#GracePotter

Grace Potter hits Central Park, The Foo Fighters rawk The Meadowlands & more (Sept 2011)

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals – Central Park Summerstage – September 24th – NYC

Back in Feb 2011, I first met Grace Potter and not only her band but specifically her crew and namely Ben, her Tour Manager – who treated me like freaking royalty. I’m not kidding, I’ve never experienced that type of hospitality from anyone (sometimes not even from the bands I work with haha) – It was just so nice to meet such genuine people who are a part of something real. They seem like a real family, band and crew as one, unlike the dysfunctional miscreants I travel with. And though I do appreciate the music and Grace is a killer performer, I felt like I was more motivated to go the show to see friends, namely Ben.

I get there, and same hospitality ensues – and this isn’t about how many free drinks I can squeeze out of the deal, it’s about respect, the same that I show others and it feels good when you receive it in return. Their are laminates waiting for me at Will Call as I find a table backstage I see Ben, who is busy naturally, but takes a second to come over to greet me. He rules.

He gets the band onstage, and then comes over to make sure I’m okay, and then walks me into this special trailer setup just for hospitality – they are big on treating people right I tell you that.
It even got surreal as we are both cracking up laughing at all the stuff to choose from, which even included her own brand of chocolate bars – an odd mix of chocolate and chili peppers – and I shit you not, in a mason jar was actual MOONSHINE that he said Willie Nelson had given them – how fucking cool is that?

He dares me to have a swig, but chili/chocolate candy was as far as I would dare – I walk to the side to catch the show on a perfect night.

She is so rad, with a Tina Turner vibe and killer legs to match as the band kicks ass behind her. The gorgeous New York City night went perfectly with the psychedelically lit stage. Nirvana seemed to be on everyone’s mind as the last few days the coming 20 year anniversary of Nevermind was reported everywhere. Jon Stewart was doing a special and how was this gonna be acknowledged at the Foo Fighters show in a few days? Without saying anything, clearly they were feeling it too as they band goes into a gorgeous cover of Come As You Are.

Setlist:

Stop The Bus
Only Love
That Phone
Goodbye Kiss
Oasis
Apologies
Low Road
Ragged Company
Ah Mary
Tiny Light
Come As You Are (Nirvana cover)
Colors
2:22
Why Don’t You Love Me (Beyoncé cover)
Paris (Ooh La La)

Encore:

White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane cover)
Nothing But The Water I
Nothing But The Water II
Tush (ZZ Top cover)
Medicine

  An awesome show, and after I hung for a bit but of course I had to let Ben do his job. I invited him to meet me at a party in Brooklyn later, and he said the band was gonna be in town all week doing some recording and press so I left him to his gig and headed out to Brooklyn.

The Foo Fighters – The Meadowlands – September 26th – East Rutherford, NJ

So I had been in touch with my buddy Ben who Tour Manages Grace Potter and we were trying to get together to do something before they left town. I invited him out to see the Foo Fighters tonight but he had to cancel last second so I made the trip out to the Meadowlands alone. Now I like Dave Grohl and just about everything that he has been a part of has touched me in some way and if he’s involved its probably on my radar. That doesn’t change to fact that I honestly really don’t give two shits about the Foos barely past their first record. Now their most recent one, Wasting Light is certainly an interesting project, that reunited him with Butch Vig who produced Nirvana’s legendary Nevermind LP and I saw them burn the house down in Austin during SXSW after a screening of a really terrific documentary called Back and Forth. This new record is easily the heaviest thing they have released since 1995, but again it still doesn’t really speak to me nor helps me forgive the baffling mediocrity of their output of the last 10 years.
But also like most people, how can you just not like Dave Grohl? Also in NYC sometimes the trip to the show can be just as exciting, so since I had free tickets I was all in.
I did that thing where you take the bus from Port Authority out to the Meadowlands for a whopping $5.00 and people are bringing sacks of beer onboard – a total party.
I get there and get my ticket from Will Call and head in, in time to catch the opening act, Rise Against.

