Good Morning

Malkauns is usually considered a late-night raga, but there's really nothing like waking up to it and starting your day with it.

Father John Misty

According to my Facebook Memories, nine years ago today I saw Father John Misty at Atlanta's Tabernacle. It was far from my first time seeing Father John, but afterward I was moved to write "Best Father John Misty show ever!" on FB.  

At the Tabernacle (and elsewhere on that tour), he surprised the audience with his cover of Nine Inch Nails' Closer.

It seems as if popular taste has moved beyond 2010s' indie rock and we're now fully in the Trump Era of manufactured material-girl pop stars, but Father John still remains the quintessential crooner of his generation, continuing to performing thought-provoking, self-lacerating songs in his own unique, post-ironic style.   

Bennie Maupin

Bennie Maupin is probably best known for performing on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and in Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band. Recently, he lost his home, instruments, and other belongings in the January 2025 Eaton Fire in L.A. 

Here, for no particular reason, is Excursion from his 1974 album, The Jewel in the Lotus. 

Unpacking Big Ears: The Return of DakhaBrakha

Generally speaking, Big Ears Saturday was a day of all jazz, although it closed with the hypnotic noise-drone of Water Damage and, earlier in the evening I saw the Ukrainian "ethno-chaos" band, DakhaBrakha. But other than that, my lineup on Saturday was all jazz. 

I've already discussed Water Damage, so let's get the latter one out of the way. DakhaBrakha played at 8:30 pm Saturday night in the beautiful Tennessee Theater (above). It wasn't an easy decision. To see them, I had to pass on the Tyshawn Sorey Trio (jazz) at the Bijou Theater, Lankum (Irish experimental) at the Mill & Mine, Helado Negro (electronic) at Jackson Terminal, and Wendy Eisenberg (improvisational) at Boyd's Jig & Reel. But such are the decisions you have to make for almost every performance at Big Ears.

The way I've come to look at it is Big Ears is a big international festival where hundreds of artists from all over the world get together for 3½ days of performance, conversation, movies, and socializing. You get to be a small part of it, taking in as much as you can, but it isn't all about you. It's bigger than that, and you should appreciate and embrace the small role you get to play, while recognizing that it isn't all a show put on just for you. 

In 2025, a small part of my small part was the opportunity to be a member of DakhaBrakha's audience.  

The one and only time I'd seen DakhaBrakha before was in Seattle (Bumbershoot) way back in 2014. I had never heard of them and was walking past their stage on my way to see some other band, some indie-rock flavor of the month. I had no intention of watching a band named "DakhaBrakha," but when I saw them take the stage with the white dresses and tall black hats, I was intrigued and stayed for their first number. I was amazed and stayed for their entire set, and still think of their performance as the stand-out set of the whole festival. I described it at the time as "Lark's Tongues in Aspect reinterpreted as a Slavic folk opera by Dirty Projectors."  

Since that time, though, our paths haven't crossed since, even though they apparently played Big Ears in 2017 (my first time at the festival was 2018). The Bumbershoot performance in 2014 was right after Russia had invaded and annexed Crimea, and it seemed only appropriate to see them 10½ years later and in year three of Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia after Putin attempted to take the whole of the country in 2022. 

Although their music is still much the same (which is a good thing), they've seemingly come to embrace their role as Ukraine's good-will ambassadors to the world. They made several appeals to support their country, both in morale and financially, to thunderous applause and even auctioned a painting to raise money for the troops. Most of the time, the video projection behind them showed animations based on Marko Halanevych's artwork, but it also included photos and videos of Ukrainian soldiers and people, slogans, and even a QR code for a site to donate money to the cause. But mostly, they focused on their strange and beguiling music.

Overall, it was a slicker and more professional presentation than what I saw in 2014, which is only to be expected for any band after 10+ years.    

It's not my intention to do a single post on every other set I saw at Big Ears this year, but this one seemed to warranted its own discussion and description. We'll go back to the day-long reviews soon.

Unpacking Big Ears: What I Did on Friday Night

cemetery at First Presbyterian, the venue for Thor Harris' Friday afternoon solo set 

So far, I've covered all the Thursday night sets I saw at Big Ears, the first three sets I caught on Friday, and Saturday night's Water Damage set plus Sunday night's debut of the Nels Cline Consentrik Trio. But the set by Water Damage's expanded lineup wasn't the only time I got to see David Grubbs and  Kramer.

