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Drunk Horse with Dave Gleason's Wasted Days :: 08.07.04 :: Great American Music Hall :: San Francisco, CA
Do you ever get tired of the best stuff being overlooked? Does it burn your biscuits that the mediocre and the pandering get sacks full of riches while real musicians scrape by? Do you want to get on rooftops and shout about the good music happening outside of the myopic perspective of television, radio, and glossy magazines? I know I do. To wit, I had the pleasure of spending an early August evening with two bands that kick so much ass that I've been walking around singing their praises for weeks afterwards. You may have missed this one but if you pull up a chair and listen close you might be able to get in on the ground floor of something great. Ladies and gents, meet Dave Gleason's Wasted Days and Drunk Horse.
Dave Gleason's Wasted Days
08.07.04 :: San Francisco, CA |
Wandering through the off-the-rails freak show that is O'Farrell Street on a Saturday night, my steps were light, rejuvenated by the promise of good times waiting for me behind the Great American's swinging doors. Past the working girls, the spare changers, and the guys skulking into the Mitchell Brothers Theater. Past the Thai teens eating late night noodles, past my cares and worries I strolled. Even a full day in retail couldn't dim my spirits knowing I'd be seeing two bands who'd tickled my fancy on their studio efforts play live for the first time. That glorious slosh of expectation inside had me keyed up, ready to let the drafts pour freely as our heels scuffed up the hardwood floor. Outside of a brief in-store performance I hadn't seen Dave Gleason before an audience but had been a fan of his work since day one. His second long player, Midnight, California, already has its teeth locked on my Best of 2004 list, a revitalizing country-rock experience riddled with honeyed singing, amazing songs, and spirited picking (for my full thoughts on this album pop over here). I work amongst record store clerks, a unique breed if ever there was one, at what is perhaps the coolest independent music spot on the continent. Gleason's record is one of those we talk about endlessly as it plays over the store's stereo. These folks are also the reason I know about Drunk Horse, a four piece from Oakland that sounds like they were suckled on Black Sabbath, Nirvana, and AC/DC and then fed only red meat and amphetamines through their teen years. Their latest record, Adult Situations, is a rollicking good time, one of those perfect half hour and change affairs that angry up the blood and make you want you want to kiss somebody hard, carelessly, stupidly. Whenever anyone spoke about Drunk Horse concerts they'd glaze over and explain that words failed them. It was just something intense and wonderful that had to be experienced first hand. As endorsements go that's about as good as it gets in my book. Music that can steal the power of speech from us has got to have some serious merit.
Dave Gleason's Wasted Days
08.07.04 :: San Francisco, CA |
Inside, I made my way past the beat-up cowboy hats and more red-and-white checkered print clothing than a production of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. I spotted Wasted Days' bassist Mike Therieau dressed in a Nudie suit-style shirt and knew somewhere Gram Parsons smiles when this band plays. With the balcony closed, the main floor was bustling as the Days took the stage led by Gleason, decked out in a scarf he stole from Ronnie Lane's grinning corpse. Some guys are born to lead bands and Gleason is one of them, a real presence in a world where so many feel like ghosts just passing through. He's cooler than you or I will ever be but he's so bloody likeable that you can't help but be charmed by the blond-haired bastard. And when his irregular cut voice opens up you're likely to swoon, no matter what your orientation. No pedal steel tonight, which allowed the assembled Days to rock a touch rougher than the album versions, Saturday night music in the best and purest sense.
In addition to Therieau, the band consisted of Michael Montalto (electric guitar, who also plays in country classics Red Meat), Dan Eisenberg (piano, organ), Ben Wayne (drums), Pat Johnson (acoustic guitar), and Gleason on his own electric guitar. Everyone who felt the spirit move them jumped in on back-up vocals, always belted out with sincere gusto, right in their raggedness. The undeniable pleasure they have in playing this music is palpable and brought the whole room into sharp focus by the time they hit the glorious title tune from their latest disc. We were all in as they told us, "You can't live in California unless you got some soul." Always nice to hear what one already believes (snarked the native Californian scribe...).
California, don't they know you
You're still standin' when they nearly broke you
Earthquakes done shook your waters
Shoulda known not to even cross her
Walkin' round in Midnight, California
Dave Gleason : 08.07 : San Francisco, CA |
At any moment with these guys you expect them to burst into a handclap breakout, picking up on some older vibration from Nashville or Bakersfield or any other dusty outlaw musician elsewhere jangling around in their notes. It's there in Eisenberg's organ washes and hard piano, the kind of thing that made folks love Bruce Brody (Patti Smith, Lone Justice) or Eddie Harsch's insightful fills with The Black Crowes. It's there in every shimmering, knees-to-jelly solo from Michael Montalto. It's in the way they celebrate Merle Haggard (with a "Sing Me Back Home" that's now replaced New Earth Mud's take as my favorite new version of the prison standard). It's in the way they tip a glass to Carlo Rossi for his "fine tastin' wine" and in songs like "Listen To The Wind" that feel like some '50s juke joint classic that dropped out of a blue sky. Taken together, there's serious weight to the Wasted Days. It doesn't get in the way of having some fun but it sticks to your ribs, the taste of real soul food delivered with the happy slap of a snare drum and mindfully reckless guitars.