Now you talk about a genre of music that I truly don’t care about it would be the one that this band sorta leads. but I had a minor interest because the guitarist in the band that joined just a few years ago is Zach Blair, a Dallas musician that I’m friendly with but don’t really know, but should as we have both been around for a very long time.
Zach and his brother used to be in local favorites Hagfish and his brother Donnie I know who now plays in the Toadies.
They all played well, its just not my thing at all.

Ok so during the break, a situation started presenting itself – I was on the house floor pretty close to the front but resting on the retaining wall stage left. I noticed this 40-ish hippy girl starting to lose her grip. I noticed her before and saw her downing cups of wine and it was clear she was also alone. Well I know how wine can kick my ass and she was getting hers royally. Well chivalry be damned, I couldn’t help myself so when she started to go, I helped her up and asked if she needed anything when she sorta collapses in my arms. People now think I know her and are looking at me like “Why can’t your girl keep it together?” – In a rare act of awareness for the Northeast, this nice younger girl that was part of the production saw what was going down and rushed over and offered me a bottle of water to give to her. This seemed to get her back to somewhat normal.

Building up tension, the opening clanging chords of Bridge Burning  All at once, the building full of Foo fans shouted first line “These are my famous last WOORDDDDS!!”.

 Acknowledging that they are celebrating a special anniversary, (again as I had mentioned for Nevermind) Grohl brought his Nirvana out Krist Novoselic to the stage to play accordion on These Days. Needless to say, fans freaked as soon as he walked out, thrilled to see the two together in a live setting again. Adding some humor to the sentimental moment, Grohl added “Krist Novoselic is like the Eddie Van Halen of the accordion.”

The show was fun and well paces and I appreciated being there and this was obviously a special night for them, but the vibe was more like seeing Def Leppard than anything of real substance. At one point Grohl walked down this long I’m-the-singer-ramp where he was playing to the people in the very back. I’m sure they appreciated it and it was a cool thing to do for them, but it just felt so arena-rock and scripted that their was nothing I could really say I took from it.

Drunk girl was in and out of her stupor for the whole show and though it was not my problem I couldn’t help but make it my problem, that’s just the kinda dude I am. When the show ended she seemed more lucid that she had the whole night so I was confident that she could make it home ok and she was taking one of the buses I was but I wanted to make myself scarce. Especially when she started freaking out that her phone had been stolen and I think me making a hasty departure made her think I had taken it. Oh New Jersey.

Setlist:

Bridge Burning
Rope
The Pretender
My Hero
Learn to Fly
White Limo
Arlandria
Breakout
Cold Day in the Sun
Stacked Actors
Walk
Monkey Wrench
Let It Die
These Days (w/ Krist Novoselic)
I Should Have Known
This is a Call
In the Flesh? (Pink Floyd cover)
All My Life

Encore:

Long Road to Ruin (Dave Solo Acoustic)
Best of You (Dave Solo Acoustic)
Times Like These (Dave Solo Acoustic/Full Band Electric)
Dear Rosemary
Breakdown (Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers cover)
Skin and Bones
Everlong

Girls that Rock w/Grace Potter,The Pretty Reckless and The Genitorturers (Feb 2011)

Great month of Rock N Roll with some rawking gals who are kicking so much ass this year!

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals – House of Blues – Dallas, TX – February 18th

I get to Will Call and let me tell you something – I’ve been in this business for awhile now – and I have never received the kind of hospitality that welcomed me when I got there. Most people know the process but I will walk you through it:
If you are fortunate enough to have been invited by the artist either as a guest or press or radio/retail or just a contest winner what you can expect is:

(2) tickets to the show

Sometimes but rarely will you also get after-show passes

and even rarer would be more than two of anything.

