Review: Trevor Gordon Hall at Host Church 05/11/13

Kaki King was hard to follow. But Trace Bundy is just that good. I’d put the shows about on the same level, but from very different perspectives. But how do you top Kaki King, followed by Trace Bundy? Isn’t that today’s challenges? We can see anything we want on youtube, so what sets your live show apart enough to justify getting out of the house?

The answer? One of two things – either something completely unrelated, but equally great, like following Kaki and Trace with Between the Buried and Me… Either that, or another of the same general genre, but different enough and better enough to be viewed in a completely different light. Standing with the indie rock percussive fingerstyle goddess, Kaki King, and the acoustic ninja, himself, Trace Bundy?? Yes, you get someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of the best.

Enter, Trevor Gordon Hall. Remember, the guy with the kalimba on his guitar?

So I went up to see Trevor at this little church in the middle of nowhere, with Kelly and Andrew; Brad met up with us later. We get to this place and there are like 10 cars and not another man-made structure in sight. There are fields in every direction. Also, a massive cemetery. Like, probably enough graves for each person in the town… I'm expecting a pretty bum crowd.

But pretty much, in spite of the few cars we saw, the whole town was there; 180 pre-sales and a super packed sanctuary. Since no one ever sits in the front pew of a church, we grabbed those seats to get a close up view.

Once we get to the actual show, we get to how Trevor can stand up next to Kaki and Trace.

First, there is a huge difference in stage presence. Kaki King has a bit of an edge; she’s got that lesbian cult following thing going on and she’ll curse on stage. She’s not a full-blown story-teller, but she can hold a conversation with the audience. It’s unfiltered and personal. Trace Bundy, on the other hand, is a story-teller. He’s animated and his stories are entertaining and fun; he’ll keep you laughing. He’s still personable, but the stories start to be as much of a performance as the music itself.

Trevor Gordon Hall, on the other hand, is a bit more serious; he's very collected and intentional. When he plays, he’s playing for the intellectual, musical side of things; not focusing on entertainment. Even his innovation of the Kalimbatar is completely void of gimmick, solely focusing on blending two logically complimenting instruments. He wants you to think and to analyze what the music, itself, is. He does throw some humor in here and there, but it’s not quite as intentional as the others.

These characteristics are all reflections of the individual’s personality, though it’s also a reflection of the actual music. See, Kaki King has all of these playful tunes, mixed with some spiteful ones, and a bunch of lost-love songs. It’s very emotionally driven and has a lot of attitude behind it. And you see that. Trace Bundy, like I said, is a story-teller; his songs tell stories; they take you on an adventure. What you get from these two is that the music is the way it is …because it is the way it is.

Trevor doesn’t have too much adventure behind his songs, nor does he have a lot of pent up emotion being released. But his music has a certain depth to it that you don’t see too often. As he introduces each song, you hear references to philosophers, literature, and classic film. His latest album, after all, is titled, Entelechy, which is “… the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized.” His works are striving towards the fully realized potential of himself, of music, and of the guitar.

Each of these performers have their pros and their own style of performing that make their shows unique. Trace has performance and entertainment nailed. Kaki King has variety and flare. And Trevor has depth and, arguably, some of the best guitar chops you will ever get to see/hear.

Though I would/will see them all again, I’m gonna have to give the top spot to Trevor. Perhaps I have a bias? A) I played a gig with the guy B) I take lessons from him when we’re both around C) he played at my wedding… But when it comes down to music, and strictly music, Trevor takes the cake.

Here are a few videos…

...an intro to the Kalimbatar

And this one just blows my mind...

Review: Kaki King Retrospective Tour at World Cafe 04/28/2013

I've written about Kaki King before. But let's back up with the years-long quest that was finally satiated last night, seeing Kaki King live at World Cafe Live in Philly:

It was the fall of 2007. I was at Messiah College, playing a coffee house. If I recall correctly, it was a song later entitled, Unwinding. After I played and was heading back to sit with my friends, this guy, John, stops me, congratulates me, and tells me of this other, similar guitarist, Kaki King, who had played at school the previous fall.

