Ghost Hotel performs at the Bentz Street Raw Bar in Frederick on April 19. Photo courtesy of Cassandra Mullinix. For more, visit https://www.facebook.com/bucketofrock.
April 2014
We do not die of old age.
This was the name of Larry Cumbo’s senior-year photo project at the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies in Daytona Beach, Fla. He grew up a self-proclaimed shutter-bug, tagging along with his dad, a former football coach who eventually decided to give up the sidelines for a career making films about the sport he loved. It wasn’t long after the younger Cumbo made it to age 12 that he convinced his father to allow him to record the fourth quarters of the games he was working.
From there, the Baton Rouge native was hooked. Florida State University was his first stop out of high school, though something didn’t click after he felt pushed into a fine arts program. Discouraged by the prospect of where his educational tract was heading, and encouraged by one of his FSU professors to seek out education elsewhere, Cumbo decided to make the jump to the Southeast Center, where he felt he could focus his passion and put it to good use.
He loved people. More specifically, he was drawn to older people, the kind of people who would live their lives long enough until they decided they didn’t want to live them anymore. That’s when they would move to Florida, Cumbo observed, not only to retire, but to fade away into a sea of nice weather and nursing homes. Digesting what happened to his grandmother after she broke her hip, the filmmaker felt the impact of age-fueled limitation first-hand and wanted to chronicle the stark images of the human condition winding down.
Thus his project: We do not die of old age.
The title would prove at least the slightest bit ironic when decades later, he would buy the Opera House in downtown Shepherdstown, W.Va. Originally built in 1909 by the town’s mayor, Cumbo first set his sights on the building when his family moved to the area in 2002. Touring the town for the first time, he almost immediately fell in love with the building’s history, making a mental note of how neat it might be to one day own the place.
Well, as it goes, that one day would come soon enough: Returning to America after a stint living in New Zealand as part of a film shoot, Cumbo struck a deal with Rusty and Pam Berry, the Opera House owners, in October 2010 for both the building and the business. A documentary filmmaker by trade — with a very clear and very honest affinity for the idea of a thriving local music scene fully in tact — Cumbo immediately went to work, upgrading the sound and light systems as well as remodeling the upstairs green room in an attempt to lure national touring artists to play his new theater.
And, for the most part, his vision worked. It wasn’t long before Cumbo’s longtime acquaintance, New Orleans legend Dr. John, agreed to perform at the venue as part of a television special, “Rocking The Opera House,” that premiered on the Smithsonian channel in March. Half concert, half NOLA-music-doc, the film ultimately opened doors for the possibility of bringing more big names to Shepherdstown for a potential full-season run of the one-off event.
The operative phrase? “For the most part.” Because no more than four months ago, as the calendar switched to 2014, it seemed as though the possibility of selling anything at 131 W. German St. would be quite the task in and of itself. It seemed as though the nights colored by the sweet and spicy aroma of Cumbo’s signature gumbo might be in danger of ever hosting any other musical act at all, let alone one that’s already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It seemed as though a building that has hosted a seemingly infinite amount of movie, music and theater sounds for more than a century now could be in danger of being silenced, perhaps for good.
And, maybe most strikingly, it seemed as though the entire notion that something could indeed die of old age was far more plausible — and far more real — than Larry Cumbo could have ever imagined.
SILENT FILM
You might not have noticed it, but in January, the Opera House was forced to close its doors and Larry Cumbo wasn’t quite sure when or if they would open again. Ever. The problem, as the business owner now tells it, was an amalgamation of bad luck, worse weather, and an impossible business model when it came to screening movies.
“It was very scary around January. We have tried everything we can to keep the doors open,” Cumbo now says on an unseasonably warm Thursday night in early April. “This place has been doing films for a long time and I’m a filmmaker, so I was desperate to hang on to that film programming. But we lose money every time. We’re a small, single-screen independent theater, trying to battle for prints with the big boys that can order 2,000 prints in a phone call. So we closed down in January. We just shut down.
“We made a decision that in order to keep the doors open,” he continues with admirable levity, “we can’t keep paying these huge advances for films, then getting them here, and then giving up 60 percent of the door, when we have four or five people show up.”
