This painting measures 24″x36″ and was painted live during Particle on 11/14/06 at Starr Hill in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s signed by the members of the band on the back, which I think is spiffy-neato. I haven’t decided on whether or not I’ll sell it. Prints, maybe?
Listen to the Benevento Russo Duo LIVE Tonight!
I am going to try a live broadcast of the Duo tonight from Greensboro.
Show starts at 10:00 PM EST. Tapers.org Streaming
You might need Winamp to listen.
Update: This has been blessed by the Duo management. As long as I have signal, this is happening.
Also, I am going to try to do this again Saturday night from Wilmington, NC. Woot!
Damn, long time no post
Yeah yeah, what the hell right? I haven’t posted in almost three months. Three months! I make a pledge, yes, you heard it. To make sure that I post at least every four months. You heard it here first folks. Anyway, I am going to the Duo at the Orange Peel in Asheville, NC saturday night. It’ll be sweet, hopefully the boys aren’t tired.
How about that Trey show. For as much shit that I talk about Trey, he rocked it out. I hate to admit that I was grining as hard as I ever would (or can remember) at a good Phish show. Speaking of the boys, check out Tom Marshall’s blog post about the Phish looking for a new home. Charlottesville is a good town. Soon as Coran Capshaw re-opens the Jefferson as an indoor venue to shows, balcony with seats, downstairs is floor space, few tables on the sides, same as the State Theatre, we will have pretty much every accomidating venue possible for music.
Speaking of music, last night I was struck silly of the choices of music in the area. First up of couse was Orbit’s Wesnesday Night Showcase. The sweet sounds of funk, soul, rock, and even ween flow through the corner of the Corner as garage doors are opened full. Next at Starr Hill three different bands including Richmond’s own the Grove. Some Widespread Panic love came from Crozet where Bloodkin ripped out some crazy twanging good times. Rebel Vibe from D.C., which I attended, brought the raggae sound. When I was driving home from work Wednesday night, I thought to myself, I really want to listen to some reggae and then boom, get a phone call form friends and away we go.
Charlottesville is an excellent musical city. I promise I’ll update with a full dump of everything I got pictures of. Hopefully soon I will manage to start a podcast of the shows I record. Maybe I’ll do a show. Should be fun. Updates ever four months right? Yup, leaving that window open. Peace y’all.
Trey Anastasio Band: Anything but scary on Friday the 13th
So I went and yes, I DID get a $20 ticket (thanks for the clairvoyance halfstar). I waited outside for a while and this fella from Asheville walked up to me and dropped it on me…very nice. Unfortunately, I missed almost all of Tea Leaf’s set because I was waiting for the ticket, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I COULD hear it from outside the gates. Once inside I was surprised that they actually put seats in the dance space this time, which is unusual, but luckily my ticket was for the floor, so I got some prime real estate to see Trey do his thing. Here’s the setlist…
Set One:
Drifting
Tuesday
Dark & Down
Goodbye Head
Spin
Shine
46 Days*
Set Two:
Night Speaks To A Woman
Money, Love And Change
Low
What’s Done
Bar 17
Gotta Jibboo
Encore:
Come As Melody
Key:
*with Josh on guitar (Tea Leaf Green)
The first set got kicked off with a nice Drifting which I was very pleased with because I LOVE that album in general and the images that said song in particular invokes are simply wonderful. I have to admit that I’m not very familiar with Trey’s newer stuff from Bar 17 or even Shine, so I had a little bit of trouble fully getting into the next few tunes, but they were executed very well and Trey seemed to be enjoying himself up there. Still, a lot of the jams were pretty tasty and certainly warmed the crowd on this chilly Charlottesville evening, as we watched the lyrics explode in breathy bursts from the band’s collective mouth. The crowd reacted to Shine (radio friendly much?) but it was the 46 Days that really stood out for me. Josh Clark gets a HUGE, edgy, Frankensteinian sound out of his guitar and he meshed PERFECTLY with Trey and Tony on this one. At one point, Trey was literally ensconced with bubbles, as though they were flocking around him and him alone as the lights flicker-fluttered, painting the stage in surreal shades and hues. I burst out laughing, uninhibited…it was a joyful moment to see Trey shredding away, hair lashing from side to side as Josh and Tony likewise thundered out soaring notes and arpeggios. At one point, all three were just hammering away on their instruments, and Tony’s hand was a butterfly blur of movement as the song reached an ecstatic pinnacle before closing out the set. Brilliant.