When they introduce "Dark End of the Street" as a song they learned from the Commitments soundtrack the room snickered knowingly. It's a jab at those who'd profit from music's past without paying real homage to its inventors. Gleason and company carries on the grand traditions they draw from, furthering their line into future days. With his sunglasses carelessly balanced on his head, Dave sang the shit out of Dan Penn's much covered nugget, drawing from that place where a singer's own life comes to represent our own, giving the humble stuff of words and a tune the oomph that gets one over the hump.
Dark Horse : 08.07.04 : San Francisco, CA |
After a brief respite, Drunk Horse laid into us. Nothing had prepared me for their sheer physicality, the wall-of-fucking-sound that slammed into my cranium and sucked me back inside from the cool night air. To look at them one might swear they've seen the quartet inside the folds of a gatefold sleeve. They are hirsute vinyl refugees in a CD world and God bless them for it. They showed a love of repetition and slow builds at the start of their set, foreplay before the real heavy petting began. They take you, hard and fast, but not before pouring a drink or two down your throat to loosen your buttons.
By the second tune, I'm all the way up front, dazed in a way I recognize, a sensation I haven't felt many times in my life. It's the raised fist realization that one is in the presence of rock greatness. More than any one lyric or any one tune, it's an overriding vibe radiating from them. I felt it the first time I saw the Ramones and AC/DC in the '80s. I felt it in the '90s at my first Nirvana and Black Crowes concerts. And I felt it last year seeing My Morning Jacket destroy a muddle of SF hipsters at Slim's. It only happens a few times each decade, that feeling of conversion. Two songs in and I knew I was gonna have it bad for Drunk Horse from that point on.
Dave Gleason with Drunk Horse
08.07.04 :: San Francisco, CA |
It seemed that the drum set was in constant danger of being demolished but it held up under the brutal sticking. The rhythm section grooves bluntly like Scott and Ron Asheton in The Stooges, impolite in the finest of ways. Over the top (and I do mean OVER the top...) guitars and haphazard (but brilliant) keyboard stabs careen through the darkness, lighting the way through Mordor and suburbia and other places we fear to tread. Punchy vocals and salty lead singing complicate expectations. They move like a stoned Motorhead who've listened to their fair share of pop music. But unlike say recent Australian darlings Jet, they dispense with the ballads altogether. Who needs daisies and teardrops when you've got all this fiery solar energy to unleash? When lead singer/songwriter Eli Eckert screams out a gurgled "Owwwww" it means something, it compels us to loose our minds. At least that's the effect it had on me. And all this just a few minutes into their set.
Looking down, opening my eyes after a twisted tangent, I see my wrist stamp is the word "Fragile," and think how appropriate. There's a hint of Yes in this Horse's pedigree, prog rock's willful penchant for taking strange turns at all the right places. Think the delirious distorted solo guitar breakout at 5:38 on "Starship Troopers" that veers into the air guitar-tastic coda or the spin-on-the-heels boogie at 3:30 in "I've Seen All Good People" or especially the Oscillation Overthruster g-force of the opening to "Heart of the Sunrise" that culminates in the every-damn-thing-goes-beautifully-nuts breakout at the seven-minute mark. Drunk Horse takes these concepts and grafts their pomp onto their dumbstick rock, a steady rolling sludge riddled with bright stones and black diamonds.
Dave Gleason with Drunk Horse
08.07.04 :: San Francisco, CA |
Dave Gleason returned to join them on a punishing assault on the Allman Brothers' "Whippin' Post." Their take is hungry like the early ABB, the one that played garages and snubbed anything that might take them away from THEIR vision of rock flecked with jazz and Latin textures, the blues exploded with improvisational abandon. Gleason's solo is a spiky, jagged thing, ornery in a tripped-out way. The collective instinct on display is staggering. They know where the blood is pumping and they tap in with a crimson grin.
Eric, the main co-worker who'd encouraged me to come out, grabbed my shoulder during "Whippin' Post" and asked, "Was it worth every dollar you spent to get in?" I nodded my affirmation so hard I hurt my neck, weakened by the damn fool head banging I'd been doing for the past half hour. Without thinking, just speaking from the heart, I replied, "Without question the best new rock band I've seen this year." And a short while on, I still feel the same.
It's no small thing to be given such pleasure. Rock, skewered with humor and righteous soul, is the inheritance of our age. It can take us out of ourselves, take us places we haven't been before and then tuck us in with a peck on the forehead. Drunk Horse brought things to a close with a request from the audience. Someone up front kept yelling "Toto Jam!" until Eckert finally said, "You asked for it." What followed was a note perfect rendition of Toto's omnipresent radio hit "Africa" that dissolved into a speed metal roar. With a slight grin, they sang such horrid lines as "It's gonna take some time to do the things we never have." Uh, no shit, Sherlock.
Both Dave Gleason's Wasted Days and Drunk Horse deserve bigger audiences. Talent like this shouldn't linger in the shadows. As I drove home across the Bay Bridge I kept thinking of the many half-talents who get spots at big music festivals like High Sierra and Bonnaroo. My momma raised me right so I won't name names but I assure you that in the realm of live music the Horse and Wasted Days rate amongst the best, especially when compared with a lot of the competition. Through song they deliver us from our workaday woes. They make us dance and sing aloud and pump the air without shame. They are bands one commits to, bands whose t-shirts we wear proudly as we rhapsodize poetically to strangers who point and ask us, "Who are those guys?" Given a few lucky breaks, the right exposure, say a spot on a big stage under summer skies or a national tour with an established headliner, I'm convinced they will blow a lot of minds. They blew mine and I don't intend to shut up about them until a lot more people know the truth.
Words by: Dennis Cook
Images by: Sarah Wirt
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