Cumbo is like a teddy bear, if the teddy bear was stitched together on a second line. A face that’s wide with interest and a larger smile to match, his teeth are straight, his beard (subliminally peppered with salt) is perfectly cut and his thick frame suggests muscle that was earned and not learned. Think a former high school wrestler … if the high school wrestler was a teddy bear that happened to be stitched together on a second line.
Couple that with his outstandingly Southern, Southern charm — fully equipped with a fainter-by-the-minute Cajun accent — and what you have is someone for whom your heart breaks. Especially when you hear how close he was to losing the one thing he mortgaged his life and career for. Especially when you realize how present that possibility remains, even after he made the decision to phase out movie-showings at the Opera House earlier this year.
“It wasn’t just that we were losing too much money,” he responds when asked why the movies were bringing his business to a halt, “but it was also too hard to confirm a booking. I had to call on a Tuesday to try and book a film that opened on a Friday, so how would you promote it? How do you know what your programming is going to be if you don’t get a yes until Tuesday? And then if you have a bomb of a movie, you have to hold it for two weeks and I have an advance on it. It got to be, we either need to play to our strengths, which was growing the live entertainment portion of what we do and the community-based portion of what we do, or … .”
His voice loses its ability to match the sound of his stocky frame, and the thought’s ending, it appears, proves too tough to tell.
The decision to nix film screenings hasn’t gone unnoticed, he explains. There was backlash when the announcement came that the community’s beloved art house movie theater was going to veer away from its recent roots. None of that, however, is supposed to imply he won’t stop trying to make it up to those who remain disappointed.
“We had to transition from a place that mainly did films, almost exclusively,” the filmmaker reflects. “I know we upset a lot of people in that film-going crowd. When we talked to our staff in January, we knew we were going to get some push-back, but it didn’t last long, we answered every email, and they seemed to understand. That was a very loyal audience and we hope that they will give us a second chance and come back for a different form of entertainment: live entertainment.”
So far, that switch in focus has been met with a mildly promising outlook. National acts such as Zach Deputy and Charles Neville are both slated to perform at the Opera House in July, and while Cumbo refuses to go on the record about the names that have committed to a “Rocking the Opera House” run, should the Smithsonian pick up an entire season, it’s clear that his targets reach even further beyond the weight attached to a name such as Dr. John.
“It’s got a lot of legs,” he asserts in reference to the momentum gained from that first television special. “And that’s what networks like.”
THE KITE AND ITS STRING
Behind every teddy bear is a sturdy object that props it up, even after the years make the act of slouching its natural pose. Not that Cumbo doesn’t continue to exude vibrance on his own, but there’s a palpable sense of comfort that accompanies his wife Julie whenever she walks into a room. The rapport between the two is both admirable and loving, a type of weightless dialogue that hasn’t lost even the slightest color of love through the years.
About seven years his senior, Julie and Larry met at a friend’s wedding. He saw her on the dance floor and to this day swears it was nearly love at first sight (that abstract notion officially announced its presence on their first date, according to both husband and wife). She went home that night, butterflies flittering through her bloodstream, told her mother he was the man she was going to marry, and then, in a plot twist not unlike a romance that unfolds on the screens the family business can’t show as much anymore, did just that.
A teacher by trade, Julie freely admits how scared she was when Larry initially decided to make an offer for the Opera House. It wasn’t long, however, until her concerns took a back seat to Larry’s ambition.
“I fell in love with the artist in Larry,” she says, grinning. “When we first bought this, I was super scared. It was a risk. But how am I going to say no? Everything he’s done, he’s been successful with, and he sees things through to the end. I admire him for the risk he took and the work he puts into it. Everything he tackles, he finds a way to make it work.”
Making it work from this point forward means having help from not only the Cumbo family but also the Opera House workers. Having been through his share of misfire with hires, Larry says he’s confident in the staff he has around him currently.
Leading that staff is Nicola Larsen, the operations manager. A well-traveled Englishwoman who might bleed actual grace and beauty, she joined the Opera House in August after hearing about an open position. It wasn’t long before the title was hers — Larry was so impressed with her interview, he says, that he wanted to offer the job at its conclusion.
“I’m really impressed with the quality of music that comes through here,” Larsen notes. “There’s some amazing talent in the area.
“It’s like a little family,” she continues, reflecting on the love she has for her job. “Larry has big goals and he’s a great guy, kind of like a big bear, you know?”
A big bear with a solid foundation, that is.
