1/30/20 The Wood Brothers @ Webster Hall
The Wood Brothers played the first of two consecutive shows at Webster Hall last night, a week on the heels of their latest album release, Kingdom In My Mind. “Everyone has these little kingdoms in their minds,” says Chris Wood, “and the songs on this album all explore the ways we find peace in them. They look at how we deal with our dreams and our regrets and our fears and our loves. They look at the stories we tell ourselves and the ways we balance the darkness and the light.” That pretty much summarizes the spectrum of my feelings as I listened to the album for the first time earlier in the week. Meaningful songs with hopeful, and sometimes dark, messages about life that really resonated with me. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about perfection, or lack thereof, being perfectly imperfect, if you will, and the simple fact that everything in God’s world is exactly as it’s supposed to be. These lyrics from “A Little Bit Broken” really hit home,
The more I live the more I know
I should wear my scars like medals of gold
Every beat up heart’s got more soul and
Everybody is a little bit broken
… (and it’s alright).
I’ve been really trying to trust life and be conscious as opposed to projecting my unconscious thoughts and preconceptions about good and bad, right and wrong, on people and the situations in which I find myself in the course of daily living. This song’s mantra, “Everybody is a little bit broken, and it’s alright” repeated over and over, and personalized for effect as Chris, Oliver, and Jano sang to each other, really reinforced the spirituality of the message.
As an introduction to the music itself, allow me to aver that if an instrument could be a spirit animal, then mine is the upright bass. Chris Wood is an absolute genius on all things bass, from standup to Fender to Hofner 500/1, all of which he rotated last night. One-third of the ever popular Medeski Martin & Wood, Chris alone was worth the $35 price of admission. The last bassist to affect me so deeply was Jorge Roeder – not a comparison, mind you, rather just a thought bubble that passed through my head. Another thought bubble, tangentially related to the first… I’d love to see Wood with Zorn’s Masada. So whereas Mike Murphy warned that “the bassist was a little much,” I completely disagree. I want more. And more. And while I think he was referring to Wood’s theatrics, those were, for me, a little window into his soul that perpetuated the resonance of his bass lines.
Oliver Wood’s voice, in this live setting, was nothing short of intoxicating; his guitar playing perfectly adequate, and then some. Jano Rix, a drummer I’ve never seen before, also impressed, especially as I realized he was drumming mostly left-handed as he also sang and played keyboards with his right. Mid-show, the trio moved center stage and played “Loaded” and “One More Day” out of a traditional one mic bluegrass setup. Besides being wowed by the pristine unplugged sound, aside from a couple aggressive shooshers, I was quite taken with Jano Rix and the percussive sounds of his shuitar. {Confession, I totally thought he was just using a guitar as a drum until I did a little Google searching this morning.}
Back to the standard stage setup, the most energetic sequence of the night followed as “Happiness Jones” sandwiched a full cover of Charles Wright’s “Express Yourself.” Somehow I started recording and past the point of return where I was going to put the phone down so you can check it out a full video of this offering here. It was a pretty great sequence.
“Luckiest Man” was a full on sing along in the encore slot at which point I was all but certain the show was over, but the trio had one last surprise, a tasty and groovy cover of “Get Out of My Life Woman” where I probably accumulated the lion’s share of a very moderate 3,819 steps, most of which were of the shuffle and bounce variety. Not every show can be quantified by the step metric, but since I kept track, I guess it’s worth mentioning. Side note: I finished January with 96,362 and the road to 1,000,000 is seeming very attainable at the current rate.
This was also my first visit to Webster Hall since the mid 90s and I really liked the space, from the lounge out front to the ballroom with its (underused) and oversized disco ball, and thought the sound was just spot on. If you can find a way upstairs to enjoy the VIP balcony (I couldn’t), it seemed from below like an awesome and uncrowded way to take in a show with what I can only imagine were perfect and uninhibited sightlines. The 1400 person capacity room was comfortably full and, as this show was almost but not quite sold out, I’d be curious to know how the space differs tonight for a proper sellout.
