The Musical Box

todd rundgren.

Well, you can’t say Todd Rundgren didn’t warn anyone. The first words out of his mouth last night at Bogart’s in Cincinnati could have served as a mantra for his entire career, but they held especially true for the wildly indulgent performance at hand: “I am what I am.”

Familiar as that saying is, it also served as the opening line to Rundgren’s new indie album, State, which half of the program’s repertoire was devoted to. Take your pick as to which might have seemed more unsettling – the fact that State’s music is drenched in electronica-heavy dance beats or the idea Rundgren had of using such rave-friendly dance sounds as the basis for the entire performance.

He brought along two long-time bandmates – guitarist Jesse Gress and drummer Prairie Prince. But with very few exceptions, both, like Rundgren, were subservient to the show’s heavily computerized drive. In short, the better portion of the music was essentially canned. That didn’t seem to bother the crowd – heavily populated by 50 and 60-somethings – half as much as being showered with music they had never heard.

Frankly, that element proved quite intriguing. Good for ol’ Todd for not staying mired in the past. For those patient enough to hang tough with the State songs, there were rewards. Groove-dominate as the music seemed, it was still graced with plentiful pop hooks and a melodic sensibility that shifted from the contemplative (the set-closing Sir Reality) to the tensely textured (Ping Me) to the purely celebratory (Party Liquor). And while you couldn’t always tell underneath the live beats and synths, there was considerable humor in the new tunes, as well. “You shall receive what you deserve” sang Rundgren under the party funk of Serious. “Since you been dancing on my last nerve.”

It was in the delivery of this dance floor pop that things became problematic. Watching a truly pro groove merchant like Prince do little more that color a static, pre-established beat was a little painful. Same with Rundgren. While he obviously got a good aerobic workout leaping about in an effort to sell the crowd on the idea of a rave, his live musicianship was limited to two brief guitar solos at the start and end of the set.

Any concert that restricts Rundgren’s guitar time operates creatively in the red. In that respect, this program hemorrhaged.

The Time Jumpers

The cheer that burst forth from the music of The Time Jumpers last night at the Lexington Opera House was in no way subtle. You heard it in the scholarly but often carefree musicianship, the commanding but unassuming singing and the glossary of traditionally minded songs and styles this 11 member pack of Nashville all-stars could summon on a whim.

And then there were those moments so uncalculated but still so overtly upbeat that you couldn’t help but get swept up in the fun. Take, for instance, when Dawn Spears, one of the seven group members that took turns on lead vocals, announced she was going to sing a sad country song only to collapse in a fit of laughter so sustaining that reinforcements had to be called in.

Luckily, The Time Jumpers had plenty. Fiddler and de facto group leader Kenny Sears (Dawn’s husband) summoned Ranger Doug Green (of Riders in the Sky fame) to sing the sublime Western reverie Ridin’ on the Rio, one of five tunes offered from the group’s 2012 self-titled sophomore album.

But the giggles hardly got the best of Dawn Sears. She followed with the 1983 Vern Gosdin hit  If You’re Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right), a solemn blast of traditional country heartbreak that was almost operatic in intensity. Not a bad trick, especially considering she was seated last night next to Vince Gill, who isn’t exactly a slouch of a singer himself.

That was the evening’s lone confessional, its only thematic ill wind. The rest of the near two hour show was devoted to music with a fluidity that was almost orchestral in design and a musical temperament that was continually sunny.

Two luminous examples were the instrumentals All Aboard and Texoma Bound, workouts that emphasized the band’s trio of fiddlers (Kenny Sears, Larry Franklin and Joe Spivey). Similarly good natured and free spirited was Kenny Sears’ Nothing But the Blues, a wry but light-as-a-feather dismissal of depression (“When my baby left me, I thought that I would die… but I didn’t.”), and the continually fascinating solo turns taken by pedal steel guitarist Paul Franklin.

Gill got his two cents in with Six Pack to Go, which was served as a leisurely blues light on desperation and high on the playful, animated solos and melodic runs that helped define The Time Jumpers’ tradition-minded, retro-inclined Americana fun. 

ZZ Top: Frank Beard, Billy F. Gibbons and Dusty Hill.

It was a dream combination – a ZZ Top concert on Cinco de Mayo. After all, what better day (or way) to celebrate the blues and boogie music that the Texas trio has blasted forth with for more than four decades?