“I always fall back on, he’s the kite and I hold the string,” Julie says with a smile. “And I’m happy to hold the string.”
FIRST THURSDAYS
It’s a tad past 7 p.m. and that renovated light system makes the concert room dark. Past the lobby, where an iPad serves as a de facto cash register, and up the handful of steps that separates the entrance from the event stands local bluegrass singer Chelsea McBee on the tiny stage that once hosted Dr. John.
A few months ago, she began working in conjunction with the Opera House to curate the First Thursdays artist series, which is pretty much exactly how it sounds: The first Thursday of each month, McBee will open for and join onstage a local headlining act. Tonight, along with help from her mother and sister, she’s opening for singer Kara Hansbarger.
The house is full but not packed. Earlier in the evening, McBee proclaimed that at least 80 people would be filling the stiff, old-movie-theater-esque seats, and by the looks of it, she shortchanged herself just a little. With capacity at just more than 200, there are only a handful of stray seats left unoccupied as the McBee family takes the stage.
“How y’all feeling?!” she asks and the crowd responds louder than it looks. In fact, the noise generated between the slanted walls that play home to a line of glow currently taking a break only increases in power as the night goes on. The people love Chelsea McBee. And Chelsea McBee loves the people.
“I’m hopeful, I’m very optimistic,” Larry will say upstairs in the tiny kitchen between the two artists’ sets while his wife enthusiastically adds, “I’m more hopeful now than I was through the first two years.”
“We’ve learned a lot from our mistakes,” the teddy bear eventually says. “And we have forged these great relationships. It’s karma, it’s whatever you believe in, but they (the artists) come back.”
As he’s saying this, it’s hard not to think about the time Larry Cumbo almost died. It was Sept. 6, 2005, a mere handful of days after Hurricane Katrina paralyzed New Orleans. Along with a crew on Tulane Avenue, he was shooting footage for a film on an air boat. A helicopter was on a rescue mission above a shotgun house near where his crew was, and after seeing how the winds sunk a fishing boat in front of them, the pilot of the air boat put the pedal to the floor to get out of the way. Almost immediately, it collided with a submerged concrete wall. Cumbo suffered a hairline fracture at his C4 vertebrae.
“I kept working,” he remembers. “There were no hospitals, there was nothing open. They were just setting up EMS stations, so there was a nurse and a doctor in the back of an ambulance and I had a concussion, I went blind. They woke me up by pouring water on me and said, ‘We need to EVAC you.’”
Instinctively, he told the medical personnel that he could go to his parents’ home in Baton Rouge that night and head to the hospital in the morning. That wouldn’t work, the medical professionals told him: The nearest hospital that was taking patients was in St. Louis. He refused treatment, he says. He needed to keep working.
There’s something poetic about that anecdote as McBee runs through her blend of bluegrass during the opening set. Everybody in the room is sitting, except for two young children, a boy and a girl. For whatever reason, they can’t sit still, and in addition to providing an extra layer of entertainment for the crowd, the artists onstage oftentimes smile and engage the toddlers running back and forth on the dance floor, sometimes sprinting through the main aisle.
Somewhere in the building, Larry Cumbo is running the light system, following each adorable movement as the boy and girl explore the depths of his vision for Shepherdstown’s Opera House. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that something from Cumbo’s formative years is swirling through the air, invisible to the naked eye, exposed to only the soul. It’s the very adage that began his career. It’s the very sentence that on this night has more meanings than anyone in the building could possibly care to consider. It’s simple. It’s strong. And as the children contniue to sprint back and forth, it’s certainly present.
We do not die of old age.
Well, there’s the reggae song, the blues song, the honky-tonk song, the Cajun song and, of course, the cover song. That’s it. That’s the list. No track eclipses four minutes; the entire set hardly sniffs 20. Subject matter ranges from love, to partying, to day jobs. Head over to the guy’s website and you’ll see some dude who could double as a high school history teacher smiling back in your direction with a type of harmless innocence best seen on the faces of PBS hosts.
Yet for the amount of blandness that paragraph implies, there’s something about Matthew Patrick’s latest, five-song EP, “Yard Sale,” that is profoundly promising. A Jack of a few trades — fully equipped with a demeanor that suggests he has little interest in ever becoming a Master of some — there is almost nothing technically wrong with the Frederick songwriter’s work here. And for anybody waiting for the other shoe to drop: No, there’s nary a “but” to be found.
