things really blew up. We were both there, but I didn’t know about him -- yet. Then, I took several years off of more devoted music fandoms, & later I would joke that Jack White followed me to Tennessee, except he has no idea who I am, even as I dressed in all black & red & a fedora at Bonnaroo one year, grateful that the other freaks in the field knew who I was emulating. 

I want to say I am a Jack White superfan, but I guess that is life-goals & aspirational still, as in the last few years my listening devotion has faded & traded for other folkier & twangier tracks, so now I am rediscovering it all with renewed vigor. In the Aughts, it was really 4 albums that engraved themselves in my brain & engrafted themselves to my bones, the last two White Stripes albums & first two Raconteurs albums. These were the last days (for me), where the music that I had was the music that I owned, on Compact Disc. Cd’s lent themselves to listening devotion as serious practices, contrasted with my current & deliciously wild ADHD temptations of a streaming account, with vast catalogs of everything & then some, just a click away.  

Just scrolling through the socials as we do on Friday, July 19th, I saw a friend posting about their quick jaunt to a record store for a special surprise. I felt that feeling in the Force, as I learned about the No Name new album by Jack White getting slipped into bags with purchases at Third Man Records stores in Detroit, Nashville, & London. The surprise No Name physical drop was followed by official encouragement from the artist to rip your copy & share & suddenly versions were showing up everywhere, from YouTube to shared Google Drives (keeping in mind that The White Stripes at one point had official releases on USB flash drive). 

Call it a merry prankster prank or pretentious stunt, but this got all the buzzy buzz & viral love that U2’s iPhone debacle sought but lost. Because instead of being spam, this required effort from the fans, like a treasure map & scavenger hunt. Days after the news of this percolated absolutely everywhere including old-school Detroit newspapers, Jack White announced a pop-up tour of live shows in tiny venues throughout the south. It started with an American Legion hall gig in Nashville, then moved to Atlanta. It started with a Monday night at The Earl, a neighborhood restaurant with a bar in the back, the kind of deliciously scuzzy OG punk rock room that hardcore fans adore, replete with stickers covering the walls & a tangible sense of all the grease, sweat, piss, swill, & dirt that had consecrated the space on DIY-multi-band marathons past.

On Tuesday, the show rolled into the legendary music scene of Athens, Georgia, & the revered temple of indie that is the 40 Watt Club. Everything about this tour is extra in the “back to our roots” aspect, right down to the plain white van parked right outside the venue with Davidson County TN plates; of this same plain white van, there is a reel of Jack driving it down the interstate. That is the kind of DIY this drips. Jack is driving the damn van.

Fans were queuing up all day in search of a rail spot. By the time I got there around 5:30pm to meet some fellow fans & hang on the line, it was a steam-room between a recent rain shower & humid summer swelter. The 5-minute walk from my hotel room left me drenched. I couldn’t stop sweating for the entire 90 minutes we stood there waiting for doors to open & our wristbands. Being  the 40 Watt, ins-&-outs are allowed, so once we had our merch, I headed back to my hotel to stash my swag, take a shower, & change my clothes. I was still back at the club in plenty of time to get a decent spot & catch the infectious opening set by Wolf Twin.

For this set, Wolf Twin are a growling two-piece of guitar & drums, fronted by Heather Gillis. The similarity of their style & sound to the Stripes is not lost on any of the devotees duly assembled & neither is the synchronicity of the front-woman’s last name. Which I immediately Googled, only to find more similar speculation. I could not help asking Heather at the merch table later, if they were related. She said, not that she knows of, & she related that Jack White (born John Gillis) had been asking her the same question every day since the pop-up tour began. Wolf Twin were off by 8:30pm, & Jack White was on at 9pm sharp. 

Jack’s main set was an hour, followed by a 30-minute encore. The entire experience felt like a dream-trance as the noises vibrated & reverberated my entire being. I didn’t try to keep up with a setlist, as I often do at shows. I  let the entire experience take me over, & in retrospect, it was way too short, because 90 minutes felt like 9 seconds on a heavenly rocketship. I have seen God in a rock god, but it burned out & blasted off like a careening comet, & of course, I want more.