What was waiting for me at Will Call was not to be believed – I get there and there are:

(2) tickets to the show

and a freaking All Access laminate that is good for the entire tour – that is only given to band/crew

The phone number to the Manager and Tour Managers and insisting that I call when I arrived.

Then someone came out from the Box Office to escort me in!!

It was like Eddie Murphy in Coming to America where were my rose-bearers?

A brief history: For the past year with Ween doing festivals almost exclusively – we keep running into this crew or just missing them by a day or two. It seems like every festival we are on Sat and they are on Sun. I forget where we were, but I remember Claude and I seeing Grace walking around (not knowing who she was or anything about her) and she is like ridiculously sexy just sitting on a golf cart (let alone how she performs) and then we see her later walking off the stage that Ween is about to perform on, and we both looked at each other like “Sorry I missed that”.

I had spoken to some of the guys in the Nocturnals before and they are all super cool so when they invited me to the show I jumped at the chance to go.
I make my way up to the dressing room as the band is now on stage and I have a great talk with their manager and we have a few laughs, before I head down and check out the show parked behind the soundboard –

The show was amazing – Grace is a ball of feverish energy – a voice like Janis Joplin and crazy stage swagger that rivals even Tina Turner with the moves and body to match. I was freaking mesmerized by her (and her bass player wasn’t too shabby either).
And chops to spare, the encore was a cover of Heart‘s Crazy on You if that tells you anything.

After the show I meet up with them in their dressing room and I’m finally formally introduced to Grace and for all her femininity and good looks, she was totally one of the guys. A hardened road dog that’s put in the miles – I know that voice well, so when I heard I can recognize it immediately and she had it.
I shot the shit with the rest of the guys in the band who were all totally cool and huge Ween fans. Thankfully it wasn’t that forced after-show talk, we really got on great and had a good time.
They invited me to a party they were having in the Foundation Room which is another part of House of Blues. I mean again the hospitality was off the charts.

We are ushered into this roped off section of the club (which I’m embarrassed by and the band seemed to be too) and they are treating us to all these drinks etc.

Ben (Tour Manager) is a really cool and fun guy and we have a great rapport so he pulls me to the side for a second to say goodbye to me. Great dude & good times.
I was coming right back here tomorrow for another rawkin’ show!

The Pretty Reckless – House of Blues (Cambridge Room) – Dallas, TX – February 19th

(Editor’s Note: A portion of the following post originally appeared in my article for Jam Magazine – you can read the entire article here – )

After meeting Celeste the previous night I now had two meetings, and thought it would be a fun chance to indulge in a guilty pleasure and see Taylor Momsen strut her stuff afterwords. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a huge Gossip Girl fan and have written about Taylor more than once in this blog.
I grab our tickets and we head inside for the show. Now, though I’ve been to this venue dozens of times now, their is yet another smaller club inside called the Cambridge Room where tonight’s show was going down. A very small space that only holds a couple hundred people, and I was happy about that. It added to the intimacy and made it feel more like a dirty rawk show.

When the show starts and the band starts to take the stage, it is literally almost pitch black in there, and they came out into a sea of dry ice – just the band, not Taylor – in that dramatic-singer comes out last-thing. There was more than enough time for the tension to build so that finally getting a glimpse of her was becoming mythical, so when she finally slowly slithered onstage, the whole crowd just kinda gasped (myself included).

I had heard all the Courtney Love comparisons and even seen evidence that supported it, but here live, I didn’t think so at all, it was more of a less-animated Cherie Currie thing – She just slithered around, back-length hair in her face, with an air of arrogance — almost as if she was striking poses for the camera. And let me be clear – it was one of the hottest fucking things I’ve ever seen.

Keep in mind, I hadn’t heard one note of this band yet and was just being a total poseur/creeper there just to gawk at her for a few songs and then take off. Celeste even had another event to attend (hence the expensive dress) so I hadn’t planned to stay that long.
Besides the above photo – believe it or not – the music made me an easy convert.