“Yeah, but he’d be pretty great if he just focused on one genre.”
False: Who says you have to be boxed into a single sound to be great? Even Bob Marley went all Bob Dylan with “Redemption Song.” Not that Matthew Patrick should be held up to either of those icons, but the roots reggae of “Fly” feels surprisingly natural when paired with the blues of “Howl at the Moon.”
“Yeah, but being good at multiple things can often mean that weakness creeps through in certain areas.”
False: The droning of the singer’s voice in “One Ride” shapes up to be an oddly flavorful companion to the twang he intones throughout “The Fool I’ve Got to Be.” Impressively, the Cajun feel of the former allows Patrick to stretch his vocal talents enough to make the latter appear downright criminal — identity theft is a serious crime, you know.
No, but seriously: The guy wears a lot of hats and it turns out he has a perfectly shaped head. Presented with confidence and competence, the five songs here combine for a sum unexpectedly more valuable than its parts. It wouldn’t work if Patrick was thoughtlessly visiting the grounds on which he hopes to walk every now and then, but with “Yard Sale,” the notion of permanent residence never seems far from his core intention.
Take “Howl,” which struts into a dirty blues club somewhere along the Mississippi during July’s latest hours and leaves to the sound of applause from even the most cynical regular. Patrick’s tasteful guitar waltzes with Brian Veditz’s harp so naturally, you can practically feel the smoke from the bass player’s cigarette creep into your nostrils. “The Fool I’ve Got to Be” plays with those ideals, inserts a train back-beat and benefits from piano work of which even Billy Powell would be proud.
“One Ride” then travels on down to New Orleans with a groove as infectious as it is essential. Adding to the Creole party is Patrick’s slide guitar work that sounds as though it was plucked right from any Neville’s backing band. No less authentic, “Fly” calls upon a B3 for splashes of roots reggae that shines even if it could use a little more Wailers and a little less O.A.R. from the drums. Patrick’s voice, of all things, saves the tune from sinking to the bottom of the Caribbean.
And then there’s “Midnight Special,” covered by nearly everyone who has ever picked up an acoustic guitar in the history of forever. The singer isn’t afraid to expose himself as somewhat of a shallow gospel singer here, opening with 40 seconds of nothing but his own voice. It isn’t until his band kicks in with a formulaic approach to pop reggae that the version picks up steam, inching forward with an array of world music intonations. By the time the song — and the EP — winds down, it’s hard not to feel fulfilled, hard not to feel entertained.
That’s an impressive feat for someone who refuses to settle down with a singular approach. Playing with genres in the singer-songwriter business can be like playing with fire: expand too easily and be labeled a cheat; expand too fervently and be labeled a traitor. With “Yard Sale,” Matthew Patrick proves he’s neither of those things. In fact, when considering the versatility and ability that appears eager and often throughout this short set, there’s probably only one word that aptly sums up the guy’s ceiling: limitless.
*** 3 STARS OUT OF 4 ***
Well, there’s the reggae song, the blues song, the honky-tonk song, the Cajun song and, of course, the cover song. That’s it. That’s the list. No track eclipses four minutes; the entire set hardly sniffs 20. Subject matter ranges from love, to partying, to day jobs. Head over to the guy’s website and you’ll see some dude who could double as a high school history teacher smiling back in your direction with a type of harmless innocence best seen on the faces of PBS hosts.
Yet for the amount of blandness that paragraph implies, there’s something about Matthew Patrick’s latest, five-song EP, “Yard Sale,” that is profoundly promising. A Jack of a few trades — fully equipped with a demeanor that suggests he has little interest in ever becoming a Master of some — there is almost nothing technically wrong with the Frederick songwriter’s work here. And for anybody waiting for the other shoe to drop: No, there’s nary a “but” to be found.
“Yeah, but he’d be pretty great if he just focused on one genre.”
False: Who says you have to be boxed into a single sound to be great? Even Bob Marley went all Bob Dylan with “Redemption Song.” Not that Matthew Patrick should be held up to either of those icons, but the roots reggae of “Fly” feels surprisingly natural when paired with the blues of “Howl at the Moon.”
“Yeah, but being good at multiple things can often mean that weakness creeps through in certain areas.”