Friday afternoon, after the Nels Cline Singers, the Sun Ra Arkestra with Yo La Tengo, and Thor Harris, I saw the band Squanderers, an experimental trio consisting of Grubbs (Gastr del Sol with Jim O’Rourke, as well as 80s post-hardcore bands Squirrel Bait and Bastro), multi-instrumentalist and producer Kramer (who's worked with folks from John Zorn to Daniel Johnston to Ween, The Fugs, and Galaxie 500), and guitarist Wendy Eisenberg (known for their solo work, the rock band Editrix, and collaborations with Zorn, Billy Martin, and others). As would be expected of these musicians, the music was fairly free-form and improvisational, suggestive of a moody, imaginary soundtrack.  

My next set after Squanders was Mike Reed's Separatist Party, another all-star band consisting of drummer Reed, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, members of the band Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan), and poet and spoken-word artist Marvin Tate. Their eponymous debut album was one of my favorite records of 2024 and they lived up to and even exceeded the excitement and intensity of the album at their Big Ears set.

But as exciting as Separatist Party was, their intensity was dwarfed by free-jazz powerhouse quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums), and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone), who perform as حمد [Ahmed], named for composer, bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993). Their set consisted on a single hour-plus improvisation that relentlessly kept building up on itself to incredible levels of intensity. Their creativity and stamina were impressive enough, and I can't even imagine the callouses their bass player must have on his fingers. 

  

 حمد [Ahmed] was one of my standout performances of Big Ears 2025, so much so that I almost (but didn't) go to see them again for their encore set the next night. But for the rest of the weekend, I has so many conversations with other music fans at the festival that began with them saying, "Oh my god, did you see حمد [Ahmed]?"

So after the moody improvisations of Squanderers, the theme of the day was one of increasing intensity, first with the Separatist Party and then with حمد [Ahmed]. That intensity morphed into the outright bizarre with the final set of the night by turntablists (not DJs) Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Victoria Shen (aka Evicshen). The principal difference between turntablists and DJs is the former use turntables and records as unique musical instruments and not merely to play music by other artists. Whatever was on the vinyl they used was unrecognizable as they distorted and morphed the sounds, and used their turntables and electronic to create dense layers of musique concrete.

Pioneers of New Turntablism, the three brought elements of free improvisation, noise, techno, and hip-hop into their set through equipment modification, scratching, beat juggling, sampling, and looping. To be honest, it was often difficult for me to tell which of the musicians was producing which of the sounds I was hearing, so alien and unfamiliar were their techniques. 

But the standout performer and show-stealer of their set had to be Victoria Shen, who also brought elements of performance art into the mix. At one point, she blew through a cornet with the bell right over the turntable's arm, so that the sound waves from the horn physically altered the sound the stylus was getting from the vinyl. But as if that wasn't enough, she did this while standing on the table, bent over so that her head was down past her knees and almost touching her toes. Later, she rigged herself with a collar that had electronic pickups attached and a string from the collar to her foot, and she bowed the string using foot movements to modulate the sound with her leg kicked up, Rockettes style, above her head.

Finally, as if all that weren't crazy enough, she produced a bullwhip and loudly cracked it several times at the edge of the stage, missing the audience members on the rail (such as me) by mere inches. Many people around me backed away from the stage as she whirled the whip in the air over our heads, but I hung in there right on the rail with a few other stalwarts. 

There were, however, two problems with her handling of the whip. One, she was cracking it while simultaneously holding a small turntable in front of her face with her free hand and a portable fan held in her teeth. The fan blew of the turntable, distorting the sound, but the turntable obstructed her view as she cracked the whip, which was just insane. Two, her aim with the whip wasn't all that good to begin with, even without the turntable blocking her view. On one snap, she managed to get the whip snagged on the barrier rail between the audience and the stage. Once that got untangled, her next snap hit me on the hand, fortunately for me not on the final downstroke but on the last warmup stroke before the actual crack. It stung, although it didn't draw blood or leave a mark.  But talk about literally breaking the fourth wall. . .

Even if that weren't the last scheduled set of the evening (which it was), that would have been enough for me for one night. I retreated to the cozy comforts of Clancy's Irish Bar and showed all my Big Ears friends the nonexistent mark on my hand where the crazy lady hit me with a whip.

Every year, I have at least one only-at-Big-Ears episode, some bizarre event that would probably happen no where else. This year, it was Victoria Shen's performance alongside Maria Chavez and Mariam Rezaei. 