After dialing & dancing more acoustic, folk, & country for a few years, a full-on-face-melting rock show is like cold-water-immersion therapy or like a muscle car in need of a muffler drag racing on back roads, holding my spirit hostage & throttling my entire being into an engine of groove. We got a mix of the new album, White Stripes standards, & more recent tracks across Jack’s solo catalog. No Raconteurs like the night before. 

The current lineup includes drums, bass, & keys/synth, which fills out the sound with Jack’s insane guitar surgery in such sonic assault as to investigate the inner reaches of all our beings with shimmer & shudder. Jack doesn’t use a setlist & his chemistry with his backing band to make it all look entirely orchestrated, gloriously effortless, & grittily inspired is such a thing to behold. Jack barely talked but when he did, he sounded like a preacher. That entire pentecostal juke joint vibe included him toweling off between songs, because that motor-city BAMF was baptized in his own sweat like the rest of us. 

Jack was casual in a plain long sleeve shirt that seemed to change colors with the stage lights. At various points I was sure it was a red/burgundy throwback, at other times I was sure it was navy, black, or gray. His people or entourage including guitar techs & merch guy were all in black suits with blue accessories. They all wore bowlers or fedoras. I have seen that crowd around Jack at previous gigs & I swear they are a monastic order of gangsters, a sacred secret society of pimps & priests, rabbis & rapscallions. 

Jack is anything & everything as far as a rock legend & creative icon goes. Sometimes cynics have leveled this as cosplay, decades of gimmicks, & the dubious accusation of “cultural appropriation.” Except we who are from Detroit know where he grew up & went to high school & cut his chops, it’s hard not to see these epic evolutions & cosmic cul-de-sacs as all part of an intensely visionary trajectory. It’s simultaneously art & artifice, or as one podcaster put it, “Willy-Wonka-core.” 

Now I don’t want to get too too deep, & I don’t always trust my hermeneutic decoder ring, but the copies of the Blue Album/No Name available at the show includes the complete lyrics for the significant 13 tracks, & I have a theory of sorts. Apparently going all the way back to the Third Man upholstery which precedes Third Man Records, Jack has always had a numerological & probably theological obsession with the number 3. Not setting aside any other versions of who the third man is, right now it sure feels like the third person of the trinity, the Holy Ghost.

Hear me out, but No Name seems to me a straight-up, old-school, southern-gospel-meets-northern-blues album. No Name as the anchor words, at first we thought referred only to the record itself. The No Name album. That still tracks, but I am now convinced that the No Name also references the great mystery, the nameless aspects of a vast God that is far too great for our words or understanding. But words we offer anyway, for 13 meticulous & miraculous tracks. Rock music as revolutionary praise. 

A quick survey of the lyrics, & one could deduce theological themes throughout. I will have to save a track-by-track close reading for another time, but have a look on your own, it’s all there. The searching intensity of the lyrical trajectory is hot & holy but also profoundly humble in its adamantly prayerful posture. Not even the cool blue water of the album’s cover can drown the deep fire of the message. It’s all there to see for those who might look & see, listen & hear.

Andrew/Sunfrog
Athens, Georgia

Crying At The Music Festival - with Josiah & the Bonnevilles

 

Crying At The Music Festival

There’s just something about the Sunday sets at a multi-day summer music festival. 

For my previous years of regular Bonnaroo attendance (that have now faded into memory), the Sunday sets were punctuated by sun & exhaustion, by endorphins & endurance, by wildness & weariness, by the intense anticipation of sleeping in your own bed after showering in your own bathroom, contrasted with the emotional exhilaration of parting with the aura & aroma, feeling all the fading festival vibes for another year. 