False: The droning of the singer’s voice in “One Ride” shapes up to be an oddly flavorful companion to the twang he intones throughout “The Fool I’ve Got to Be.” Impressively, the Cajun feel of the former allows Patrick to stretch his vocal talents enough to make the latter appear downright criminal — identity theft is a serious crime, you know.
No, but seriously: The guy wears a lot of hats and it turns out he has a perfectly shaped head. Presented with confidence and competence, the five songs here combine for a sum unexpectedly more valuable than its parts. It wouldn’t work if Patrick was thoughtlessly visiting the grounds on which he hopes to walk every now and then, but with “Yard Sale,” the notion of permanent residence never seems far from his core intention.
Take “Howl,” which struts into a dirty blues club somewhere along the Mississippi during July’s latest hours and leaves to the sound of applause from even the most cynical regular. Patrick’s tasteful guitar waltzes with Brian Veditz’s harp so naturally, you can practically feel the smoke from the bass player’s cigarette creep into your nostrils. “The Fool I’ve Got to Be” plays with those ideals, inserts a train back-beat and benefits from piano work of which even Billy Powell would be proud.
“One Ride” then travels on down to New Orleans with a groove as infectious as it is essential. Adding to the Creole party is Patrick’s slide guitar work that sounds as though it was plucked right from any Neville’s backing band. No less authentic, “Fly” calls upon a B3 for splashes of roots reggae that shines even if it could use a little more Wailers and a little less O.A.R. from the drums. Patrick’s voice, of all things, saves the tune from sinking to the bottom of the Caribbean.
And then there’s “Midnight Special,” covered by nearly everyone who has ever picked up an acoustic guitar in the history of forever. The singer isn’t afraid to expose himself as somewhat of a shallow gospel singer here, opening with 40 seconds of nothing but his own voice. It isn’t until his band kicks in with a formulaic approach to pop reggae that the version picks up steam, inching forward with an array of world music intonations. By the time the song — and the EP — winds down, it’s hard not to feel fulfilled, hard not to feel entertained.
That’s an impressive feat for someone who refuses to settle down with a singular approach. Playing with genres in the singer-songwriter business can be like playing with fire: expand too easily and be labeled a cheat; expand too fervently and be labeled a traitor. With “Yard Sale,” Matthew Patrick proves he’s neither of those things. In fact, when considering the versatility and ability that appears eager and often throughout this short set, there’s probably only one word that aptly sums up the guy’s ceiling: limitless.
3 stars out of 4
Colin McGuire is a writer and page designer at the News-Post as well the music reviews editor at PopMatters.com. His blog, TV Without A TV, can be found at blog.fredericknewspost.com. Want your album reviewed by the FNP? Email 72Hours@newspost.com for details.
MACRoCK, the music festival held annually in Harrisonburg, Va., usually on the first weekend in April, captures the real spirit of an independent music festival meant to connect bands with fans without all the corporate influence hoopla of a festival like SXSW.
In fact, MACRoCK has a rich history, beginning in 1996 when it was founded by James Madison University’s student-run radio station, WXJM, and booked the likes of Superchunk, Dismemberment Plan, and at the time, the little known Elliot Smith.
MACRoCK then broke ties with the college and the radio station to continue on as an independent nonprofit organization aimed to carry out the mission of showcasing truly independent local music acts from across the country, and keeping fans informed about artists and happenings throughout the independent music scene.
The two-day experience this year ran from afternoon hours to the wee hours of the early morning packed with high-energy rock shows full of enthusiastic college kids who weren’t afraid to get a little touchy feely with some playful pushing. Despite the fact that fans obviously owned the floor at MACRoCK, there was still some room for us older post-college adults and journalistic professionals, which made it feel more like a legitimate festival rather than just a string of college rock shows.
Showcases featured metal blends such as the currently buzzing Iron Reagan from Richmond, Va.; a rainbow of punk genres from pop to post-hardcore/ post-punk; and “listening” rock genres, such as experimental and folksy singer/songwriter storytellers.
Friday night featured a fun run of female-fronted bands with D.C.’s own Merge Records artist Ex Hex as the shining star. Saturday night had dueling headliners — pop punk hooligans Diarrhea Planet at the Blue Nile venue and TY Segall-endorsed Memphis punx Ex-Cult (formerly Sex Cult until they were forced to change the band name with a cease-and-desist from the established New York Label under the same moniker) — at the Clementine.
