Posts by Chad Berndtson

Of all the people I’ve met and got re-acquainted with at the Vibes so far, I need to introduce Joy Bashew Rosenberg, who’s headquarterd in the tubes at thejambandbook.blogspot.com. Joy, a USC graduate, started an expose of jamband history and culture for her masters’ thesis in fine arts (creative writing), and now she’s headed for […]

Jonathan Lobdell, the Vibes’ unflappable press guru, just did a fist pump in exclamation of the first rays of sun in about three hours. We know the feeling. The Gathering of the Vibes has become the Opening of the Skies, folks; as far as today’s schedule, only the Alternate Routes got their main stage set […]

There’s so much to say about the beguiling ambiance of Seaside Park—and how well this long-maintained festival holds and absorbs the space, especially since its 2007 return—but a few traveling snafus have put your faithful correspondent a little more behind the eight-ball at the moment than he’d prefer. So, to the point.

The Black Crowes diehards among us haven’t had it so good this decade—I’ve found my own Crowes apologism working overtime with every false start and curveball. Sometimes it’s been difficult (I took some first-timer-for-whatever-reason Crowes fans to a messy, flatlining show in New Hampshire in July 2006 and ended up embarrassed) and sometimes faith rewarded (brought those same skeptical “fans” to a two-set blowout of a Crowes show in Worcester, MA later that year, and they were sold from the opening notes of “Virtue and Vice” on).

READ ON for more of Chad’s coverage straight from the Vibes in Bridgeport, CT…

So you’re not among the lucky this year—the beach-lovin’, music-hoardin’ legions comprising Vibe Tribe 2008. Well, once again, iClips is your teacher, mother, and secret lover…or at least your friend, in that it’s providing a live feed of three out of four Vibes evenings and an enormous percentage of the overall music. Check it out […]

Having recently finished an enterprise feature for another publication on the glut of national music festivals and what role that glut creates for regional festivals with a lot more personality, I’m more excited this year for the Gathering of the Vibes than I have been in quite some time. As the man said, “He’d have to be one charming motherfuckin pig”…er, sorry, “Personality goes a long way.”

Compared to the Roo- and Coachella-sized behemoths, and a lot of the sexy new kids with names both playful and official-sounding—Rothbury might be a bit of both, and allegedly, it was quite the time—the Vibes is a creakier, more elegant dinosaur. A glorious, humble triceratops of a festival, yes, secure in its size, pleasant in its modest ambition and its abilities, not ostentatious, and kindly manageable.

And damn isn’t it great to have it back in New England proper (it returned in 2007 after several years of renovation to Bridgeport’s Seaside Park and a few years at various upstate New York locales)? For this born/bred New Englander, it’s not only in a New England/Tri-State area happy medium, but it fills a still-felt void left by the big Phish festivals of yore and especially the can’t-believe-it’s-been-five-years-now departed Berkshire Mountain Music Festival (1997-2003). (For Berkfest alums from those heady days, monsoon conditions and all, have a scoop of nostalgia on the house) READ ON for more about what you can expect at GOTV ’08…

 After years of solo tours and spot projects, Tim Reynolds is not only back in the spotlight with DMB but has revived TR3 (if not former members) in a new configuration. 

Formerly (and still certainly, though no longer nominally) Psychedelic, the Breakfast has taken the long, winding, and, perhaps, ultimately more rewarding path to becoming a jamband stalwart.

[Photo by Jess Reis]

Formed in 1998, the Connecticut quartet didn’t ascend to the loosely grouped, national-level echelon of contemporary outfits like Umphrey’s McGee, Tea Leaf Green, the Benevento/Russo Duo, and other peers. But to these ears, guitarist/vocalist Tim Palmieri and Co. have long been what you might call a classic jamband’s jamband: organically evolved without gimmicks, ridiculously talented, creatively unstilted, committed to a really professional show—and also respected, far and wide, by many of the scene’s best-known musicians and insiders. Yes, one of those bands that even your most jaded scene-head pals will still see with regularity even as he or she’s abandoned other, showier bands.

This year the Breakfast has finally achieved re-entry following a two year period of transition. First, there was the departure of longtime keyboardist Jordan Giangreco in 2006, which prompted the band to tour as a trio for a short time before recruiting Matt Oestreicher. Then, in December 2007, bassist Ron Spears exited, prompting the January 2008 debut of Northeast jam veteran Chris DeAngelis.

As we learned from a recent catch-up with Palmieri, there’s a lot more good Breakfast to come…

HIDDEN TRACK: If I’m not mistaken, 2008 is your 10-year anniversary, right?

TIM PALMIERI: Indeed it is.

HT: Do you have anything special planned?

TP: Well, we always do a Halloween run and pick a special theme. We’ve talked about a theme that I can’t yet divulge to you, but we will announce it.

READ ON for more of Chad’s Q & A with Tim from The Breakfast…

Any savvy concertgoer knows to temper expectations just a bit sometimes, even at the risk of jading. It’s so hard to find (and then bottle) lightning more than a few times a year that those who go looking for it wind up with a merely overcast sky time and time again—a long string of B and B+ shows with the rare A stuck in the days between.

[Photo by Rich Gastwirt via Phillesh.net]

Friends who don’t go to the 100-150 shows I average every year ask if going to so much music desensitizes me, and the answer is yes, of course—to a point. Glass half-full reasoning suggests that if you go to a lot, experience a different variety of all types of venues, styles and groupings, and when something really good happens you get that tingly feeling—the feeling you forgot, as the poet wrote.