Guitarist Billy F. Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard were on a roll Sunday night at Richmond’s EKU Center for the Arts, giving their set list a serious shakeup and having a ball with crunchy guitar workouts full of rootsy, rustic and highly economic drive. Sure, the fact it was Cinco de Mayo probably helped. It certainly gave the trio’s border-radio classic Heard It on the X a greater gravity. But it could have been Arbor Day and ZZ Top would have delivered the goods.

Musically, the 90-minute performance hasn’t strayed much from the elemental, blues fortified grinds the band has always favored. To that end, this was Gibbons’ show all the way. As the trio’s only soloist, he summoned up thick, angular solos that nicely worked off the plentiful boogie grooves at the heart of most tunes. When the music shifted strictly to the blues, as during 1975’s Blue Jean Blues (one of many surprises the band spruced up its set list with), Gibbons’ soloing was more fluid. But at no point did he overindulge. A jam band ZZ Top is not. Instrumental jaunts, and Gibbons’ rich soloing, favored brevity. Only on the still vital blues medley of Waitin’ for the Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago did the band slow the melodic flow and take its time. Still, Gibbons’ solo was contained and immediate.

Then there were the hits, most of which have aged well – save for the static, syncopated Legs. The ’80s Eliminator singles Sharp Dressed Man and Gimme All Your Lovin’ possessed a crisp pop efficiency very much in keeping with the rest of the performance, while the ’70s boogie anthems La Grange and Tush (which closed the show) reflected a refreshing level of Lone Star wildness.

But what was featured around all that stole the show. The opening Precious and Grace (from 1973’s Tres Hombres) was unexpected. Ditto for Certified Blues (which was exactly that thanks to Gibbon’s soulful playing), an exquisite relic from 1970’s ZZ Top’s First Album and the roadhouse rumble Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings from 1975’s Fandango!

Hill piloted the last forgotten gem, the band’s 1992 cover of Viva Las Vegas, which it seldom performs anymore. It was a crowning, celebratory touch for a boogie band that manages to fashion almost any day – onstage, at least – into a holiday.

Paul Burch

Early into the nearly two-hour roots rock joyride Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub engaged in Saturday night at Willie’s Locally Known was a savory tune called Honey Blue.

It grew out of a blast of fuzzy guitar, a syncopated beat that resembled a mild rhumba (the trio repeatedly returned to such a percussive device throughout the evening) and a crisp, authoritative vocal from Nashvillian Burch that was steeped in the concise, emotive delivery of vintage pop. As if this change-up were not enough to showcase the efficient drive that the show favored, Honey Blue then morphed into a brief snippet of the blues/soul staple Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.

The medley summed up everything you needed to know about Burch’s stylistic sensibilities by offering a slice of original, pop-fortified roots rock alongside an example of the tradition-minded song construction that inspired it.

In short, it was Burch’s way of saying, ‘Go ahead. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.’

The model for this kind of musical time-tripping was obviously Nick Lowe. Burch’s original tunes possessed the kind of expert songcraft and split infatuation with roots rock and pop that made Lowe’s early records so distinctive. It could be heard last night in the subtle melodic swing of Little Bells, the retro country propulsion of the show-opening Like a Train and the elegant pop sweep of Waiting for My Ship (all three tunes, along with the earlier Honey Blue, came from Burch’s splendid 2009 album, Still Your Man).

Even Burch’s vocals recalled Lowe’s clean, collected singing, as evidenced by Ballad of Henry & Jimmy and the more vintage country rumble Jackson, Tn.

Beyond that, the show was as casually paced as it was tireless. Burch must have bade the audience good night a half-dozen times before launching into another song. It took Saturday Night Jamboree and Tryin’ to Get to You to finally shut the trio down. Even then, Burch – who was decked out in suit, tie and vest – looked as if he had just hit the stage instead of having ripped through the rock of ages for a couple of hours. Score one for the power of positive pop.

Justin Townes Earle

“Don’t start telling me what to do,” Justin Townes Earle cautioned to a patron barking out song requests Friday night at Buster’s. “I’ve got this thing under control.”

The celebrated songsmith was true to his word. During a brisk 90-minute set – his first headlining gig in Lexington in more than a decade – Earle both played to and against expectations with unassuming authority.