Other highlights included teenage female duo Skating Polly from Oklahoma, who did not disappoint with a set filled with teen angst and stage antics along with girly indie pop. They might have been stripped down (just vocals, bass, and simple drum lines), but they were still youthful rock at its best.
Some familiar local names you might have known at MACRoCK 2014 included pop-punk alt-rockers Rozwell Kid from Shepherdstown, W.Va., and the Funny/ Not Funny record label who has released albums by locals over the years from the former bands Prison Book Club and Demon Beat, and the current band Bishops from Shepherdstown.
Rozwell Kid, a band that channels the spirit of a “rager” keg party set to a warped Weezer soundtrack — and who are always worth seeing when they play Frederick or Shepherdstown — received many accolades after their bigger-than-life set on Saturday.
So, that’s a wrap on MACRoCK 2014. If you want to get a flavor of SXSW or what SXSW claims to be, skip all the big ticket showcases, massive venue lines, and the airplane flights, and check out MACRoCK next year. All you have to do is take the two-hour highway cruise down to Harrisonburg, Va., and get connected with independent music.
– This story was written by Cassandra Mullinix. Follow her on Twitter @bucket_blogger.
Killer flute, dudes! No, but really: Checking out “The Bluebeard EP” by Bluebeard (who have since changed their name to Bare Left) is like an accidental trip over bridges that somehow link Jethro Tull, The Who and (scoff all you want) Dave Matthews Band. Coming from a quartet of students who attended the University of Maryland at College Park, what this five-song set might lack in production or performance is offset by the bravery and imagination with which it is presented. Yeah, it’s not major-label quality. But it sure as Ian Anderson isn’t a quick half-hour with GarageBand, either.
Plus, there’s some serious mood attached to the bulk of what you hear. Singer Kai Keefe was born to mope, and in the case of Bluebeard at least, that layer of tonally resilient apathy creates the atmosphere of a 1970s rock club, best seen with stairs that flow under the ground rather than over it. Even the harmonies with guitarist Alex Galiatsatos are pretty in the way a rainy day can sometimes hold more beauty than a cloudless sky.
“Cellar Floor,” a slowed-down acid trip through Terrapin psychedelia, takes the best of what David Gilmour and Roger Waters did without the help of The Floyd and turns it into modern-day pop-prog. Think “Wish You Were Here” meets anything from The National’s latest record. Better yet, these guys have the brains to keep the thing under four minutes, always an overlooked courtesy that stoner-rock too often ignores.
Actually, the “rock” portion of that phrase might even be a bit underrated when it comes to these four guys. “Please, Please” utilizes a Pete Townshend-inspired guitar line to near perfection, all the while breaking for verses driven by little more than a bass and some tom-toms. Neither element measures up to the effects Galiatsatos showcases for that classic late-1960s Brit-rock vibe, though. It’s a grand combination, really — straight-forward structure mixed with the ability to turn up when needed — and Bluebeard leans on it enough to never outrun their boundaries.
The only real knock on the set is a general lack of shine. Drummer James Riffle could use a lesson or two in both groove and tuning, but at the end of the day, his is a sound almost essential for such a classic-rock-radio approach, anyway. And yeah, sometimes Keefe’s vocals can sound a little too careless, though considering how his offerings extend far beyond the voice, all is forgiven by the time listens No. 3 or 4 come around.
And speaking of those offerings … seriously, that flute! It’s the band’s secret weapon and it single-handedly takes this otherwise pedestrian outfit and adds a palette of colors best seen on the clothes people refused to wear at Woodstock. “Gone Away,” the most complete track of the bunch, allows Keefe and Galiatsatos to step into the spotlight with their respective weapons of choice (flute and guitar), and both players never disappoint. The former almost instantly takes the novelty label off his woodwind wonder, slashing through a bridge with precision and taste. Galiatsatos, meanwhile, erupts for a quick solo that bends and echoes with headliner caliber. Double that recipe for “Captain and Crew.”
By the time the EP-ender “Love Withered” rolls around with its waltzy 6/8-time signature, you almost have to ponder what a good producer and some upgrades in equipment could offer these guys. Yeah, it’s a fine-enough way to close things out, but more than anything, it leaves you wondering what if. What if they had more time to devote to their craft. What if they had more time to mature as a group.