Set two was the freaking money maker, though. The band wasted absolutely no time in launching into Night Speaks to a Woman (one of my faves) and I was pleased to hear it played so up-tempo. It was DRIVEN, fast, electric and got everyone kicking up their feet as it led into one of the better jams of the evening. This was quickly followed by Money, Love and Change (which was similarly much faster paced than I’d anticipated) which burbled into some frenetic back and forth between Trey and Tony, with Trey jumping up and down maniacally and grinning from ear to ear. This one two punch was definitely my highlight of the evening. The jams were edgy, well extrapolated upon and TIGHT. Jenn Hartswick did some stunning effect work with her trumpet that had me dog-cocking my head over and over again. As a side note, she looked pretty hip up there. Nice hat, Jenn. 
Low, What’s Done and Bar 17 were all nice, but, honestly, unremarkable. During What’s Done, my friend who was taping the show said, “Oh great, another one of Trey’s depressing songs,” to which I replied, “Hey, sometimes Trey has to play sad bastard music, man.” I also noted that Ray looks a lot like my friend Dave, at which point I couldn’t resist screaming with delight, “HE LOOKS TOO MUCH LIKE DAVE!!!”
And how about a set closing Jiboo that had everyone in my general vicinity locking eyes and smiling ridiculously. We were all back on tour. The song itself went into a very interesting direction and never made it back to the Jiboo lyrical theme, but it didn’t need to. The audience was happy that the TAB spaceship had launched and watched happily as it twittered and soared into what was left of the evening.
I was hoping for the Divided Sky encore, but was plenty happy with Come as Melody, which i could only limitedly pay attention to, because i was running to see if i had to go to work (which i did). In fact, I still haven’t really slept because I had to do the overnight at the boys’ home, so it’s really a wonder that i’m typing all of this right now. 
In any case, it was a great night of music. Trey looked healthy and happy and he was bouncing around up there like a llama bounding towards the turquoise mountains. Tony is now one of new favorite bassists and GOD BLESS JENNIFER HARTSWICK taboot, taboot. So happy she actually played a little (I thought she would only be singing…BONUS!).
Good show, good night, Trey bien!!!
originally posted over on crazyredbeard’s myspace page
I thought it was funny
Widespread Panic does Charlottesville for Two Nights!
One of my buddies just pointed this out:
Widespread Panic: September 26th and 27th at the Charlottesville Pavilion
Pre-sale begins 8/15 @ 10am EST and ends 8/17 @ 5pm EST
$35.00 GA
On sale 8/18 @ 10am
Charlottesville Pavilion or call 877.CPAV.TIXX
Can I get a hells yeah! HELL YEAH. Two nights baby, they must really like us here. That is all.
Festival! All Good > 10,000 Lakes Festival
What can I say? I love music festivals. If there was ever a speaker coming out of my head, it would sound like a festival. The music never stops. Basically All Good ran July 14th – 16th and then 10,000 Lakes was 19th – 22nd and man, that’s a lot of miles to travel. Over 500 miles round trip for All Good along with 2,800 miles for 10,000 Lakes makes for a weary traveler. Luckily I had some friends going out to 10KLF so I was able to fly out there and hitch a ride for the remaining 4 hours of driving. The company was great, the sights excellent and the music, well it was just damn good.
All Good, Marvin’s Mountaintop, Masontown, WV
This four day festival featured the unique situation of having no overlapping sets. With one main stage and then a side stage that fires up during the main breaks, All Good positions itself for maximum chilling action with zero hassle. You heard me, zero, its All Good man and they stick to it. I took my gear out there and was able to collect quite a few shows. This was a test run for 10,000 Lakes and it went very well except for my power going out right at the end of the GRAB set. Otherwise I was doing good.
