What do you get when you gather four middle-aged dudes who like to smoke weed and have close to a century of cumulative music experience? You get a little band out of Asheville, NC, called The Beard, and despite the many reasons why this shouldn’t be anything extraordinary, it is.
Asheville has a long and rich musical history, from the Appalachian ballads of centuries ago to the deep underground indie roots that grew a diverse alt-scene on the ghost town streets in the ‘80s and ‘90s, to the tourism-friendly descendants of jam band legends like the Phish and the Dead, to the current punk scene that’s cropping up all over town like psychotropic and nourishing mushrooms taking over a close-cropped, sedate suburban lawn.
Every so often, this town atop many “Best Places to Live” lists sheds the old and grows new musical skin, and The Beard is poised and ready to be part of the next big thing. By taking a few tried and true recipes and merging them into a sound that shifts seamlessly among genres and time signatures, they’ve created something that appeals to listeners across the musical spectrum without feeling contrived or like they’re bending their sound to fit into a palatable box to be handed out folks who claim to listen to “a little bit of everything.”
This was the experience listeners got last Thursday (7/28) at Asheville’s Salvage Station when The Beard opened for local legend and Lynyrd Skynyrd alum Artimus Pyle and his latest sonic incarnation, Pyle Tribe – a tasty blend of Southern Rock, almost-funk, and nearly-psychedelia. Pyle Tribe is the ideal band for folks who grew up on seventies arena rock and still like to sit on the tailgate of a pickup truck, cheap beer in hand, only now they’re talking about the value of their 401k and how well their New Balance sneakers have held up, even with a daily run. This is not a bad thing, and the band is interesting enough to capture the attention of young folks in the audience, who might be a generation or two removed from the core of the sound and are discovering it for the first time, only now with a modern twist. And in that respect, The Beard were the perfect openers.
Billed as “Stoner Rock Meets Southern Rock,” this gig exemplified the wisdom in The Beard bassist Brett Spivey’s goal of making mixed-genre shows more of the norm. It happened a lot more back in the seventies, as Pyle reminisced before the show, and venues were packed for almost every performance. In the current music scene, according to Spivey and as evidenced by a pop-in to any club in town, you have your punk shows, your jam band shows, your rock shows – and there’s very little overlap.
The Beard’s set on Thursday laid the groundwork for a transition to a more mixed-genre model, kicking things off with the bottom-heavy “Like Dreaming,” off their recent EP, the second in a four-part series of EPs the band are releasing in preparation for a full-length vinyl album in the not too distant future. Shawn McCoy is the lead vocalist, lead guitarist, and chief songwriter in the band – The Beard was his brainchild a decade ago – and his soaring vocals are an interesting counterpoint to the drudgy, low instrumentals.
All of their songs are about drugs and they’re not shy about that fact, but it’s not always overt and please don’t mistake these guys for another “Woo hoo, party drugs!” band. Sure, there’s the obligatory ode to smoking, “420,” a tune with Black Sabbath undertones and expert harmonies reminiscent of Alice in Chains, and even when singing about weed, the maturity and cohesion of the band members is at the forefront, right next to their obvious camaraderie. “Drink the Sun,” about a particularly heavy LSD trip, perfectly captures the feeling of slogging through one’s own head, feeling like you’re mostly there but not. And while there’s definitely a lot of drudge going on here, there are also moments of pure metal bliss, with McCoy and rhythm guitarist Brad Justice bouncing notes off each other hard and fast enough to make Hetfield and Hammett rethink all of their life choices.
Drummer Fred Hensley keeps things tight and level, expertly setting the tone for a blistering low end as Spivey drives things home with a grungy, bluesy bass edge. The Beard puts on a live show that reads more like an album as far as cohesion and flow, but they bring an energy and heart to the stage that’s often lacking in bands half their age. The banter, the self-deprecating humor, the obvious joy to just be up there playing with their best friends – combined with the musical prowess they possess, this is a damn near perfect thing to witness. The bottom line: If you don’t know The Beard, you should. If you haven’t heard them, go listen. And for the love of all things hard and holy, if you get a chance to catch these guys live, go. You won’t regret it.