Because if “The Bluebeard EP” is any indication of what’s next for Bare Left, there might be good reason to turn that tie-dyed frown upside down, there might be good reason to embrace any color other than a mere depressing shade of blue. On account of versatility alone, these five songs make for a combined listen that is anything but boring.
“I haven’t played in a very long time so please don’t make me cry,” Keefe begs on “Captain And Crew,” but he needn’t worry about a thing. Because as Jethro Tull taught us all the way back in 1968, more flute = less room for tears.
** 2 1/2 STARS OUT OF 4 **
Killer flute, dudes! No, but really: Checking out “The Bluebeard EP” by Bluebeard (who have since changed their name to Bare Left) is like an accidental trip over bridges that somehow link Jethro Tull, The Who and (scoff all you want) Dave Matthews Band. Coming from a quartet of students who attended the University of Maryland at College Park, what this five-song set might lack in production or performance is offset by the bravery and imagination with which it is presented. Yeah, it’s not major-label quality. But it sure as Ian Anderson isn’t a quick half-hour with GarageBand, either.
Plus, there’s some serious mood attached to the bulk of what you hear. Singer Kai Keefe was born to mope, and in the case of Bluebeard at least, that layer of tonally resilient apathy creates the atmosphere of a 1970s rock club, best seen with stairs that flow under the ground rather than over it. Even the harmonies with guitarist Alex Galiatsatos are pretty in the way a rainy day can sometimes hold more beauty than a cloudless sky.
“Cellar Floor,” a slowed-down acid trip through Terrapin psychedelia, takes the best of what David Gilmour and Roger Waters did without the help of The Floyd and turns it into modern-day pop-prog. Think “Wish You Were Here” meets anything from The National’s latest record. Better yet, these guys have the brains to keep the thing under four minutes, always an overlooked courtesy that stoner-rock too often ignores.
Actually, the “rock” portion of that phrase might even be a bit underrated when it comes to these four guys. “Please, Please” utilizes a Pete Townshend-inspired guitar line to near perfection, all the while breaking for verses driven by little more than a bass and some tom-toms. Neither element measures up to the effects Galiatsatos showcases for that classic late-1960s Brit-rock vibe, though. It’s a grand combination, really — straight-forward structure mixed with the ability to turn up when needed — and Bluebeard leans on it enough to never outrun their boundaries.
The only real knock on the set is a general lack of shine. Drummer James Riffle could use a lesson or two in both groove and tuning, but at the end of the day, his is a sound almost essential for such a classic-rock-radio approach, anyway. And yeah, sometimes Keefe’s vocals can sound a little too careless, though considering how his offerings extend far beyond the voice, all is forgiven by the time listens No. 3 or 4 come around.
And speaking of those offerings … seriously, that flute! It’s the band’s secret weapon and it single-handedly takes this otherwise pedestrian outfit and adds a palette of colors best seen on the clothes people refused to wear at Woodstock. “Gone Away,” the most complete track of the bunch, allows Keefe and Galiatsatos to step into the spotlight with their respective weapons of choice (flute and guitar), and both players never disappoint. The former almost instantly takes the novelty label off his woodwind wonder, slashing through a bridge with precision and taste. Galiatsatos, meanwhile, erupts for a quick solo that bends and echoes with headliner caliber. Double that recipe for “Captain and Crew.”
By the time the EP-ender “Love Withered” rolls around with its waltzy 6/8-time signature, you almost have to ponder what a good producer and some upgrades in equipment could offer these guys. Yeah, it’s a fine-enough way to close things out, but more than anything, it leaves you wondering what if. What if they had more time to devote to their craft. What if they had more time to mature as a group.
Because if “The Bluebeard EP” is any indication of what’s next for Bare Left, there might be good reason to turn that tie-dyed frown upside down, there might be good reason to embrace any color other than a mere depressing shade of blue. On account of versatility alone, these five songs make for a combined listen that is anything but boring.
“I haven’t played in a very long time so please don’t make me cry,” Keefe begs on “Captain And Crew,” but he needn’t worry about a thing. Because as Jethro Tull taught us all the way back in 1968, more flute = less room for tears.
2 1/2 stars out of 4
Colin McGuire is a writer and page designer at the News-Post as well the music reviews editor at PopMatters.com. His blog, TV Without A TV, can be found at blog.fredericknewspost.com. Want your album reviewed by the FNP? Email 72Hours@newspost.com for details.