What did I see?
Thursday: Brothers Past, Easy Star All-Stars – Radiodread, and Easy Star All-Stars – Dub Side
Friday: Oteil and the Peacemakers, Southern Culture on the Skids, John Medeski and The Itch, Les Claypool, Ween, GRAB, and The Disco Biscuits
Friday Sidestage: The Brakes, Soldiers of Jah Army, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Steel Train, The Bridge
Saturday: Donavon Frankenreiter, Galactic, Umphrey’s McGee, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, The Black Crowes, The Greyboy Allstars
Saturday Sidestage: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, ALO, The Hackensaw Boys
Saturday Ropeadope Stage: DJ Logic and Friends, Stanton Moore and Friends, Karl Denson and Friends
Favorite shows go to GRAB. They really smoked the house and the crowd was feeling it. Surprise of the festival goes to Easy Star All-Stars for their original stuff they played. It was sick!
10,000 Lakes Festival, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
This festival was also extremely chill. We ran there with the VIP action so that ment nice, close camping, two meals a day, and most importantly, a lawn chair to put in the VIP section of the main field. I would especially like to thank Bill Higgins for helping out my friends and myself as we taped up a storm. I met up with some old friends, had the most relaxing lake swim ever and finally got to chill with my brothers from SC. Enough about me what did I see?
Wednesday: Trampled By Turtles, The Breakfast
Thursday: Garaj Mahal, Kimock/Perkins, O.A.R., String Cheese Incident, The Mutaytor
Friday: The Everyone Orchestra, The Keller Williams Incident, Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphrey’s McGee, Assembly of Dust
Saturday: U-Melt, Keller Williams, Benevento/Russo Duo feat. Mike Gordon, GRAB, Medeski Martin & Wood
Favorites of this festival goes bar none to Phil Lesh and Friends. They freaking rocked the house man. Surprise of the festival goes to The Breakfast for the killer set they rocked out. Shouts go out to U-Melt and Tea Leaf, you guys rock, it was fun.
And you know the kicker, in that crazy week of music, I saw almost as many bands as I did last year. I will do some follow-up posts as I have fifteen hours of music from All Good and twenty hours from 10,000 Lakes.
Here are some links to my tapes thus far to tide y’all over:
GRAB 2006-07-22 @ 10KLF spc4>mme
10KLF – Benevento/Russo Duo feat. Mike Gordon 2006-07-22.spc4
InTents – July 11, 2006 @ Miller’s
Crazy Red Beard ran the house at Miller’s Tuesday night following up some excellent performances by some Richmond musicians. Charles was nice enough to allow the mics to run and InTents ran a nice 20 minute set. You can listen to it below. Set as follows:
InTents
July 11-2006
Miller’s
Charlottesville, Va
Source: SP-C4 > XLR > mme > S/PDIF > mt24/96
Transfer: Compact Flash > Audacity > (dbPowerAMP 16/44.1) > MP3
Taped By: Joseph Lawson (joekiller dot com)
Crazy Read Weird+ > Wish You Were Here* > Fearless > Wish You Were Here > A Lark, A Creek~ > Don’t Sweat the Small Things > CRW Reprise
Notes:
+ – In memory of Syd Barrett
* – First Time Played
~ – Robot Revolt Teases; Run From the Shadows Teases
Listen to it here:
https://joekiller.com/player/xspf_player_slim.swf?song_url=https://joekiller.com/audio/InTents2006-07-11/file0083.mp3&song_title=InTents2006-07-11
from the archives of re:Al I tea
welcome true believers. my name is monsieur lion-o. some know me as a painting dervish. a daredevil with a halo and a crazy red beard…
…why am i here, you might be wondering? well why are you? if you can tell me that, then i might be inclined to crack open the spine of my own personal history for you. i like to tell stories. ask my friend wierd jimmy. he’ll tell you. in fact, if we ever have an In Tents experience together, i’ll have him tell you one THROUGH me. it’s at least something to behold.
so here’s the deal. you’re all in for some mental diarrhea. you’ll either get it or you won’t. for some of you, it’ll be IT. for others, it’ll be just another literary fart in the wind. either way, it’s coming whether you like it or not.
so, that being said. welcome. welcome. and welcome again.
i’m spider-man. the author of the sipder files.
welcome to a new thing (same as the old thing).
enjoy the decadence. enjoy the decade dance. enjoy, enjoy, in JOY!!!!