Usually I don’t listen to people’s recommendations. Part of it is that there are so many that I usually forget names; the other part is that I really don’t trust other people’s taste in music. Tonight was different, though. Whether it was later that night, the next day, or the next week; eventually I looked up Kaki King. And this is what I saw; ultimately the inspiration for Bea and the Rock Elephant:

Similarly to my discovery of Trace Bundy, I was completely blown away and had no idea that all of that was possible on a guitar. Everyone else is just so blindly drawn to big power chords and the same set of 3 or 4 progressions.

Jump ahead a few years and I've missed seeing her every time I've had the chance. Seriously, I've had the chance to see her FOR FREE and things just never work out. I've been chomping at the bit for years!

But I finally got a chance last night. And it was one of the best shows I've seen. Ever.

To start, this was her 10th anniversary show (or tour?). 10 years ago, she released, Everybody Loves You, to make money while playing in the subway. It caught, and the rest is history. But for this show, since it was the 10th anniversary, she played the album, start to finish.

And at first I was super excited when she mentioned that she was doing this; her first album is one of my favorites. After the first few songs, though, I was confused. Turns out I didn't have her first album. Later in the show, I would discover that I didn't have the second album either! Some fan I am? Actually, though, I'm excited because that means more new music of hers without having to wait for another "new" album ;)

But that left me coming to the table with no idea of how the songs should sound. Knowing her latest 4 albums, hearing the start gave insight into the makings of a musical genius. She told stories of her early struggles as a musician, rejection, playing drums for a band in college, and how this one little imperfect demo to sell in the subway blossomed into a career of 10 years and counting.

And Kaki really surprised me. Not that I didn’t expect her to rip; I just didn’t expect the personality. I had heard before that she was quieter and bitter/angsty. Maybe the report had come from a bad show? Everyone has them. But for this she was transparent. She was imperfect and made a few mistakes; she was quirky and stumbled over her words a few times. But she was genuine and she was having fun. When a world class musician can have a less than classically-inerrant performance, yet laugh, joke, and smile, it sets them apart from the mechanized and interjects soul and emotion. Kaki King had that.

And maybe it was because her family and friends were there? Some sisterhood banter to lighten the mood? Comfort from her wife? I don't know; I just know that it was just a good time; it felt like the intimacy of a house concert.

And I was somewhat afraid that after she played through the album that would be it. Instead, she finished up the album and started in on more. She ended up playing an hour and a half long set of just acoustic guitar. It was great.

Except there was more! Yes, a second set; 3 hours total. The second set was King with drummer, Jordan Perlson, and Dan Brantigan on the EVI (electronic valved instrument) and trumpet. For this, Kaki rose to her feet and dawned several other guitars (I think I counted 7 total for the evening) and a tenor(?) uke. Rather than sit, she stood in order to rock out a bit harder to some more of her newer material, mixed in with some of my old favorites off of ...Until We Felt Red. The second set also saw King’s voice transition from stories to singing. It played much more like a technically dazzling indie rock show.

Essentially, King had opened for herself and her band. Half dreamy acoustic music and half indie rock show, the sets were intertwined with the frenzied plucks, pats, and taps that set King's music into oceans of texture. Were there some slips here and there? Yes. Were there technical difficulties with the EVI? Yes. It’s not about hitting every note and having everything be technically flawless; mechanized music is lifeless. Music is about life; it’s about the breath of the instruments, how the artists interact with them, and how meaning can be drawn from feeling.

Kaki King nailed it. All I can think is how much it sucks that I missed her for YEARS and, prior to that, had missed this genre. I will now be locked in my guitar room for the foreseeable future (except for going to work and, perhaps, the bathroom).

And I'll leave you with this: another of my favorites, as well as King's encore -

The Kaki King Effect

She’s doing it all right. Kaki King has delivered good music to the masses. It’s a little bit experimental mixed with a little bit of radio-friendly. It’s nothing that you are supposed to like; she’s not being inflated like Gaga. It’s something that you happen upon and it draws you in.