At one point, she asked the crowd, “Have you guys ever heard of Oasis and Muse?” as her band jumped right into a Supersonic/Time is Running Out mash-up and Taylor even went so far as to accurately mimic Liam Gallagher’s mannerisms.

The next cover, Audioslave‘s Like a Stone, didn’t seem to go over as well. It just didn’t fit the momentum, and let’s just say the guitarist probably should have sat out the Tom Morello guitar solo.
What solidified my fandom was the song Going Down – which is not about fellatio (per say) but no less twisted – that had me singing the chorus all the way home.

One point of interest was that the crowd kept chanting “Little J” (the nickname of her character on Gossip Girl) in between almost every song. This is interesting because the whole production of the Pretty Reckless seemed to be a rebellion to not only that character specifically but to the entire culture that it represents, fictional or otherwise. Having said that , I don’t believe they were taunting her in the least, in fact I think they were chanting it as you would the name of your favorite song in support of Taylor, but for the life of me I can’t understand how they wouldn’t get that this would completely irritate her (you could tell she was as dumbfounded as me, and took it as complimentary but her silence proved she was aghast at the cluelessness).

By this point everyone was rawking and getting into the show as well, and by the end of it Taylor was just down to her bra (and I down to my last fingernail haha).

Set List:

Since You’re Gone
Light Me Up
Miss Nothing
Zombie
Just Tonight
Goin’ Down
Supersonic (Oasis cover)
Time is Running Out (Muse cover)
Like a Stone (Audioslave cover)
My Medicine
Factory Girl

ENCORE:

Nothing Left to Lose
Make Me Wanna Die

So after the show it was still somewhat early and Celeste and I still hadn’t had a chance to discuss her participation in our upcoming SXSW showcase, but she had another event to get to that was just a few blocks away and she invited me to come along.
We  discussed details for the showcase and then I called it a night, eager to get home to download the Pretty Reckless record.

The Genitorturers – Trees – Dallas, TX – February 21st

Back in the 90’s when the band was first garnering attention, and my friends and I were seeing some of their first tours, they had two advantages: bondage gear, PVC, tattoos and piercings were still quite out there, and Marilyn Manson hadn’t yet saturated mainstream culture. Now, the Genitorturers seem to be just another band with a few tricks up their sleeve that will hopefully bring in paying customers.

While the band’s performance was tight and passably energetic, the exposition side of the engagement was sorely lacking. Seeing a few gimp masks, rubber dolls dressed up as if they’ve been ripped out of the uterus and some nipple pasties on a burlesque dancer lacks the impact it may have had a decade ago.

Audience desensitization or not, this night felt particularly no-frills. A band that once boasted a stage-encompassing set of toys such as spinning wheels, massive crosses and an onslaught of potential sexual casualties was pared down to a shadow of its former self with costumes and props pulled from what could easily have been big-box store shelves, as opposed to custom-crafted den of iniquity gear. It was deflating after not seeing the band for so long and having such high expectations.
That’s not to say that their wasn’t some craaazy shit going on cause there totally was:

As a band, Genitorturers still capably deliver their sterile synthesized rock’n’roll. As a stage show, however, at least on this night, they seemed to have lost that internal spirit for a rousing performance, delivering a bare-bones S&M-influenced show as opposed to the sensory overload S&M extravaganza they are renowned for and have easily been capable of in the past.

After the show, I go outside to find my buddy Patrick and he’s talking to this crazy gal Jacqueline, who was telling us about an upcoming event she was gonna be participating in – something insane called the North American Bodypainting Championship – (that ironically I get a call the very next day from the producers of, asking me if I would be interested in being one of the judges – I detail this experience in Part III). I love people watching and at a show like this, you couldn’t ask for a better parade of wild shit, and we hung out and met and talked with a bunch of really interesting people.

Photos –

Roy Turner
Barry Brecheisen
Robert Easley