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Grazing In The Grasses
by Cripsy Duck 2-28-01
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.13, No. 10)
SLAMGATE - WALKER'S RUN
ALEX DEGRASSI - SUNDRIED OPPOSSUM
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You've been here before. It's Monday night in Charlottesville and you're bored. Maybe you've got some important work to do-- say, a cheesy music review column for a local free paper-- and you really just wanna punt and go get a few brews-- you know, just to "clear" the old head. What do you do? Well, Virginia, there are options. If all you need is booze and a warm place to down it, there's a watering hole approximately every fifty feet in most of Charlottesville. Walk out your door, stretch out your arm and lean. You should find yourself somewhere that serves beer. But if, like me, you're looking for some musical diversion to accompany your self-absorbed quaffing, well... your options suddenly become a little more limited. I'm a duck of almost no practical imagination, so if I'm up for something cerebral I usually find myself at Miller's enjoying the heady ambient improvisationalists who rotate Mondays there, and if I just wanna talk trash and check out whatever, I roll to Michael's Bistro.
2/19/01 Slamgate is a side project for Walker's Run's bassist Zack Blatter and dobro player Bill Cardine, with a drummer added to the mix. They put together a pile of unusual jazz and rock and some nice spacey jams that don't easily lend themselves to categorization. The resophonic guitar (often referred to as the Dobro-- after one of the companies that first pioneered the metal-coned guitar hybrid) is one of bluegrass' most evocative voices-- that coondog twang-- and it sounds cool in almost any context you can work it into. Cardine handles this task admirably. The groove was low-key and good, but the jams started kicking a little harder when the band was joined by Ben Krakauer on electric banjo. Turned up too loud (refreshing next to the other miked and underamplified acoustic instruments), and wielding the banjo like an electric jazz guitar, Krakauer added some tasty ripping. I stuck my head in the following Thursday to check out Krakauer's other project, Old School Freight Train, and found myself really enjoying their set of bluegrass and oddities. There's a certain sober demeanor that's really attractive in a bluegrass band, and when it's combined with nice harmonies and hot soloing, well... that's Nashville.
2/23/01 Out of ideas and almost out of breath, I climbed the stairs to Starr Hill's upper lair to purvey the carnage wrought by Walker's Run's migration to the big room. It was bad-- worse than I expected. (Spidey ... senses... tingling...) Not that I didn't know anybody there-- it seemed like I knew everybody there. There was just something surreal about seeing what has been for some time now Michael's Bistro's most successful Wahoo-fronted band packing in a huge crowd at Starr Hill.
I was starting to feel really confused-- as though English was my second language-- when my personal communication defense mechanisms went on the fritz leaving me adrift in a sea of continuously recurring uncomfortable conversations from which I could not escape. Yikes! What does this have to do with Walker's Run, you ask? Nothing. But neither did most of the people wandering around gabbing while the fully fattened crew (blostered by Will Lee, Randall Ray, Ann Marie Simpson and even bonus vocalist Mary Lucey-- all of whom appear on Walker's' record) tried to reign over the din. It was useless. With their entirely acoustic ensemble, even Starr Hill's massive system couldn't cut the public drone with much more than a little mandolin, a smidgen of upright bass and the occasional vocal or violin solo. Too bad.
2/24/01
Alex DeGrassi is often faulted for his part in birthing the New Age music movement with the thoughtful solo guitar pieces he first recorded for Windham Hill founder William Ackerman in the early 1980's. DeGrassi, Ackerman and the late sage Michael Hedges were among the label's first artists, creating cerebral ambient music that would eventually be criticized as muzac for intellectuals. (Of course, if you're a fan of Brian Eno, you know that this is not really a criticism-- it's an ideal.) DeGrassi still delivers the dreamy goods, if occasionally all too humanly, but elements of his acoustic guitar style remain epic contributions to the instrument's craft-- specifically, his regular use of interesting tunings, his lightning fast fingerstyle runs and his powerfully slapped-on and pulled-off harmonics-- stuff he and Michael Hedges helped bring poignantly into the modern consciousness. On my way out, I dropped by the Outback Lodge to catch a couple tunes by Sundried Oppossum and couldn't tear myself away for the rest of the night. Every time I see this band, they burn hotter than the last time. (It's getting to be about time to check my thermal insulating tiles-- I think I lost a couple on that last re-entry.) If you like psychedelic rock, you need to go see Sundried right now. The guitarists are two of the best players around here-- real dualing shredders with plenty of punch to go for super extended monster solos-- and the band rips behind them like it was the last jam on earth, creating a fully synergetic psychedelic steambath. They aren't drawing very big crowds in Charlottesville, which is pathetic since this is the only real jam band around here with a snowball's chance at national relevance. More like Awesome Oppossum. |