Unpacking Big Ears: The Thor Harris Variations

Okay, we've already covered Thursday, Day One of Big Ears 2025, our so-called Pitchfork Day. Friday, Day Two, started with the Nels Cline Singers, but we've also already discussed them here, and after Nels, we hiked over to the Knoxville Civic Auditorium for the Sun Ra Arkestra with Yo La Tengo, which we also already talked about as part of Pitchfork Day. 

The Civic Auditorium is a little off the beaten path for other other Big Ears venues, but the First Presbyterian Church (the festival uses a lot of churches in town as venues) is on the way back from the KCA to the other venues. There, we saw musician Thor Harris perform two extended compositions, one solo and one in ensemble.

His solo piece started with him on keyboard riffing on some post-minimalist figures. He looped and overdubbed some of the figures, and once he was happy with the result, played clarinet over the loops. Harris is primarily known as a percussionist (Shearwater, Swans) but those of us familiar with his solo work and as Thor & Friends were in familiar territory. Here's a recent (April 2, 2025) sample that wasn't what he was playing at First Presbyterian but does capture the vibe and spirit of his first composition at Big Ears.    

After that was over, Thor invited his friends from the band Water Damage, including Marissa Anderson, Mari Maurice (more eaze), Nate Cross, Jeff and Greg Piwonka, on stage with him to perform what wasn't quite an acoustic version of Water Damage's louder electric sets, but only slightly electrified. This was a rare treat as I don't think they've yet recorded anything acoustic or even close at this point.   

That was Friday. On Saturday night, I got to hear the full-blown, fully electric version of Water Damage with an extended cast including guitarist David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol) and Kramer (Squanderers). In all, I counted at least 13 musicians on stage, including Thor on some homebuilt stringed instrument, two drummers, a violin, and a whole lot of electric guitars. For once, I was glad that I brought earplugs because they were LOUD.  

They didn't start until a few minutes after midnight and played a 45-minute version of Reel 25, which after a long, extended droning intro, is basically one heavy-metal, infinitely repeated riff.   

I'll be the first to admit this isn't music for everybody but that's a large part of what I love about Big Ears - if not for me, who else is all this for? The musicians on stage were clearly into it (it takes some real devotion to play a repeating riff for that long). Hilariously, Kramer, apparently realizing that his mandolin, although electrified, couldn't be heard over the sturm und drang of the rest of the band, pantomimed playing his mandolin behind his back and over his head, a la Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight. 

Those around me by the rail at the intimate Standard venue were clearly having a blast as well, but I understood that many in the back of the room didn't last until the end and even some outside waiting to get in eventually gave up and went home without entry when they realized that, yes, it will be that one riff for the entire set. As Pitchfork described them in a review of their album In E, 

Forget music that makes you feel no pain. What about music that makes you feel like nothing at all, that pushes and pulverizes you until every woe, hope, and worry disappears like dust? That is the marvelous strength of Water Damage, an amorphous collective of about a dozen Austin underground heads whose high-volume indulgence in repetition is a force both obliterative and purifying. They ride the divide between noise and rock, pounding out rhythms like a power trio caught on an eternal trip to nowhere, all beneath feedback streaks and microtonal bleats.

But blah, blah, blah, words and pictures. Here's a video of Water Damage performing Reel Ee from In E live to give you a taste and to close out this post. 

Enjoy!

Unpacking Big Ears: Pitchfork Day

 

The annual Big Ears music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee is a celebration of jazz, electronic, experimental, indie, and other niche genres on the fringes of popular taste but on my first day, three of the four artists I experienced could just as well have been playing at the Pitchfork Festival. That's not a knock against the performers, it's just an ironic realization of the overlap in the Venn diagram between the avant-garde and the mainstream.  

The first evening of the festival started out for me with a set by indie-rock royalty Yo La Tengo. They opened their set with Ohm from their 2013 album Fade, followed by Sinatra Drive Breakdown from 2023's This Stupid World. During the set, they reached deep into their extensive back catalog, performing False Alarm, Tom Courteney, and The Balled of Red Buckets from 1995's Electr-o-pura, Moby Octopad and Autumn Sweater from I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (1997), and closed the set with a rousing version of I Heard You Looking from 1993's Painful. 

Since they were at Big Ears, they were joined onstage by fellow festival performers William Tyler on guitar and percussionist John McEntire of the band Tortoise. I heard rumors that Ira and Georgia were in the audience the following evening watching the set by Swamp Dogg. Earlier that following day (Day 2 of Big Ears), they played a set with the Sun Ra Arkestra at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium. 

