The Avett Brothers are on tour and still warming up, but even that's worth seeing. Warming up was a hard action this past Friday night at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex Junction, Vermont. The temperature dropped with the sun, and the nearly-moonless night left the starry sky clear, in a late-spring-temps-in-the-mid-40s kind of way. The day had been sunny but breezy, the first cool day after a long bout of humidity. The Avetts opened the tour the night before in Portland, Maine, before heading outside for a number of nights, both for Essex Junction and Mountain Jam, the weekend fest in upstate New York.
For whatever happened in Maine on opening night, the Avetts tried their hardest in Vermont, to entertain the weekender crowd, built of teenyboppers, three generations of couples, and real music fanatics: there is nothing like the Avetts' tender balladeering and Carolina stomp jams, their multi-instrumental talents and their earnest emotion onstage. Maybe it’s because they’ve practiced their craft over their entire lives, that their talents would lead Rick Rubin to let them back up Johnny Cash’s last session hours, or that Bob Dylan would put them in the gaggle of modern strummers, roaring through a rambunctious and old song during the Grammys this year. That gaggle included the Avetts as well as Mumford & Sons, and all were lined up like a scene from the Grand Ol’ Opry, pickin’ away as the blue and tangled frame of Bob Dylan writhed around spewing poetry about not working at an unnamed farm. Distinctions and arguments may be constructed in support of many, but I see the Avetts as leading this charge in 21st century authentic Americana Rock, because they're inventive and energetic—behind them follow Old Crow Medicine Show, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the Avetts’ wildly popular British counterparts Mumford & Sons. They Might Be Prolific, as it were.
But what’s the difference between what the audio producers of the 2011 Grammys wanted to achieve out of Seth Avett’s banjo tone in that complicated sonic mix, and what Burlington’s Higher Ground organizers and sound techs were looking to throw into the chilly suburban Friday night outside of Burlington? The answer is unfortunate, but unknown: what was clear is that the front-of-house mix-- that is, what was coming out of the two big speakers that hung from either side of the temporary stage set up at the fairgrounds—was heavy with bass, not to a Bonnaroo 2010 extent, but noticeably awry. For a band that’s always sounded to me like they taught Elvis to play guitar on "That's Alright, Mama," and are deserving of a free residency at Sun Studios in Memphis, too many tunes in Essex Junction ended up bouncing around the venue like punk music played at clipping volume, with bass that ate up definition. Maybe it’s a fluke of live outdoor amplification, but I remember a similar problem when Paul Simon played at Champlain Valley a few years back, and the stage was situated in the center of the racetrack, and the subtle electronic nuances in his “Surprise” album got washed out by the outdoor chest-rattling megathump.
So there was more bass than one may have wanted in the mix, but—and there’s an ample familial and friendly pass that may be bestowed here—the overwrought bottom end wasn’t even the Brothers’ longtime standup and electric bassist Bob Crawford, but Paul Defigilia, of Langhorne Slim and the War Eagles. It’s noble and admirable that the Avetts could roll on with such gusto; their tour blog featured a kind note from father-to-be Bob, explaining his absence, and giving props and cred to last-minute fill-in Paul, who was introduced from the stage as being from “a farm in Virginia.” He switched between pulling away at the strings of the stand-up and thumbing an electric bass, and he looked to the drummer often to ‘see’ the beat (usually, it seems, bassist Bob and the brothers split the stage’s front line three ways, and all face forward; 2011 also marks Bob’s tenth year of playing with the Scott and Seth Avett, since jamming with banjo-standup bass-acoustic guitar in a North Carolina parking lot during the dawn of the last decade. Fill-in bassist Paul didn’t play any wrong notes, and he didn’t foul up any stops or starts—and there are many to miss, across the Avetts’ catalog—but it was interesting, challenging, to hear new choices in riffs being made, not often, but enough. Was it Paul’s different sense of ‘letting-go-of-a-note’ that characterized the mix as different than the Brothers’ usual vibe? Or was the pensive, chilly vibe the fault of the Higher Ground sound guys, and/or the lakeside climate?
Don’t get me wrong: if this was the “worst” of the three Avett Brothers shows I’ve seen, it’s still in the top fifty concerts I’ve attended, and Paul did a fine job filling in massive shoes. No matter who the bassist is or isn’t (or the drummer, for that matter), the Avett Brothers—themselves, left to their own devices—are already the Stuff of Country Legend on this continent and others, as they go thrashingly toward Everly Brothers harmonies and Merle Haggard-style chord changes. They opened tenderly—a true warm-up-- with “January Wedding,” a version of “Feeling of Feeling” at a faster, Clash-like pace, before a uncatchable Doc Watson cover with a Sublime-style backbeat played a bit faster: this is what you do after leading the pack of strummers behind Bob at the Grammys. What went wrong with the banjo during “Paranoia in B Flat Major?” It was quickly traded out, for one less robust, and often swallowed during loud passages.
The Avett Brothers are well loved because they can play softly, and do, amply, without drums and bass—perhaps 40% of the show was simply banjo and guitar, and Seth and Scott’s voices. In these, the cello slid into the mix with passages in songs I didn’t recognize but liked, about Greensboro women and broken cars, houses and returns home. Two of their most powerful “torch song” ballads came near the end of the show—“I and Love and You” and “Head Full of Doubt…” In the latter, the line that illicited a massive roar from last summer’s Bonnaroo crowd (“…your life doesn’t change/by the man that’s elected”) was met with eerie silence by the Chittenden Country crowd. In the former, “I and Love and You,” the song that became the name of their substantial breakthrough album, I was easily swayed into the dream place and dreamy time presented, and nearly wept to think of a place such as “Brooklyn/Brooklyn,” to “take me in… are you aware the shape I’m in?” During the song’s instrumental bridge, Seth Avett’s overhead clapping seemed taught to him by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne: it was emotional and effective stage antics, and I wished Seth had had a gong to smash at the very largest moment, before the final verse and chorus. The bizarre encore came after Scott Avett thanked the crowd, saying “we don’t take it for granted, you inviting us back up here—thank you.” Joined by the bizarre Dylan-dressalike and 1980s relic John Oates, now traveling with a blues band, the Avetts and Oates chewed through a melodic and brave “It Ain’t Me Babe,” passing around verses and dotting an eighth note in the chorus’ vocal line, leaving their mark of Carolina distinction and American innovation.
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