-crazyredbeard
Musical Traveling Round-up
Being that I haven’t been keeping up with all the shows I’ve attended, a round up post seemed to be the best way to go. So the last post was about Dubconscious; who were kick ass. Where have my musical tastes and taping taken me recently?
June 8th – 11th: Wakarusa
If you don’t know, Wakarusa is a four day camping and music festival hosted by the kind town of Lawrence, Kansas. Yes, that is right, Kansas. Now while I can appropriately say that I am not in Kansas anymore, I did bring back some fond memories and made some new friends. Rain or shine (or wind), Waka must go on and it did! I flew out there to meet up with the usual crew (think Langerado crew) but it was an adventure in itself flying and getting to the venue. My plan was this:
1. Get Tickets.
2. Fly to Waka
3. ????
4. Party down!
5. ????
6. Fly back.
Please notice the ???? on steps 3 and 5, as I wasn’t really sure how I was getting to and from the airports. Luckily, when you are going to a festival like this, it is easy to pick out those who share the similar interests and intentions of attending this festival. Taking off for Kansas I proceeded to get a little alcohol buzz going before my 8:30 AM flight. *GASP* drinking in the morning? Who would ever do that… Well, I would and I know of a lot others that would too. Please don’t take this for an alcoholic rampage as only two bloody marys were involved and all I wanted to was to sleep the whole way there so that I was ready to go. Besides, drinking at the airport is expensive! Thus, I proceed to go to the plane and get on. We take off and my slumber ensues. Que Joe sleeping… zzzz…. Later on I awake to the wheels hitting the ground and we are good to go right? Nope, we had landed back where we started! Apparently we needed some federal safety whatchamajigger and took off with out it. We are sitting on the tarmac for about an hour when this sketchy heady looking guy gets on the plane and goes to the back. This guy was most definitely not in line to get on the plane when we took off the first time. The flight attendant talks to him for a while and then escorts him up to first class. I thought to myself, this is the sketchiest TSA guy I’ve ever seen. Anyway, we finally took back off and the airline did give us some complimentary snack packs for our delays. So props to them. Finally we make it to Kansas and my quest to fill in the first ???? began.
Cue the sketchy guy from the plane. Observing his movements I came to the conclusion that the only reason that some heady looking guy is coming to Kansas is Wakarusa, duh. Our conversation was short and sweet. “Hey man, are you going to Waka?” I said. Heady dude responds with, “Yeah dude.” Pushing further I enquire, “Do you have a ride there?” Much to my delight he says, “Yeah my buddy is supposed to come pick me up.” Booya, doing well here, I ask then, “Could I catch a ride?” Headies always help out their kind and he answers, “No problem man, he should be here soon.” Wham blam, there’s the ride. Not bad eh?
Waka in it self was tremendous, the schedule heady, the weather, well a little hot but great! What bands did I attend?
Thursday: Disco Biscuits, Pnuma Trio, Lotus
Friday: MOFRO, Backyard Tire Fire, Disco Biscuits, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, New Monsoon, Greyboy Allstars
Saturday: New Monsoon, Gabby La La, Keller Williams and the Keels, Buckethead, Railroad Earth, Keller Williams, Benevento Russo DUO, ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra)
Sunday: Tea Leaf Green, Larry Keel and Natural Bridge, Yonder Mountain String Band, Zilla, STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector 9), and Hurra Torpedo
Not bad for four days of music right? Highlights were the Zilla show, Larry Keel with guests from both Yonder and Railroad Earth. Sleeping during Gabby La La and awakening to her staring me down for sleeping. My feelings were come on it was hot, I didn’t sleep the last night due to the fact that the music stopped after the morning came thus making the tent too hot and others were doing it too! The fire department coming out and spraying the hose up to cool down the hippies instead of turning it on us. Tapers being prepared for such an occasion by having umbrellas on hand. Meeting everyone from Jacksonville, FL as those guys filled in steps 3 and 5 with a ride. The positive vibe. The lake, the heat. Seeing tents just go flying from the fierce winds. Meeting new friends from Indiana and of course DUO! Easily said, this was one hell of a weekend.