To those who view Earle as an alt-country or Americana artist – a guilt-by-association tag he can’t help but bear as the son of Steve Earle – there were tunes that skirted with country tradition, such as the pedal steel-saturated Midnight at the Movies and the familial meditation Mama’s Eyes. The latter was one of two songs last night (Am I That Lonely Tonight? was the other) to reference Earle’s famous dad (“I am my father’s son. I’ve never known when to shut up.”).

But the more Earle stirred the stylistic pot, using country inspirations as components rather than foundations for his songs, the more playful and intriguing the performance became. A wonderful case in point was Baby’s Got a Bad Idea, one of several works highlighted from Earle’s recent Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now album. The song was a ripe, roots-savvy excursion that emerged from a rural country framework but was driven by a pure rock ’n’ roll charge. The resulting music sounded like a cross between Faron Young and T. Rex.

When Earle strayed completely from country-related turf, you heard a voice with a clear pop vision – or at least you did when the show’s muddy sound mix wasn’t making the songsmith sound as if he was singing underwater.

During the cleaner moments, stylists like Ryan Adams (in his lighter, less Americana-inclined songs) and even Josh Rouse came to mind. But a pop star Earle is not. The wily thematic depth of One More Night in Brooklyn and especially Harlem River Blues – not to mention an especially crafty choice of cover material served as encores (Billy Joe Shaver’s Georgia on a Fast Train, The Replacements’ Can’t Hardly Wait) – placed Earle very much in a musical camp of his own restless design.

Taylor Swift performed Saturday night at Rupp Arena. Herald-Leader staff photo by Mark Cornelison.

It was large on ceremony and, at times, uncomfortably long on talk. But when it stuck to essentials – tunes and performances that reveled in youthful celebration – Taylor Swift’s sold-out concert Saturday night at Rupp Arena became quite the party.

With three Lexington shows in slightly more than four years now to her credit, it has become clear that the multi-platinum-selling 23-year-old seldom opts for the simple. Last night’s outing came with staging that simulated an ancient cathedral and a Paris skyline. It had a violinist popping out of the stage floor, percussionists being flung about on wires like slingshots, and parades of musicians, singers, dancers and, of course, costume changes that continually gave the concert the feel of a music video come to life.

And there was red. Lots if it. Not so coincidentally, Swift’s newest album is titled Red. The favored color could be found in costumes (the Oz-esque ruby slippers the singer wore at the top of the performance), the backdrops, the stage dressings and the lighting. In short, red was more generously red splashed about at Rupp on Saturday night than in a Friday the 13^th movie.

There also was the metaphorical red that was the basis for one of several life lessons that Swift dispensed between songs. Declaring red as symbolic of “the crazy emotions,” the singer also offered this bit of social guidance: “The only thing you have control over (in life) is how you look at it.”

To quote the late Roger Ebert, “Wow. That’s deep.”

But the truly curious aspect to this performance was that despite its sense of (and seeming desire for) spectacle, Swift’s pop smarts have matured markedly. Take, for instance, the sock-hop pop of 22, which sent the singer and a platoon of dancers to a stage near the back of the arena floor. There was no ballyhoo, no costumed theme, just a moment when honest, exuberant music and motion were in sync.

There were similar moments in the vintage girl-group pop of You Belong to Me and Holy Ground. But there were just as many instances when some of Swift’s more melodically inclined hits were suffocated by the staging. The bizarrely vampish courtesan setting for I Knew You Were Trouble, in particular, was a real head-scratcher.

A serviceable vocalist at best, Swift has nonetheless become a confident and tireless stage artist. As she journeys into her 20s, maybe she can lasso in the floor show a bit to bring it more in line with the pop properties that she is so obviously schooled in.

The 30-minute opening set by British pop stylist Ed Sheeran was as spontaneous as Swift’s show was choreographed. In a rare move for an arena act, Sheeran performed as a solo acoustic act, building on-the-spot arrangements out of looped bits of vocal and percussive fragments. The homemade formula hit a dizzying zenith during You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.

It was difficult, however, deciding which was the gutsier move during Sheeran’s cover of Wayfaring Stranger – singing the tune’s final chorus a capella before the crowd of 17,000 or deciding to tackle the traditional folk favorite in the first place within a set of contemporary pop originals.