Thus, under these conditions, the Sunday set can send the sensitive fan (like me) into fits of fierce reverie, often moistened, if not utterly soaked, by tears. Take Mavis Staples singing for Pops Staples on Fathers’ Day back in the 00s at a steamy Sunday tent show, singing for her recently released from this world father, me thinking of my Daddy, who I would only have a little bit longer. Or what about Allison Krauss & Robert Plant, on their first tour together, mixing their new folk blues with Led Zeppelin classics, while I just fell to pieces. Or there was Okkervil River in 2009, a band that I then barely knew, but they pierced my soul while we wailed “Unless It’s Kicks,” as I celebrated the last day of my first festival as a sober person. 

In 2019, Brandi Carlile gave an impassioned rap about what Father’s Day might mean to a family with two moms. I had only recently fallen fully into 2018’s heart-wrenching tear-drenching totality of a record “By The Way, I Forgive You,” & this show leveled me. I caught a second Brandi on a Sunday that same festival season at Moon River in Chattanooga. Then there was Wilco closing Moon River on Sunday with “California Stars” in 2021, one of our early post-Covid festivals. Yes, we were ready to sing along, all up in our feels, & our feels are having the feels. I think the prevailing “never miss a Sunday show” sentiment comes from Dead tour initially, but for me it is about the Sunday at a summer festie, when I am dragging & dirty, weepy & filled with wonder. 

This year I attended some of Sunday at the Green River Festival, under the cloud of a tornado watch. 24 hours earlier, our Saturday was interrupted by a torrential gullywasher of biblical rainfall. As we walked back to “shelter in your car” per the festival’s instructions, our shoes & clothes were soaked & what once was a grassy parking lot was a sloshy pond. I wish I had the spirit of the young child I saw playing in the mud, but instead, I was more consumed by frustration & anxiety, even as I tried to keep a good attitude nonetheless. Yet months of anticipation getting washed away was far from ideal. Will we even be allowed back? So that stinking “I’m never going to another music festival again” thinking might have creeped in beneath the surface.

While finishing our quesadillas at a restaurant in the nearby town of Greenfield, we got the notifications on the festival’s social media feeds. The weather has passed. The venue is reopening. The show must go on. We were jazzed, glad we hadn’t already found our seats at the nearby movie theater, that was our next-best option. Before long, we would be digging Bonny Light Horseman, Willi Carlisle, Mdou Moctar, & others. The rest of Saturday was exhilarating, & around the start of Fleet Foxes, we made our way to our car & the hour-plus drive back to my brother’s place nearby. 

I hate to admit that we are those older men who constantly check the weather radar on our phones. This only intensifies to a kind of mind sickness during a music festival with weather issues. Over the last couple decades of regular festival attendance, we have been too hot, too cold, too windy, too dry, & like the start of Saturday, too soaked to the bone. At least a couple of weather delays turned into cancellations. Some festivals never return. The fairgrounds at Green River had a small museum that boasted of this festival’s history, dating all the way back to 1986, & the many weather near-catastrophes they survived, including an ice storm, the one year they thought a fall festival might be fun. 

All that context to say that I did consider skipping Sunday when we learned the forecast & the threat of tornadoes. My brother was only in for Saturday, & after a short stint at this solo Sunday, I would begin the long drive back to Tennessee, to see a friend three hours south, to finish the journey on Monday. After some trepidation, I devoured the pancakes my brother prepared, packed my bags late Sunday morning, & headed back to Greenfield. I am so glad that I did! 

During the entrancing vibes of Dobet Gnahore’s set, I noticed the family nearby. Lots of people were swaying with the Ivory Coast singer to the infectious Afropop, us included. My eyes fixed on the father, or was it the grandfather, dancing with his adult son, or grandson, or maybe they were just friends. The young man is blind & smiling ear to ear. Their tenderness & grooviness instantly broke me. Trying not to cry was futile. It was joyful seeing them so into it, not unlike the first time I encountered deaf fans at a Dead show bonding with the sign language interpreter. Already all-up-in-my-feelings, I left Dobet to check out trans singer Izzy Heltai at another one of the side stages. This amazing set was no less emotional for me. Already floating in a cloud of music’s raw humanity & cosmic vulnerability, I finally made my way toward the main stage for my first time seeing Josiah & the Bonnevilles, the primary reason why I had purchased the Sunday ticket.

