This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on September 28, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Rock & Roll history is densely-planted with family tree systems, with tangled and broken limbs, sometimes leading to new roots systems. Part of the storied lore behind the music comes through contemplating the “how they got there,” the tendrils of history and stylistic influence, beyond the immediate sound before us.
Santa Barbara is getting a good taste of that background lore with the sudden presence of both Wilco (at the Arlington on October 13) and last week’s tight, action-packed set by Son Volt, shaking up SOhO with its vintage alt-country-rocking sound. The family tree aspect connects the band through Uncle Tupelo, featuring both Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Volt’s Jay Farrar, before an apparently non-amicable breakup sent them on their different paths. Obviously, Wilco’s trajectory was more high-flying and with a wider public and critical acclaimed, but Son Volt has its own legacy of influence and a fierce fan base.
At SOhO, the opening act was more than a passing fancy. British singer-songwriter Peter Bruntnell played a set slowly revealing his mischievous twin intentions. A certain earnestness is embedded in his songs of lost or complicated love, but the same surface emotional sincerity gets cagier — think Robyn Hitchcock — when he sings about Houdini’s death or, yet more surreally, cryogenics in the dark-witted “By the Time My Head Gets to Phoenix.” For educational points, he also informed us that Walt Disney’s head currently lives in the famous Phoenix cryogenics compound. Little jolts of irony kept waking us up: this is not your father’s moody singer-songwriter type.
Son Volt came out swinging and rocking and gently twanging. Farrar, with his shaggy mop top coif, dark shades, and guitar inscribed with “slammable,” dished out song after song from the band’s annals, going back to its popular 1995 debut album Trace, played front to back. Also in the mix were tracks from the recent tribute to the late Texan icon Doug Sahm, Day of the Doug. Links between Sahm (Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornados, and assorted projects) can be detected in the Volt sound, minus the salty wry humor.
Farrar’s sturdy, clean, and no-nonsense vocal power, with scant between-song banter, wedded to the band’s well-oiled machine, rich with vocal harmonies and tasty-lean licks on guitar, steel, and keys. A fan I talked to in SOhO suggested that Farrar is the better, stronger singer in the Farrar/Tweedy comparison game, while Tweedy was more rough and mumbly. Tweedy is also a much more complex lyrical and genre-twisting artist, but the Volt dealt sternum-grabbing sound at SOhO.
For a first encore, Son Volt fell naturally into the arms of Tom Petty’s classic “An American Girl,” before leaning way back to the Uncle Tupelo songbook for a taste of “Chickamunga.” For a solid 90 minutes, the mid-life band rose to the occasion of sounding like the neo-good ol’ rock & roots band that it was/is.
Harvest Season for Live Music
‘Carmen’ costars Sarah Saturnino and Nathan Granner. | Credit: Courtesy
The multi-genre autumnal harvest of live music officially begins this week, with plenty of options for music lovers to get outta the house, and into houses of sound. For one, opera returns to the Granada, where it last landed in the form of the Music Academy’s production of La Bohème. Opera Santa Barbara kicks off an intriguing new season with another crowd-pleasing favorite, with Spanish flavors at its core, Carmen (Friday and Sunday, September 29 and October 1).
At Campbell Hall on Sunday, the UCSB Arts & Lectures season has its own kick-off moment to the multi-layered tune of jazz-pop phenom Jacob Collier, still a twenty-something and thus qualifying for wiz kid status. Several years ago, keyboardist-vocalist Collier dazzled crowds and critics with his harmonic sophistication and complex one-person arrangements of music by Stevie Wonder and even The Flintstones theme (long a jazz favorite among cartoon subjects), with intricate layered video productions (check him out on YouTube). Live, he brings along a band to fit into his soulful puzzle-like arrangements and manages to bring in listeners beyond the usual jazz fan suspect crowd, which, alone, deserves credit. Check him out.
Veteran pop-rock-pub-arena mega-band Foreigner is making its last stand with its current retirement tour, bringing them around to the Chumash Casino on Friday, September 29. It’s a very sold-out show, but worth the effort of finding side door tickets if not in possession. The same sold-out status has naturally landed on the Santa Barbara Bowl’s big show tonight (September 28), with Foo Fighters sneaking in a short-notice date in a town they know well (guitarist Chris Shiflett was born/bred here, and Dave Grohl is known to pop by humble nightspots for a cameo here and there).
Over at SOhO, ever the great spot for music in an intimate setting with fetching vittles and libations, the list of recommended shows includes a return of the charming Americana/Swedish folkloric singer-guitarist Sofia Talvik (whose show at the Alhecama Theater a few years back is fondly recalled), on Sunday. Come Monday, jazz big bands will have their night out, when the acclaimed SBCC “Monday Madness” big band hits the SOhO stage, showing us what this locally legendary ensemble is capable of.