Kaki King isn’t about flashy. She’s about music. And she understands it in both a musical sense as well as a commercial sense. That’s how you can hear her music on the radio (though not mainstream radio …more like Echoes or college stations) yet you can analyze what’s there and not be bored. There’s a healthy mix of the technical and the typical. On any record of hers you will find both some technically dazzling acoustic work as well as some accessible melodies and harmonies.

Her albums are a multi-faceted single entity, disguised in some manner to all. To those of us who seek musical excellence and complexity, that’s what we hear. Yet, at the same time someone who doesn’t know anything about music can appreciate and enjoy it as being similar enough to what they are already familiar with. She’s doing it all right.

So what exactly am I referring to when I say “The Kaki King Effect”? It’s how listening to her music makes you want to listen to more of her music …exclusively.

I noticed this sometime while driving this past weekend. Now my personal preference for listening to music is to listen to an entire album, start to finish. I rarely ever do shuffle or even an album out of order. It bothers me. After listening to the whole thing, I will find a different album to listen to.

In the case of this past weekend, I started by listening to Kaki King’s latest album, Junior. Afterwards, when it was time to choose the next album, I couldn’t think of anything that I cared at all to listen to. Scrolling through the vast music collection of my iPod, I just wanted more Kaki.

So then I listened to another one of her albums, and another. It was a one-track mindset perpetuated by itself; a phenomenon I would like to dub The Kaki King Effect.

Here's the first song I ever heard from Kaki King, Playing with Pink Noise. It's a little less accessible, but a good gateway.

Spring Break Playlist

This past week I was on spring break. Due to money and an ill-fated promise to go on a trip with friends from school, I went to Daytona Beach, Florida instead of snowboarding in Colorado. It definitely wasn’t the snowboarding trip that I would have otherwise gone on, but it was a good time to just relax and chill at the beach.

Unfortunately, being Daytona Beach during spring break, you can’t just go to the beach and just relax. Everything is loud and in-your-face from the pushy shop owners to belligerent drunk college kids. Far too often this loudness is paired with music.

And this is, of course, from the selection of music that I like the least. These are the pop-hits, the club mixes, and …well that describes all of them. Though there are a few gems out there that are genuinely good at what they’re doing, the genre has got the monotony thing down to a science. Once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard nearly all of them.

Naturally, I felt out of place. Rather than raise my glass and lower my musical standards, I decided to put together my own spring break playlist. I’m an album kinda guy, so these are full albums – stuff I listened to while laying out at the beach or back in the room when the other music gets to be too much.

By no means are these full album reviews. They’re basically just my rationale behind listening to them and a few comments on the band and/or the album. If you're in search of new tunes, you can make it your goal to follow my playlist through this coming week.

Monday:

This Time It’s War: Terror Plots

• I’ve been following these guys for years now. The first time I saw them was with August Burns Red in high school, before ABR got big. This past year, TTIW finally released a full length album, Terror Plots. This album is heavy, technical, and a great way to get pumped about getting some sun.

Tuesday:

MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

• This is me meeting mainstream. It’s a weird feeling to realize that other people have heard of what I’m listening to. However, I’ll stand firmly behind a handful of such bands that I deem worthy. These guys are one such band. They’ve got a nice relaxing vibe that’s perfect for lying by the ocean, yet have enough variety to hold my attention. They’ve got a lighter sounding orchestral pop/rock going on and I like it …even if other people do too.

Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s: Buzzard

• My first encounter with Margot was in the radio station with Ryan Faus. Freshman through fall of junior year, we had what was probably one of the best radio shows at WVMM. Despite having an extremely eclectic playlist, everything flowed as a continuous and coherent stream of consciousness. Anyway, so we found these guys and were blown away. The only other band that’s come close to that sort of impact has been Phantods, who I might just have on the list later this week. So after we discovered them, we found that they were coming to B-Sides. It was glorious. They’re a 7 or 8 piece collection of extremely talented musicians whose genius is realized first in their song writing, but then further realized through their attention to minuscule details. I think Animal/Not Animal is still my favorite album from them, but Buzzard was just released and I’m seeing it slowly grow on me.

