Ibbeken

One part Allmans, one part Traffic, and one part wise-guy Virginia soul, Indecision was the eighties' answer to this region's former heavyweight musical genre, blues party rock. The four-piece (five, if you count "fifth-Beatle" Danny McCrystal on sound board and strategic initiative) college boy band could lay out hours of heavy riffage coupled with dynamic musical improvisation set against a Dead-inspired fluid rhythmic backdrop. Their concerts were considered "real" events, and clubs, festivals and colleges up and down the East coast played host to their greedily packed shows. I recall Halloween bashes at Trax being notorious spectacles complete with magical stage sets, hallucination-inducing light shows and Indecision's superjams. They were unstoppable. Until they stopped.

I guess time caught up with Indecision. Changes in line-up and infrastructure combined with a fan base that was graduating from college to take the proverbial wind out of their collective sail. By the mid-nineties they had all but petered out after watching the bands that used to open their shows grow into megastars. But they didn't suffer too badly. One became a head brain for AOL, one a successful medical merchandise salesman, one a real estate broker, one an instrument-repairman, one a guitar lesson guru at Charlottesville Music, and one a keyboardist for "Hooch"-masters e:verything. They still get together a few times annually to shake the cobwebs out of their warm electric rock, and Friday, April 21 ,2000 was one such night.

evans

I wasn't gonna miss it. When it comes to modern psychedelia (the genre referred to as "jam bands" nowadays), I recognize that Phish is a pretty amazing and noteworthy band, but Widespread Panic and Blues Traveller (and now, moe) never could hold a candle to Indecision's deep-in-the-pocket thinking-person's psychedelia.

Their Outback Lodge show was a return to those graceful roots. Although I could tell they hadn't played together in a while, the woody tones and rolling rhythms quickly warmed up into deep heady jams late in the first set. Ironically, the two bandmembers still stationed here and performing regularly, Aaron Evans and Craig Dougald (guitar and drums for the Kathryn Caine Band), seemed more out of place at first than the two members who've turned into professional business-guys, Sean McCrystal and David Ibbeken. Maybe Shawn and David were just more pumped-up to play, and since they haven't been doing different things stylistically, they still sounded Indecision-ready. Whatever the case was, it didn't take long for the group to reach stride and swallow up the thirty-something former college partier crowd (with the occasional serious hippy-freak sprinkled in for good measure) with their honest and willful Virginia jams.

catfish

After Catfish came former Nighthawk's frontman Jimmy Thackery, a dynamo of Stratocasting, a fire hydrant of hacksaw fury in a furtive exploration of swing and blues. Legend has it that D.C.-based Thackery was once playing a show across the street from a George Thoroughgood show and the two met out on the street mid-tune, traded guitars, and proceeded to jam with each other's bands.

child, sax and mr. thackery

Now that's rock and roll. Sure as Shinola, Thackery still burns with the best of them, a not-so-elder statesman of all that's righteous about white electric bluesmen. The day grew cool, but the band did not relent, and the Downtown Amphitheatre was reduced to fits of dancing and merry-making.

I waddled down the mall to the New Dance Space where Nashville songwriter Tom House was performing for Acoustic Charlottesville. House is a true enigma, a real country folk artist. His stuff reminds me of the kind of music you might actually hear on rural front-porches never spoiled by electricity. Lots of fingerstyle waltzes sung with a wavery white-washed lonely Sunday morning with Grandma kind of voice. True hayseed Americana riddled with social consciousness ala Dylan's Guthrie. He was amazing.

I pressed on to the Prism Coffeehouse where John Renborn was showing off the virtuosic side of folk art. This immaculate guitarist with the five-finger picking style seemed like he was playing right over the heads of the full house in attendance. His amazing trills and arpeggios were so clever that it was almost difficult to concentrate on them, except to occasionally think: "God, he's good" or something lame like that. With smatterings of British Isles melodies and amazing technique, Renborn's two night stint at the Prism left a number of jaws dropped, including mine.
-C.D.
cripsyduck@mindspring.com