David Rawlings Machine and Gillian Welch Wheel Into Santa Cruz (SHOW REVIEW)

As a regular thing, live music in Santa Cruz, California is a thriving art. Even mid-week it is not hard to find a night to sit in front of an artist or artists and wile away the hours in the company of good songs and enthusiastic fellow audience members. The usual offerings were augmented this past Thursday, September 29th, at The Rio Theatre for the Performing Arts, when Dave Rawlings Machine wheeled into town on the first stop on their west coast tour.

Both the band and sold out room were buzzing as Dave Rawlings and his pals took the stage. Though this crew is centered in Nashville, The Rio held the air of a hometown show and for good reason. Gillian Welch attended school here in town at UCSC. She opened the night beaming a smile and decked out in a new (vintage) dress in which she looked more the part of a flower girl that might have hung around the old Cooper House downtown in the seventies then a country music luminary.

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“Driving up the road, the windows were down and as we got close the smells became instantly recognizable. It’s good to be back in Santa Cruz,” said Welch. The crowd cheered and Rawlings stepped to the microphone with an equally ecstatic smile, “We are very glad to be here tonight,” he grinned. And then he opened the first notes of . . . a new song for which no one knew the name. That was probably the most exciting part of the night. This first stop on the west coast tour introduced a handful of new songs amidst favorites from the band’s impressive back catalogue and respective solo material.

This might be the finest string band on the road right now (get ready for some analogies) and when the true engine of your machine is the harmonies woven between David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, this thing is going to go! Those voices, and it may not be too far a stretch to call them iconic at this point, are married in harmony. These singers are inextricably tied together and it would be hard to hear one without the other; they blend with a simplicity, precision and ease that is natural. The one voice needs the other and together they are musically perfect. Augment that engine with a throttle the likes Willie Watson and that machine moves.

Willie, a multi-instrumentalist secret weapon, with his own fine songs sings like a Dust Bowl era bluesman with a voice so old-timey, so high and lonesome, that Bill Monroe himself probably would have been a Willie Watson fan. Holding down the low end on the stand up bass was Paul Kowert and, soaring above them all; Brittany Hass (another relatively local girl by way of Mountain View, California) sawed her way through tunes on her fiddle. Most prominent in their talents, Dave Rawlings Machine has mastered the art of the nuance. This band has a sense of musical dynamics that may be unmatched by any other band in their genre. They can play so energetically – Rawlings literally firing out frenzied but perfectly paced flat pick guitar runs, his 1935 Epiphone guitar pressed in and anchored in the hollow of his hip, its neck aimed out at the audience, he looks like the musician version of Tommy gun firing 1920’s mobster.

“It’s Too Easy,” the first set closer, for example, found Willie Watson joining Brittany Hass for a two fiddle attack that had the entire band shouting, the crowd bellowing, beating hands on seatbacks and feet stomping on the floor. And to answer that energy, the band drove the tempo up, faster and faster, red lining the tachometer, until rosin dust flew from fiddle bows like smoke.

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Then, alternately, the second set opener “Ruby” began. This song, about a one-sided love yet unrequited, was played so softly and tenderly that you could hear the vocals, at times, not through the PA but OVER the microphones floating from the stage out into the air above. And this is purely an acoustic band. No one on stage was plugged in. Every sound was picked up by instrument mics only and that is something special that music audiences see less and less. This band knows how to work a crowd too. They drop some of the sweetest covers in random places and this deeply connects them with their audience. Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately” found an interesting spot as the night’s second set closer and the encores were beautifully cover heavy.

Welch’s “Look at Miss Ohio” began the encore run with a sensitivity and grace that seemed utterly appropriate. Next, the pairing of Rawling’s “Method Acting,” a heart aching song in which the character battles deep depression, melted unassumingly but seamlessly into Neil Young’s epic “Cortez the Killer.” The traditional ( and unofficial Grateful Dead anthem) “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad” took its place in the first round of encores and called out everybody’s inner Deadhead with the audience no longer willing to sit. People spilled out into the aisles and danced with abandon. But the band was still not done and they returned for one more quick one. Everybody gathered around a single microphone for a really beautiful version of “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby.” And then it was over and the band bowed amidst a roaring standing ovation. Audience members were all smiles, one liners from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? , inspired by the “Didn’t Leave” were tossed about in the departing crowd and met with chuckles.

 

Dave Rawlings Machine: The Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz, CA, 29 September 2016:

Set I: The Midnight Train (?), The Weekend, Pilgrim (You Can’t Go Home), Wayside (Back In Time), To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High), Lindsay Button, Keep It Clean, The Airplane (?), It’s Too Easy.

Set II: Ruby, The Last Pharaoh, He Will Set Your Fields on Fire, Sweet Tooth, “The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife (?), Stewball, Put ‘Em Up Solid (?), Queen Jane Approximately

Encores: Look At Miss Ohio, Method Acting > Cortez the Killer, Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,
Don’t Leave Nobody But The Babe

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