Milner on Music for Dec. 26 - Live on Record
A look at two recent live records by 75 Dollar Bill and Garcia Peoples with Chris Forsyth
This year wasn’t a great one for live music. COVID-19 kept venues and clubs shut and bands recorded the odd thing online over Instagram Live or Twitch, but there wasn’t much on the improvised front. Thankfully, though, two live records slipped out from two-similarly minded bands, and each compliments the other: Chris Forsyth’s tag-team with Garcia People’s People’s Motel Band, and Live at Tubby’s by an augmented 75 Dollar Bill, here billed as the Little Big Band.
Both are the sort of band a certain kind of music fan adores: they play rock that’s steeped in the jam classics, but sound fresh and engaging. Musical touchstones run the gamut: world music, the Grateful Dead, even jazz or 70s punk rock. They’re mana for rock critics, at least ones who keep a Richard Thompson record at arm’s length. I’ll admit it: I’m one of those, and I loved both of these records. They’re both keepsakes of the kind of thing I haven’t been able to experience all year: a live concert.
Forsyth’s is the shorter of the two, and was mostly meant as a vinyl-only march table souvenir - although he’s selling digital copies at Bandcamp, and one would be loath miss it.
People’s Motel Band opens with “The Past Ain’t Passed,” a slow jam that twists and turns, the guitars of Chris Forsyth, Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki shimmering and mixing together, with keyboardist Pat Gubler adding textures. Meanwhile, the rhythm section of bassist Peter Kerlin and drummers Cesar Arakaki and Ryan Jewell keep things locked in. It sounds a little like Richard Thompson, when he’d stretch out on droning solo for “Calvary Cross.” But this is more of an intro than the climax Thompson’s is: it’s almost a free for all, the band loosing working around a theme.
Everything builds to a climax, then drops out leaving a simple guitar pattern, touches of percussion and little flourishes of keyboard, before they kick into the 70s rock groove of “Tomorrow Might as Well Be Today,” with it’s stomping rhythm and slick guitar riff. It’s more structured, guitar solos building in turn, and the band returning to the theme. It’s a tasty piece, the lead guitars working back and forth like an old Television track.
Indeed, it’s hard sometimes to write about these bands without name-dropping because they both are steeped in music history. Forsyth has written tunes that reference classic rock - “The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues” off 2016’s The Rarity of Experience, for example - while Garcia People’s name is a direct reference. There’s also the play on a Michael Azerrad book on their latest, too: “Our Van Could Be Your Life.” With a CV like theirs, it almost comes with the territory.
“Mythic Mountain” closes side one, a nearly ten-minute track opening with a steady drum pattern, little guitar flourishes and a slowly building groove. As the guitar builds up, a second joins in another lead, the two playing almost at odds; about two minutes in, Forsyth starts singing. Between verses, the guitars shine in a tremendous show of musicianship - these two really work well together. This one builds to a guitar climax that’s downright breathtaking. No wonder the crowd erupts with shouts and applause.
The second half is taken up a lengthy version of “Dreaming the Non-Dream,” which in its first two minutes builds up a hell of a head of steam, it’s tense rhythm building and boiling while the lead guitars crash and tangle. Solos rise and climax; grooves build and crest. The group almost starts at a white-hot fury and for the entire time, they keep it going. It’s exhilarating to listen to at home, and the crowd where this was recorded sounds dialled-in, shouting and yelling every time they think the jam’s coming to a peak - and there’s several, like a screaming guitar at 14 minutes in, but the band keep going and raising the stakes. By song’s end, listeners will need a moment to catch their breath
If People’s Motel Band is a snapshot, Live at Tubby’s, available at the band’s Bandcamp, is an experience. All six songs are about ten minutes or longer, and two tracks extend past 20. It opens with “in the lock / Beni Said,” a slow, almost droning song built around a simple riff and lengthy viola drones courtesy of Karen Waltuch. After a few minutes, the whole band kicks in: Rick Brown’s home-made percussion; Cheryl Kingan’s sax and the swirling guitars of Che Chen and Steve Maing. As the guitars kick and forth, the slow drone from the backing group makes it feel like a raga, or something from a Tuareg group. It’s hypnotic, even as it passes the ten-minute mark and slowly glides to a finish.
They start slowly on “Like Like Laundry,” with a simple percussion pattern; the musicians slowly join in after a minute or two. Guitars and saxophone start repeating a pattern, building up a groove at a leisurely pace. The guitars go back and forth, and Kingan adds an interesting texture with her baritone sax. In the liners, Chen notes how this lineup (75 Dollar Bill is usually a duo) hadn’t rehearsed, and maybe more dedicated listeners might pick up on a certain looseness here, but the group picks up on the music fast and mesh well together. You can hear it here, in the way they toss the music around, letting solos resolve themselves and play around with the music, trading off parts and building onto others.
“We’re going to play another one, it’s not that long, but it’s pretty long,” is how they introduce “I’m Not Trying to Wake Up,” and it sounds like it took them a moment to get on the same page to start the song off. Once they do, they kick into a slow groove, but one that builds up with banging percussion and droning, almost snarling guitars . From there, it’s on the shortest track here: a cover of Ornette Coleman’s “Friends and Neighbours.” It opens with shouting and a steady beat, but explodes into a swirl of sound and colour: Kingan’s alto plays a solo against Waltuch’s scratchy viola backing. It loose, rollicking and probably a lot of fun, although it’s the weakest performance here.
The double-LP closes with a side-long performance of WZN3-Verso, which was only six minutes on last year’s I Was Real, but stretched out for well over 20 minutes here. In studio it’s a tense performance that builds to an explosive climax, but stuck in the middle of the running order. Here it’s quicker, but drawn out into a haze of guitars and viola, The guitar whips out a blistering run and converses with the viola, before settling back into the song’s rhythm. Instruments fade in and out, with the rhythm section keeping things propelled along. By song’s end, things are into an almost middle eastern groove again, with hand percussion and strings circling around the listener. It’s entrancing in a way the studio version only hints at, a showcase of a group of musicians who all clicked on stage - even if they didn’t really practice together.
Live at Tubby’s isn’t just a glimpse at a band playing well, it’s also a document of the pre-COVID era just days before everything locked down and death tolls shot up. It was the last time to date, I believe, this lineup played live and they might not ever play again, given how drastically everything has changed in under a year. Venues in Toronto are closing at an alarming rate, and nothing new is replacing them. It’s an uncertain time for musicians, and music fans, too. “We sure do miss playing music with our friends,” says Brown on the album’s Bandcamp page. I know miss hearing them, too.