Illinois-born country singer Brett Eldridge began the evening with a brief five-song set. The musicianship of a four-piece band was effective and thrifty, the singing was crisp and authoritative, but the material was completely innocuous.

The Jeremy Kittell Band, from left: Nathaniel Smith, Jeremy Kittell, Simon Chrisman and Josh Pinkham.

Near the end of a performance full of technical cunning, scholarly variety and especially keen ensemble intuition, Jeremy Kittel held his violin outward so all in the audience Tuesday night at the Weisiger Theatre of the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville could inspect the damage of his performance.

The instrument’s bridge was bent at a severe angle. That’s kind of like a swimmer unexpectedly discovering that he has broken his arm before a final competitive lap.

Luckily, nearly all of the concert’s heavy lifting was behind him at that point.

Kittel comes from a growing line of instrumentalists who use bluegrass inspiration (or, in his case, a variant of it) as a launching pad for compositions and improvisations rooted in jazz.

The compositional side favored lyrical warmth that retained a more plaintive side of bluegrass, as shown by The Curious Beetle Medley, which played nicely off the gentle antique tones of hammer dulcimer provided by Simon Chrisman. The show-opening Flight of the Mastadon played more extensively with timbre, tempo and harmony, with Kittel, cellist Nathaniel Smith and mandolinist Josh Pinkham shifting lead, rhythm and even percussive duties.

In terms of sheer fun and invention, nothing beat the chamber-style reimagining of the Jimi Hendrix anthem Hey Joe, which stripped the dulcimer of its fanciful charm and turned the song itself into a patient, folky meditation.

But what might be interpreted as strictly Americana inspiration in Kittel’s playing is really more global in nature. The performance regularly embraced traditional Irish music, be it overtly (as in the richly detailed The Foxhunter’s Reel) or more discreetly (as in a new untitled piece Kittel said was informed by the soul singing of Al Green and Bill Withers, even though it seemed to rely more on Celtic finesse).

With the bridge out, so to speak, the Kittel band encored not with a final blast of cross-generational, cross-continental string music, but with its lone vocal number: a retiring reading of Gillian Welch’s Hard Times.

In other words, after an evening of genre-hopping, globe-trotting and all manner of instrumental mischief, the group closed the show with unaccompanied four-part harmony singing. How curiously fitting.

The Engines, from left: Dave Rempis, Tim Daisy, Nate McBride (replaced last night by Kent Kessler) and Jeb Bishop.

Having spent the better portion of two hours Thursday night at Mecca exploring levels of jazz dynamics that shifted from cool, melodic balladry to blasts of free improvisation, the Chicago collective known as The Engines turned to that most lamentably unlikely of inspirations, the neighborhood taqueria. During the finale of El Norte, penned by trombonist Jeb Bishop, the quartet compressed its bounteous instrumental drive, improvisational dexterity and pure performance intuition into a remarkably streamlined musical travelogue.

No sooner did an intro of animated Mexicali-flavored bop establish itself than the band swerved into swing. Then El Norte switched gears again to allow drummer Tim Daisy and bassist Kent Kessler to cook up a light but pronounced groove under a musically acrobatic solo from Bishop. The entire escapade was rich, melodically spacious and taco-rific.

Unlike many of the Chicago-based units that have visited Lexington over the years as part of the Outside the Spotlight, The Engines worked from a compositional base as opposed to a strictly improvisational one.

Some tunes, including Four Feet of Slush, emphasized hushed ensemble cool. Others, including the show-opening suite of two Bishop works, Tilt and Spark, were full tour de forces that incorporated groove, drone-like backdrops, an encyclopedia of percussive exploits from Daisy and a beautifully emotive bass solo from Kessler that served as the true eye of this musical hurricane.

There also were instances when the music pared itself down to free-style solos ripe with wicked humor. Daisy took top honors in that department early into the second set with a restless solo that had him grabbing various percussive devices out of a suitcase for use in creating assorted scrapes and scratches across his drum heads.

The catalyst for all this fun was saxophonist Dave Rempis, who engaged in several cat-and-mouse bouts with Bishop that built to wondrous boil during Stafe. But there was one instance during a brief unaccompanied solo when Rempis seemed to sum up the continually morphing music of The Engines. After establishing a resoundingly clear tone on alto sax, his sound quickly corroded into a coarse squall.