During the summer it is harder to see good stuff here in the ‘ville so I generally travel to the shows, but this hasn’t prevented me from taping. Crazyredbeard and I have been working on a demo tape for himself. Basically a compilation of all of his best live stuff. We did some recording sessions in house too which turned out great.
June 20th: The Slate Hill Show
Feeling the pains of not having taped anything for while, I ventured into the Outback Lodge hoping for some good tunes. I was rewarded with a fine, slightly drunken, showing by Slate Hill Phil and his Slate Hill Show. The music, which he claims is country though sometimes sounding like grass, is a combination of banjo, mandolin, and guitar. Perfect sounds for some grass, er uh, country. Being that it was acoustic the sounds came out really well through the C4s but man, some people were talking right in front of the microphones generally the whole time. Furthermore, there were a grand total of perhaps seven of us there so you can hear their conversations loud and clear. *grumble grumble* Oh well. I take the passive approach to taping because I have found that if you start asking people, especially drunk people, they generally just get louder or do something drunk like try to fight you, throw beer on your gear and generally stuff that we don’t want going on. Besides, their stories are funny, but shit y’all, STFU.
June 25th: Peen, Man Mountain Jr. and Intents
These shows were in honor of Natalie leaving the area and going on to graduate school. The whole setup could be attributed to a community effort. Everyone brought out their equipment which allowed the show to sound great at Orbit and we got a fine recording. Music started around 8:30 PM or so and ran until they kicked us out at 2:00 AM. I have the vast majority of the show tracked out already and will get it up on tapers.org when I can.
June 28th: Phil Lesh & Friends / Trey Anastasio & Mike Gordon with The Benevento/Russo DUO
I traveled to Raleigh, NC to the Walnut Creek Pavilion, now called the Alltel Pavilion at Walnut Creek, for a full day of music. Starting at 4:00 and going until 11:00 is not bad for one show. The Duo opened it all up with a normal however short set. We had just finished our margaritas and charged into the venue, which has a no re-entry policy, and they stopped. Well damn! Now we are stuck in $10 beer land and having just paid $500 to fix the car, that just wasn’t happening. Oh well, Phil came out fairly soon and we were taken for a ride. Here is the set list:
Set 1: Good Lovin, Tenessee Jed, Friend of the Devil > Hardest Part, Next Time You See Me, Berthaet
Set 2: Loose Lucy > Shakedown on 9th Street > Shakedown Street, They Love Each Other > Unbroken Chain > Death Don’t have no Mercy, Gimme Shelter, The Weight
Very solid. I really enjoyed the Friend > Hardest part. Joan Osborne was on vocals and did a beautiful job.
Next up was G.R.A.B:
Jam> Play, Pause, Stop, Dragonfly, Suskind Hotel, Sleep Again, Goodbye Head > Something For Rockets, Car Carrier Blues, Mr. Completely > Spin, Trouble, Seasons, Drifting, Mud City
E: Let Me Lie, Tuesday
Good stuff. A little sloppy I felt but this was their first gig (other than the impromptu Bonnaroo showing). I thought the best was the Mr. Completely > Spin. Sickness!
GRAB BT:
http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=26683 (wayback machine)
https://archive.org/details/duo2006-06-28.flac (current)
Phil BT: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=26748
This post is dedicated to Natalie who, for the short amount of time I knew her, turned my world upside down, inside out, and every other way possible. I loved every minute of it. Holler on back girl!
joekiller 