Between The Buried And Me: Colors

• The choice here was in direct response to too much rap music in the room. I couldn’t take it. Between The Buried And Me is math metal, progressive metal, and genre-mash slurry of awesomeness. I’m not big into their self-titled, but everything else I could listen to 24/7. They’re one of those bands that will have a full length with 5 songs on it… I’m real into the idea that songs can have more development than a single verse chorus deal. These guys build vocal compositions around musical compositions with a technical palate that textures each song to be its own, freestanding entity, yet flow through the album seamlessly and beautifully.

Wednesday:

Phantogram: Eyelid Movies

• Phantogram is an electronica duo. They played a B-Sides a while back and were quite excellent excellent. On one hand, they were something completely different for me. On the other, it’s just really interesting. Spacey female vocals compliment the fuzzy bass lines and gritty guitar rather harmoniously. In addition to being awesome, I also just heard them at American Eagle the other day at the mall. It was a neat experience.

Thursday:

Nosaj Thing: Drift

• Ryan introduced me to this guy last year. Again, it’s electronica. Completely different, though. Phantogram is more rock sampling and Nosaj Thing is predominately electronic. The real experience, however, is in his live show. I’ve only gotten to see videos, but his whole music show is coupled with a light show synced to the music. It’s done really artfully. Anyway, this was a nice album to relax and read to, soaking up some sun.

Sublime: Sublime

• So back in my video game days, there was this game, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. I was pretty great at it and played it frequently. Consequently, I ended up liking the soundtrack a lot. It included stuff like Ozzy, A Tribe Called Quest, and Sublime. Though those days are long behind me, I had an urge to listen to the soundtrack a while back, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and downloaded a few of the albums that the songs came from. Sublime was one such album, with the track, Doin Time. Sublime is a 90s surf punk/rock/ska band …or something like that. Basically, all that to say that they’ve got some great beachy tunes that, though normally crass, go down smooth here in Daytona.

65daysofstatic: Unreleased/Unreleasable, Volume 2: How I F*ed Off All My Friends

• Here’s yet another electronica band. However, these guys normally infuse math rock and monologue samples. And I say “normally” for a reason. Their two Unreleased/Unreleasable albums are not the norm. They’re what would better be known as glitch electronica. It’s a lot of pop hit samples mixed with 65days flair – distorted guitars, drum machine beats, etc. Then all of this combined with the glitch aspect. If you’re unfamiliar with glitch music, just think of everything that could go wrong with a cd/record/etc. Skips, pitch shifting, tempo altering, and a host of other glitches are intentionally introduced into the spliced together samples. It’s intense stuff and most people will hate it. Perhaps that has something to do with the album title? Anyway, I’m into obscure music and this pretty well epitomizes that. And yes, this was to read, relax, and sleep. Check them out.

Friday:

mewithoutyou: Brother, Sister

• This may be one of the greatest albums of all time. Lots of people can’t get into the more spoken word/poetry vocals, but if you can, this album is brilliant. You could say they’re just an indie rock band, but they go way beyond that with how they arrange their ideas and structure their songs. Brother, Sister is, in my opinion, their best album. It’s edgy, dynamic, and has some of the most vivid imagery that you’ll ever hear in a comprehensive album.

Saturday:

The Mars Volta: Scabdates

• Experimental psychedelic rock. It’s loosely constructed, jazzy, and free-flowing. There are also some glitch type elements. Of the albums of theirs that I have, Scabdates seems to embody all of these things the best. I could see where lots of people would freak out and not know how to interpret what’s going on through the album, but if you can absorb the textures and set aside everything you think you know about music, this album will blow your mind.

Kaki King: Junior

• The first time I heard this album I didn’t like it. My first taste of King’s music was her music video for Playing With Pink Noise. It’s percussive fingerstyle – the stuff I do. This album, however, isn’t much percussive fingerstyle at all. After listening to it without that expectation, however, it’s another brilliant album by Kaki. In this album, she’s exploring more of her singer/songwriter side, developing herself as somewhat of an indie genius. Of what I’ve heard of Kaki, she’s not the most pleasant person and really hasn’t enjoyed most of her touring bands. This album embraces that attitude, being rather rough around the edges at times. Though following her on twitter, it appears as though this tour is actually working out for her and she is actually having a great time.