Boney Earnest's Suburban Hilltop Tent Revue

Friday, August 20, 2004 ... 1:02 PM

Gil & Dave Counterpoint from K.

My buddy K. e-mails me:

"Okay, Boney, I looked at the cleaned-up version of your review, but you know, the first one made sense to me too. Or I thought it did at the time! It's pretty amazing stuff because, you know, who the hell ever thought to wonder what Revelator would sound like without Dave? Their duo-ship is such a given, it's like peanut butter & jelly. Dave is some superhuman jelly, but to me, the way he carries himself onstage, his whole shy, self-deprecating manner, it helps bring him back down to earth for me. But like you said, when he lifts off, he really lifts off. But, you know, for me, Gil is not that relatable. I see her as every bit of the genius Dave is. When she sings a line like, "I can't say your name without a crow flying by," I feel like she's up there in the stratosphere with Dave. Her songwriting and her singing are just as virtuosic and mesmerizing to me as his playing. I think. Are they? I never really thought about it until reading your review. But to me there's something unapproachable about her, like she's from another time or another world, and with that flawless white skin and those blue eyes, she's like, not an ordinary woman. So to me she's maybe even less relatable than Dave. Maybe if I had a crush on her like some people I know...just kidding. I've only seen them twice, so I can't really talk anyway. But I did notice that Dave seemed more confident this last time. I attributed it to the fact that he was all warmed up and roaring to go after playing the opening set with Old Crow. Like, he carried that confidence and energy over into the main set. But maybe that's not it. Maybe there is a real shift going on. The seesaw does creak when Dave solos, that's for fucking sure. But doesn't the seesaw creak the other way when Gil sings sometimes? I don't know. Part of why I love "Throw Me A Rope" so much is its balance between Gil & Dave, and their harmonizing, it's like perfect equilibrium. Or at least that's the way I always remember the experience of that song, after I come back down to earth ... "

Brendan

0 comments | 7"

Wednesday, August 18, 2004 ... 6:35 PM

Who's the Revelator?

So last night was my seventh chance to watch Gil & Dave save a packed house's worth of folkie fans' souls from the frangible blandness of the post-Joni singer-songwriter tradition -- a tradition well-represented at last night's Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue by the oh-so-blah Patty Griffin, who drew the short straw, apparently, and had to follow Gil & Dave's abbreviated, standard, but awestriking-as-ever set.

Following Dave once he's warmed up is like following Moses. The paths he carves out of music are Red Sea treacherous, and when he is warmed up, David Rawlings stands at the foot of Sinai clutching his little archtop Epi in his arms like the fresh-minted Torah.

Gillian forms storm clouds out of her minor key chord progressions and spooky looming lyrics ("I can't say your name without a crow flying by") -- but it's Dave who brings down the rain and the lightning. Dave has snowballed so much confidence and presence in the years since these two started their career of twang evangelism, you can hear the dynamic shifting between them. Dave's guitar sits louder in the live mix -- or he plays louder than he used to (breaking strings onstage this year for the first time in his decade-long career) -- but either way, when Dave solos, the seesaw creaks.

Having heard it with my own ears seven times now, and a few times more on CD TV DVD, I'm starting to wonder what Gillian's song "Revelator" would sound like without David Rawlings. What has become, in the four years or so that they've been playing it, Gillian's career-defining song has concurrently become David's signature launching pad -- the point in the show at which he ignites, lifts off, and takes everyone with him who can hang on. There is a tension building between the song's two characteristics that I'd bet neither Gil nor Dave would admit to, but which you can fucking feel, if you're listening -- listen to the pure down-strum fury of that last chorus -- and particularly if you follow the song's life -- from the album cut through the DVD to their current near-rote stage act, where the song lies entrenched 3/4 through, the climax of the set.

So listening to it, you think, without Dave, "Revelator" would either yawn open and breathe its own first deep breath as Gillian's song, or it would fray away soggily like a rained-on newspaper.

You get the feeling -- or the hope? in spite of yourself? -- that it might be the former. Because you really do love Gillian. When she plays that solo number up there by her lonesome -- last night it was "One Little Song," and the feeling of it caught in my throat where it spread into a long sigh as she fingerpicked those last notes -- you sort of shake free of the Rawlings fire for a moment and let Gillian's slow bluesy cracked-leather enchantment work on you -- and it's comforting. You identify with Gil, because her genius is disguised as earthy melody and gritty homespun lyricism. She loses power when her songs get too scholastic ("April the 14th Part One") or abstract ("Whiskey Girl"). She is most effective when she works with recognizably colloquial idioms, whether of Bristol ("Acony Bell") or Memphis ("Wayside").

Dave's superhuman virtuosity, meanwhile, blisters on the surface. You can love him for a moment here and there, between numbers, when Gil steps away to tune her banjo, leaves him alone at the mic, and he shies away from the adoringly jeering crowd -- anxiety, sure, you can relate to that -- but the instant his flat-pick strikes that tinderbox, boy, he detaches from you, from the human race, from gravity. He becomes something alien, cocksure and lightning-brilliant. And any sense of sympathy between you and him scatters sparking into the air -- and if you do identify with Gil, then what does that mean?

So what are you getting at, Boney?

Nothing. This is just where my mind wandered last night during Patty Griffin's boring-ass set.

Brendan

1 comments | 7"

Friday, August 13, 2004 ... 9:25 AM

Suburban Hilltop Tent Revival: Old Crow Medicine Show at Newport Folk

I saw Old Crow's first set on Sunday, at the Borders stage. They were the act of the day. Of the weekend. And I mean I saw Steve Earle, Lucinda, Rufus, Wilco, Doc fucking Watson -- and each of them was brilliant -- but Old Crow were the trophy of the festival.

It was not a soul under that pavilion not wholly converted inside of thirty seconds. They shook it like to make it break. Watching them stomp and holler their way through songs and styles 80 or 100 years old or older -- ironically enough (and doubly ironically, since the same thing was happening at the same festival 45 years ago), there is no way not to believe that you are looking at the Next Big Thing. You believe that these kids are bound for glory.

Well, but then you sort of realize: this is old-timey string band music, dude. You're telling me they're gonna wrench the hiphop out the hands of the record companies and replace it with: an open-back 5-string banjo? O Brother was big, but. Plus, you know, we've seen what compny money does to country music. It's a sausage-maker that turns raw twangy meat into Oscar Meyer Music weiners. You put Hank Williams in, and Garth Brooks slides out. Loretta in, Shania out. Bill Monroe in ... Nickel fucking Creek out.

But at the same time, you hear Old Crow, and you want people to know about them. And then you also want to keep them a secret. And you think, Can they be kept secret? And you think, if the word is going to get out, then I wanna be the one who gets it the fuck out. So that later on when I see Old Crow t-shirts on 14-yr-old girls at the mall I can say to my friends, "I fucking told you."

So listen: every night they've got an audience and you're not in it, you're missing something special. See them in little bars and sweaty tents, friends, while you still can.

Brendan

0 comments | 7"

Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"

SITES WHICH THE TENT REVUE RECOMMENDS

MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Dig and Be Dug in Return
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
The Old, Weird America
Honey, Where You Been So Long?

LITERATURE
The Greensboro Review
Mixed Animal
Night Train
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Mungo (This was the blog of my friend, the late Cami Park. Miss you, Cami.)
Staccato Fiction
Wigleaf
PANK Magazine

OTHER
Cat and Girl
Film Freak Central

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