Concert Moments

Last Friday night the intimate Warming House in south Minneapolis presented a concert featuring two bands.  Intuitive Compass, a southern Oregon duo, opened for Resonant Rougues, a quartet calling Ashville, North Carolina its home.  The first band's website describes its roots as "vaudevillion folk music," while the latter claims influences by Appalachian classic and early New Orleans jazz, among others.

The style of Intuitive Compass fit perfectly with the ambiance of Warming House.  The venue is on the basement level of an old building on 40th and Bryant.  The theater's capacity is less than fifty, and the acoustics are near-perfect.  In this no-frills setting, the thoughtful lyrics of Compass' music could not only be heard but digested as well.  Curiously, the band did not reveal the title of most of their selections until they had finished playing each song.

Aurelia Anne Cohen's work on the accordion evoked a beat and style reminiscent of the Decemberists.  In front of her on the floor were five bells.  I was amused and slightly distracted by watching her tap one or more bells at various times throughout several songs.  I found myself guessing when she would ring a bell, and whether just one or several consecutively.

Compass has played throughout the country, but focuses on the Northwest.  I can't blame Cohen or her partner, guitarist Jason Dea West, for name dropping the The Violent Femmes and Trampled By Turtles, two well known bands for which Compass is opening this month.  

My only knock on Intuitive Compass is that they could have used more variety in tempo.  Tempo variety was not a problem, however, with Resonant Rogues whose co-leader Sparrow, an effervescent personality with an exquisite voice, started her band's set on the accordion but then switched to banjo a few tunes in.  The Rogues are real troubadours who have been all over the US and Europe.  At least a couple of their songs were written while they were in the Balkans and northern Turkey, soaking up the culture of the locals.  This was their second visit to Warming House, and the last of four gigs for which they paired with Intuitive Compass.

Between visits to Minneapolis, Sparrow married co-leader Keith J. Smith, a guitarist who multi-tasked with percussion via a foot pedal which he played with his heel.  The band was headed to South Dakota that night after the show, with Alaska being their ultimate destination.  The Rogues' sound was smartly completed with a stand-up bass and a superbly talented violinist, Kristen Elaine, who is a former bandmate of our good buddy, Tony Cipolle, from their Whiskey Chasers days.  According to Tony's dad, Admiral Bob, Kristen is classically trained but currently prefers life in a traveling folk band "because it's more fun."

The highlight of the evening was the occurrence of a Moment, one of perhaps only seven or eight in the history of my concert-going experiences.  An explanation follows.

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Every once in awhile I've been lucky enough to attend a concert when I realized during a song, "This is a Moment that is going to stay with me forever."  I first came to this realization in high school when I saw the Ronettes live in the Minot Municipal Auditorium, circa 1964.  They were one of the headliners in a lineup of about ten popular '60's groups to perform in the Magic City that night.  Each group sang four or five songs.  The bands that preceded the Ronettes were well received, but nothing out of the ordinary.  Then the Ronettes, three sexy biracial chicks from New York in tight, red hip-hugging dresses, spiked high heel shoes, plenty of mascara and big hair took the stage.  Culture shock on the tundra!  All of a sudden, what seemed like every airman from nearby Minot Air Force Base was on his feet, going wild.  Their excitement was contagious, and the clamor in the audience drowned out the girls' opener, Baby I Love You, and the rest of the trio's other offerings.

Going back to my college days, I remember standing ten feet away from my favorite South Bend band, the MRQ, who launched into a cover of the Hollies' Look Through Any Window.  Another Moment!  They totally nailed the Mancunians' three part harmony, together with a perfect replication of the guitar parts and drums. This sounds like hyperbole, but believe me when I say that the MRQ is the best live cover band I have ever seen; maybe the best live band, period.  Every time they played on campus, usually in Stepan Center (dubbed by Paul Stookey the "Big Popcorn Shaker"), I made it a point to see them.   MRQ was a tribute band before the term gained wider acceptance.  Their specialty was primarily hits and deep cuts by the Hollies, and secondarily the Byrds and Beatles.  They're also responsible for my becoming a life-long Hollies fan (and a Bobby Elliott wanna be).

I still remember the first time I heard those Florida rednecks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, rip into Gimme Three Steps.  I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck start to curl even before the instrumental intro was completed.  I'm guessing the year was 1987.  I am not a huge Skynyrd fan, but since then I've paid to see them two other times just for the sheer joy of hearing them perform that one song.  No wonder it's on Pud's Plethora Of Platinum!

An almost identical experience transpired with Styx, a Chicago band I have always liked going back to the days when Dennis DeYoung was lead singer on over half the group's repertoire.  Their song which absolutely grabs me is Blue Collar Man.  I have seen Styx four or five times over a span of four decades, and twice they opened with "my song."  Did they know I was in the crowd?  Do they know Blue Collar Man is Track # 1 on Pud's Plethora?     

In the eighties, Anne Murray dedicated her hit Can I Have This Dance to a young man sitting in the second deck of the Met Center who was about to propose to his girlfriend.  When Anne finished the song, she called out to him, "What did she say?"  He yelled back, "She said 'Yes!'"  Nine thousand fans erupted with a standing O.  Suddenly there was a speck of dust in my eye.

Although I was not fortunate enough to see the Beatles in concert, I did see both Paul McCartney as a solo, post-Beatles and post-Wings act, and Ringo Star with his first All Star Band.  One Moment from the McCartney show stands out.  It was in the mid-eighties when Paul was in the midst of cranking out five albums in a seven year span.  My recollection is as follows.  Because Paul was touring in support of a recently released solo album, his set list was weighted in favor of new songs.  That was probably acceptable to the younger fans in attendance, but it really wasn't what baby boomers most wanted to hear.  The first twenty-five minutes or so were a mixture of Wings gems and newer stuff.  Then, it happened, the Moment.  Everyone in the packed house recognized the first couple of notes from the Beatles' song, Drive My Car, and the place erupted.  The Fab Four may have ceased to exist over a decade before, but that's the material we most wanted to hear.  For the remainder of the night, the phenomenon of early recognition of Beatles tunes repeated.  We could not get enough of the Mop Tops, even though there was only one of them on stage.

So, now we are back to the present.  Ticket Master, public drunkenness and, as I get older, my lower level of tolerance for boorish behavior -- I'm talking to you, Mister Let's Make A Video Of Every Song With My Cell Phone Raised Above My Head Guy -- have caused me to severely reduce my live music experiences, especially in connection with nationally famous artists.  Thus it has been many years since my last Moment; that is, until Friday night.  When Resonant Rogues played Coco, I knew right then and there a Moment was underway.

Coco came about two-thirds of the way through the set.  The Rogues had already won over the crowd with their sublime craftsmanship, the vignettes preceding many of the songs, the smart mix of slow and bouncy tunes, the solo instrumental snippets by each of the quartet's members, and especially the winning personality of Sparrow.  As she sang Coco in what struck my layman's ears as beautiful French, I felt almost transported to Parisian streets.  I immediately recalled the French film Amelie, starring Audrey Tautou.  Both Sparrow and the character Amelie have that mischievous mannerism, a twinkle of the eye and a sweet smile to go with a kind spirit.  I had only a vague idea of what the song was about, but it didn't matter.

If someday Resonant Rogues comes back for a third visit, I'd like to see them again, with the hope they reprise Coco.  In the meantime, maybe I'll take up French.