Such a moment was indicative of a jazz vehicle that loved the flow and pace of keen rhythm but wasn’t for an instant shy about changing into something more dangerous when the need kicked in.

Ibrahim ag Alhabib (center) and Tinariwen.

When your band is comprised of nomads from the Sahara – musicians with strong militant roots – you have more than a few stories to tell. Now picture being on tour in North America, with Tamashek, the native tongue of your fellow nomadic Touaregs, as your primary means of communication. Talk about being a stranger in a strange land.

But in the case of the Grammy-winning Tinariwen, the desert troupe that headlined last night’s opening of the MusicNOW Festival at Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall, a sense of artistic communion bridged all borders.

As almost always seems to be the case in performances when language divides artist and audience, rhythm and groove took over. For Tinariwen’s 85-minute set, that meant tunes centered on mid-tempo ensemble grooves performed in relatively tight quarters. The sound was positively swelling at times, yet the group – which shifted between five and six members – never used more that two guitars, bass and hand percussion. There were no leads, no solos and no obvious refrains in the song structures. Instead, tunes like Imidiwan Win Sahara (from Tinariwen’s Grammy-winning 2001 album, Tassili) operated with vocals and verses established by guitarist and group leader Ibrahim Ag Alhabib that were sung like chants.

Sometimes the resulting mood was elegiac. In others, it was warmer and more contemplative. Throughout, though, its infectious sway was profound. Much of the audience, seemingly unfamiliar with the music they were about to experience, remained on its feet for the duration of the set.

This isn’t to say there weren’t at least a few barriers in this kind of presentation. Alhabib was the only group member who didn’t have his face at least partially concealed by the scarves that were part of Tinariwen’s native nomadic gowns. But the band’s visual profile, foreign as it might have initially seemed, only added to the music’s worldly grace and mystery.

It would have been even more fascinating to discover some of the narratives in their lyrics, but one message was conveyed clearly after Alhabib had someone from the audience translate it for him from the stage: “We are friends.”

Richard Thompson

It was at the five-minute mark of an almost impossibly intense guitar solo Tuesday night at the Kentucky Theatre that Richard Thompson’s blend of jaw-dropping technique, tireless performance stamina and remarkably mature rock ’n’ roll nerve came to a boil.

The song that established such a sublime pile-up was Can’t Win, a neglected powerhouse tune from the British songsmith’s 1988 album, Amnesia. After the tune’s dark story line of conformity and mistrust was played out (“we harpoon dreams, we stiletto in the back”), Thompson, 64, let his fingers do some especially wicked strolling. He conjured long, sinewy lines that tightened around the melody like barbed wire. With the highly flexible groove of drummer Michael Jerome and bass guitarist Taras Prodaniuk at work under him, the break yielded an atypically solemn form of guitar shredding. Thompson’s facial expression was stoic to the point of being sphinx-like. But the sound he conjured was like Armageddon. No wonder Jerome bowed his head in a fit of seeming exhaustion at the tune’s conclusion.

And that was just one highlight from the nearly two-hour performance. The true charm behind the concert was that the power trio lineup – and a program highlighted by the first six songs from the new Buddy Miller-produced album, Electric, that generously catered to the format – offered a detailed and insightful look into Thompson’s considerable instrumental strengths.

Admittedly, Thompson long ago established himself as a monster player. But most of his past performances at the Kentucky have focused on the harmonic invention of his acoustic playing. And there were instances last night underscoring that, including the dance-hall shuffle and swing of Al Bowlly’s in Heaven, the dizzying picking in the inevitable encore version of 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and the deconstructing groove of Easy There, Steady Now, which Thompson coyly tagged as a “jazz odyssey.”

But between the jagged folk dance structures at the heart of Electric tunes like Sally B and Stony Ground and the dark power chords protruding from Shoot Out the Lights, there were unusually generous glimpses of the amplified Thompson working within jams and improvisations of fearsome richness.

Playfully tagging his power-trio potency as “wimpy,” Thompson purposely addressed convention by opening the second of two encore sections with a cover of the ’60s warhorse anthem Hey Joe that mimicked the chunky rhythmic drive of Jimi Hendrix. But truer fireworks came with the show-closing Tear Stained Letter, a blast of hearty folk/soul fire that was pure unrelenting fun.