In late 2007 the feeling I forgot came to me in an unexpected—but as it turned out, unsurprising—show last year: the final night of Phil Lesh & Friends’ epic 10-night run at the Nokia Theater here in New York. I’d been to the 11/6 show earlier in the week and it was a cursory delight—full of easy-mark crowd-pleasers, a safe level of stretching out, a few moments of A-level PLF work and enough mojo to convince me this fivesome warranted a place with at least the most capable PLF lineups. The final show of the run, however, was a game-changer, with a decently solid first set, a pretty, all-acoustic second set, and a stemwinder of a third set that, to these ears, remains to date the fullest, one-set expression of what this current PLF lineup can accomplish. READ ON for more of Chad’s PLF review…

They didn’t attempt to eulogize their own magazine so much as exemplify all it accomplished in 13 years, so I’ll spare Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock and Kyla Fairchild the indignity of treacle. But I finally finished the last print issue of No Depression—which I’ve been advised will still be on stands for another month—and it’s clear a unique critical voice will be missing from the pack from now on, at least in print form.

What is No Depression’s legacy? Great music, sure, and writing about it with infectious, sometimes uncritical (and that’s OK), passion. What I like most about its finale is how long it took me to get through it: weeks, digesting stories one at a time, at my leisure, and extracting salient points. I’m as impatient as they come; I bitch heartily when a favorite blog isn’t updated minute-by-minute, or a setlist report is incomplete, or a story on a well known artist doesn’t tell me anything beyond cursory fluff. No Depression’s greatness is that to the end it feels unhurried. This magazine isn’t a shouter; it’s a raconteur.

READ ON for more of Chad’s review for the final issue of No Depression…

Exhausted from the Jammys, the afterparty, and the ill-thought-out decision to work a full day after, I nevertheless dragged myself down to NYC’s Rodeo Bar last night, intent on catching at least a little of Girls, Guns & Glory—a Boston-area country-rock crew par excellence and one of the best of its kind around. [youtube]qizRvpYHmrw[/youtube] As […]

It was the tightest Jammys show in at least three or four of them-thetype of night for which you're tempted to use the word lean but pull back only because that might under-represent such a high quality of talent assembled. Tight, tight tight, with changes from the past few Jammys were subtle, but essential: slightly fewer acts with longer stretches devoted to each, giving time for collaborations (most, anyway) to marinate a bit and really suss out some value and excitement.

Hearing the two play back-to-back one hour sets of Murder by Death and O'Death in the murky lair of the Middle East, well… all that was missing were seance candles and two men with handlebar moustaches declaring a duel after too much whiskey down the gullet.

If there's a word for the Dumpstaphunk experience-and articulating what gives great funk bands their mojo is a futile exercise-it's "full." Politics, passion, punch, and professionalism-and you're dancing your face off all the while.

Manhattan's Terminal 5, tucked way down between 11th avenue and the West Side Highway in the West 50s, can be a top-of-the-line place to see a show; its airy-hangar-meets-the-Addams-Family-mansion feel drips personality. But when Cat Power and her oddly named foursome Dirty Delta Blues took up there, it was one crowd energy-killing, sonically misdirected moment after another,

The Black Angels hold an enhancement for that lurking guitar drone that turns their songs into blissfully psychedelic sensory overload, gauzy blues, and industrial-edgy shoegaze. What about all that critical posturing about the Black Angels turning "drone into an art form"? It’s one hundred percent accurate.

Appreciating Mighty High means allowing for Warren Haynes and Gov't Mule to indulge their recent surge of interest in dub and other reggae flavors. There's a lot to like on Mighty High and a lot to discard. Even haters of the CD–some Mule fanatics have called it un-listenable, and they're not totally wrong, should feel comfortable knowing the band has no plans for a holding pattern with this musical output. Trust in that.

hy are so many people on the multilingual bus with Gogol Bordello? Because getting into them is as much as layered, depth-creating experience as it is the well-documented hyper-visceral one. That is, the more layers you peel back and the deeper you entrench yourself in what the band's laying down, the richer the experience gets.

The Galactic album that became From the Corner to the Block was originally going to be all-instrumental, and in its initial stages was a little loose on concept. That was two years ago, when the band found itself on tour with Bay Area emcee Lyrics Born as the opening act and nightly sit-in guest, and was really enjoying itself as it figured out the next direction.

Opening a two-night stand at this curious Long Island theater in-the-round, Weir and his crew were in satisfaction delivery mode, going for the familiar—Dylan chestnuts, Bob-sung favorites, a few fuzzy psyche-out moments—without taking too many chances until the end. Their opening run from "Shakedown" on was fun, but cursory; it wouldn't be until a slow-burning, wholly dramatic "Loser" that they'd really lock in. Steve Kimock too, was a colorist up until that point, and only keyboardist Jeff Chimenti—absolutely this band's undersung hero—had really grabbed the limelight, leaning barrelhouse for "Minglewood Blues."

Nearly twenty years later, following creative times both fat and lean and two tours of duty with the Crowes, Marc Ford is older by fact, wiser by his own admission, and hardly throwing in the towel. He seems to be as busy as ever, and just returned to the road with a brand new band and a meaty new collection of songs.