Josiah Leming’s lyrically honest & acoustically hazy East Tennessee folk unpacked me the first moment I heard it. At the time that I was first inspired by his infectious & immediate singing, I wasn’t aware that he was a recent TikTok sensation, also a 30-something bartender & Amazon warehouse worker & former American Idol performer with a few failed commercial music careers already under the bridge. I was this-past-Sunday-old when I realized that for this solo acoustic performer, there was no backing band called “the Bonnevilles,” but that we fans are the Bonnevilles. As Josiah began to narrate his entire life story in between songs, which included simmering covers of Chappel Roan & Elle King that had hundreds singing along, he increasingly held my heart in the palm of his hand.

Then, Josiah started telling us about his mother. He said her favorite song was “Fix You” by Coldplay, & that he always wanted to do for us Bonnevilles, what that song did for his mother. As someone who had screamed & cried along to that song on my soggy work commute back in the 00s, I found this comment all too relatable. Then, he relayed how he had lost her to cancer some time ago & missed her every day. This immediately sent me to thoughts about my late father, who I lost ten years ago this past May.  

Already mesmerized & in the palm of this performance, Josiah introduced his version of “Ghost,” a song attributed to Justin Bieber. The chorus summarizes grief so succinctly & gets locomotion from his haunting harmonica wails at the breaks, I am buckets & buckets of the tears that were mere moist mist back at the blind man dancing with his dad. I have listened to this track so many times since Sunday, to hear these words again: 

That if I can't be close to you

I'll settle for the ghost of you

I miss you more than life

And if you can't be next to me

Your memory is ecstasy

I miss you more than life

This kind of long-term grief for a loved-one like a Dad is not a bad thing. This grief is good, & this song unspooled yet more of it into cascading tears to soak this festival field like Saturday’s downpour.

I was still crying two songs later when Josiah ripped into “Another Day At The Factory” for his Dad, the opening track to his 2023 album “Endurance.” I actually knew the words to this one & started singing along & dancing & waving my arms, as we do. I think to myself at some point during this track, that Josiah is staring directly at me. He is singing this song for me, burrowing into the depths of my being, open heart surgery on the sabbath with everything broken yet good about me, suddenly exposed for the entire world to see. A perpetual rail-rider, I have had performers offer a wink or twinkle a smile at my old-dude dance moves before. But this is different. His eyes stay fixed on me for the entire song, & it’s a little freaky

After the track concludes, he stops the show & starts talking directly to me. He instructs the security guy in the pit to pass me a guitar pick. “You made me cry so hard so many times,” I shouted back. Then I noticed a camera on me. I guess my weepy-feelie-face is on the jumbotron now. 

The surreal shock to my system from all this is short, but still lingers like an incurable & inscrutable fever dream, several days later as I type this. Because this, yes this, this is why I drive almost 2000 miles round trip just for a show. Just this is why, as a recovering addict, live music is the full-blown religious feeling & replacement addiction that I just can’t shake, even as I hold the guitar pick in my hand. 

I relay the story to a dear friend who immediately describes the exchange that I just had with Josiah as sacramental. I make a post to the socials “Ain’t no cry like the Sunday afternoon festival set sad song ugly cry,” & at least one friend gets it, as he tracks back to another Bonnaroo Sunday moment, that time with Lionel Ritchie & Kenny Rogers. 

I literally crave the redemptive & purgative power "the sad music ugly cries" provide. But these can’t be too precious or predicted or staged but must surprise you & knock you over like a wave. I keep coming back at risk of getting caught in the kind of stormy weather that makes me question human existence itself, & I keep coming back in hope of being swept away by a storm of emotion that makes me savor the tragic beauty of all human experience. 

Josiah & the Bonnevilles

Sunday 230-330pm

Port Royal - new song 

In Dreams - new song

Story of the 6 Dollar Check

Stolen Love

Any Time or Place

Good Luck Babe - Chappell Roan cover

JERSEY GIANT - Elle King cover

Ghost - Justin Bieber cover

Just one break - with Mon Rovia

Another day at the factory 

Holy Place

Blood Moon

Basic Channels