Alex Brubaker Guitar: Review: Trace Bundy at World Cafe Live

If you've ever seen Trace Bundy, you know it's more than just a guy playing guitar. Everything around you is part of the experience. It's not just music; not just stories...

Which is why I'm going to start this review off with a review of my meal. See, the Trace Bundy experience leaves you remembering the details. You've got this journey leading up to one of the most exciting shows of your life. The details get you there.

And understanding what a show I was in for, I decided to start the night off with a good meal. Not that you shouldn't ever not eat well, but World Cafe Live does a pretty good job at good food.

The Meal
I got the halibut fillet. It was served over sauteed broccolinni, topped with a chilled corn relish, and roasted yukon potatoes on the side. A savory garlic butter sauce topped the dish.

The flavors were great. The richness of the garlic butter tied together an otherwise light dish. The halibut was good, not great. Despite being cooked perfectly, melting in your mouth, half of it was under-seasoned and rather bland. The potatoes and broccolinni went very well with the dish, but the star of the show was the corn relish.

Yes, the corn relish. To start off, it was chilled. That helped to set it apart from the rest of the dish as not only a textural element, but also a contrast in temperature. To top it off, it was slightly charred. This brought out a lot more sweetness than you would generally associate with it, as the sugars in the corn had started to caramelize. The end result was this sweet, zesty, slightly acidic element sitting atop a plate of much more savory-oriented food. I wanted more.

To end the meal and start off the show, I got creme brulee. It was good. Actually, it was the first creme brulee I've ever had. I can't compare it to others, but can say that I enjoyed it. I was looking for a little bit more egg flavor, but then again, I don't know if that's what it was supposed to taste like or not... Regardless, it was quite enjoyable. Trace actually asked for a bite of mine when he saw it (he was joking), and then got one of his own after the show.

Now on to the show:

The Show
For this we'll have to back up. Earlier I mentioned that every Trace Bundy show includes the journey you took to get there. Well, our journey didn't begin with dinner. It began with buying the tickets. See, originally Kelly was going to go, so I got two tickets. And originally Andrew was going to bring Jean and Joe, so he got 3 tickets. Our dinner reservations were, therefore, for 5.

Well Kelly dropped out. She was off to a bachelorette party early the next morning. And Joe dropped out. He was headed to a wedding early the next morning. And then there were 3. We exhausted our list of people who may be around/may want to go and ended with 4, adding Casey.

It was unfortunate that we didn't get a 5th. Or was it? Once we got there, they seated us at our table for 5, which was really a table for 6. But we only needed 4... A few minutes and some of Andrew's charm later, we were relocated to the table for 4, sitting front and center.

Here's a picture Trace took on his phone of the crowd. Note that we are the closest. #win

Now we get to the actual show.

This was the last show of Trace's CD release tour for Elephant King. His last show at World Cafe Live was a year and a half ago, right before his son was born. Right before the show after that (the D.C. show I was at), his wife had gone into labor. Seemingly irrelevant to the show, but I guess when stuff like that happens in your life, you remember the details. Trace's memories of Philly, in this case, were good ones; a great way to start off the show!

So as the show progressed, there were a handful of things that were the same as the previous shows: the medleys, the iPhone version of Superstition, and some of the stories. I knew what was coming. Part of me wanted to think that it was gimmicky. But it's not - everything that was the same was just as good, if not better, than the first time. The version of Superstition, for instance, that he plays with a guitar app on his iPhone - way better this time. After another year and a half of practice he went from looking super nerdy, sitting and playing his phone, to standing up and rocking out.

And the stories... he's just a great story teller. Take his opening song, Patanga, for instance. What is the meaning behind it? The beauty of a made up word is that you can make up the meaning ...which is what he does every single time. Maybe a few of the times he uses the same stories, but it's unlikely that you will ever hear the same definition/story of Patanga twice.

The stories go from complete nonsense of how Patanga is the film on top of SPAM to how he had a nearly-fatal climbing accident 10 years ago and how the song, Traverse, is partially about that. And they touch everything in between. Elephant Kings. Ninjas. The baboon guard. A monkey referee. He has the imagery of the great song writers, only he builds it into the dialogue surrounding his compositions.

It takes a lot to be great. Some people say 10,000 hours. But that's only to be good at your instrument. To be a good entertainer. To make people laugh To make a dining room fall silent. That's something you don't just have. I'd like to think that I have some pretty good stories surrounding my songs, but I don't have near the delivery. When you see Trace Bundy live, you see a real person. Rock and pop stars are so disconnected from reality that you don't get them. Singer/songwriters are generally more real, but they're a dime a dozen; it's the same thing time in, time out.

With an instrumental act, you've got to work hard. First, you've got to be able to hold people's attention with your ability. If you don't have the chops, you're going to fail. But in order for people to listen, you have to get their attention. And you get peoples attention by relating to them. You relate to them with songs like Joy and Sorrow; telling about how there is this dichotomy that governs life, making you feel joy when seeing your newborn son, but sorrow when he pees into your eye...

And then you do things for the people. Stories about your life experiences are great. Stories that are just stories are too. But something that people like, for whatever reason, are covers. And Trace does a few. He turns them into feats of finger ninjary, doing the one-man-band bit on Oldies, Zeppelin, and Eminem.

But in the end, for me, it comes down to the music. He's brilliant. And for once in my life, I made the brilliant decision to write down the setlist. Since you most likely weren't here, you can watch the videos sans-stories (for the most part), on youtube:

Patanga