Yo La Tengo are no strangers to the Arkestra. The Arkestra have been guest performers during Yo La Tengo's annual Eight Days of Hanukah celebrations and YLT covered Sun Ra's Nuclear War way back in 2002. The two performed Nuclear War together at Big Ears on Friday and it still sounds just as transgressive as it did when I first heard the song during a Sun Ra show sometime around 1985 in Atlanta's Moonshadow Saloon. 

In addition to the Moonshadow show, I've had the good fortune of seeing Sun Ra multiple times during the 1970s and '80s, including an extended late-70s residency in Boston that included a large light-show installation. I've run into him in the NYC subway system and once when leaving a Boston movie theater after a showing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I have fond memories of those shows and partly to keep the memories alive, I had not seen the Arkestra since his passing in 1993 until this show, despite my fondness for replacement bandleader Marshall Allen (the centenarian Allen understandably did not travel to Tennessee for the Big Ears show). 

The new Arkestra, especially with Yo La Tengo on board, is certainly a different experience than those protean sets from the 70s, although it was nice to see that they still featured a dancer and to hear standards like Rocket No. 9, The Second Stop Is Jupiter, and I'm Gonna Unmask the Batman (which I don't think I'd ever heard them perform live before), in addition to Nuclear War. As per cosmic tradition, they ended the set with Space Is the Place while parading off the stage.

But back on Thursday night, the one act that I saw that definitely didn't fit the Pitchfork profile was a trio led by bassoonist Joy Guidry. I posted a full set on WDW by Guidry back in 2023, and was truly blown away by their 2024 album, Amen, much of which was performed during in the 2023 video. Their set at Big Ears this year was titled Amen, and they opened the set with Psalm 138:7, the opening track of Amen. But one of the outstanding features of Amen is the soulful gospel singing of Jillian Grace on songs like Angels and Max Roach's Members Don't Get Weary. However, Grace, nor much of the other personnel on Amen, did not perform with Guidry at Big Ears, even though some, like trombonist Kalia Vandever, were otherwise playing at the festival. The trio on stage with Guidry included a violinist/keyboardist and one other, and together they played a moody and atmospheric set of ambient spiritual jazz. It was a good set, but to be honest I was disappointed as I went in expecting to hear the Amen album. To be sure, some of the quieter passages from Amen, such as I Will Always Miss You, were played but the set was hardly what had been promoted on the festival website.

Joy Guidry's set was performed at The Point, a converted church without your usual stage lighting, and performed in the near dark. The darkness did not lend itself to photography, so I had to reconstruct the set using AI generators, which gave me a reasonable facsimile of Guidry on bassoon, but added the spotlights and a fuller ensemble, neither of which were present at Big Ears.   

Afterwards, it was back to Pitchfork-land. Although not officially a part of the Big Ears festival, Knoxville's tiny experimental venue and bar, The Pilot Line, was offering its own series over the weekend, including a solo performance by Animal Collective's Geologist. 

It's rare to be able to see a musician the caliber of  Brian Weitz in such a tiny venue with such a small audience - maybe 100 people, even less near the stage (which was larger than the floor space for the crowd). Also as surprising was that he played the entire set using a hand-wound hurdy gurdy with added electronic effects. The tunes played were variously spacy, Eastern-sounding, and folky, as well as always surprising. As a huge AC fan, I was shocked (shocked, I tell you!) that I was able to walk right in to the set with no cover charge or line extending around the block. A few years ago, I saw Jessica Moss of Silver Mount Zion perform at The Pilot Light, also without a line or cover charge, but Animal Collective has an exponentially larger following than the Godspeed spin-off project. 

My final set of the Pitchfork night was Darkside at The Mill and Mine. Darkside is the project of Chilean electronic musician Nicolás Jaar along with American guitarist Dave Harrington and drummer Tlacael Esparza. Much of their music is classified as electronic dance music, and while they did feature some big, thumping four-on-the-floor dance beats, their set was much more varied and textured than your typical EDM, dipping into psychedelia, electronica, and even spacy ambience (although briefly, before the dance-hall fans zoned out). As I recall, they opened the set with SLAU from their new LP Nothing, and played most if not all of the songs from that album in their set, including the popular single, Graucha Max. The set was notable for the changing music as well as the extensive use of stage smoke and dramatic backlighting to cast the performers in silhouette.

For most of the rest of the Big Ears weekend, I saw various modern jazz ensembles, noise artists, and avant-garde performers. But on Thursday I saw my popular Pitchfork bands and I offer no apologies for an evening with Yo La Tengo, Geologist, and Darkside.