Unpacking Big Ears: The Nels Cline Sets

 

I'll say this about Big Ears 2026 - lots of guitarists. They say guitar music is dead, and that may be true for pop music, but the guitar is alive and well in the worlds of jazz and the avant-garde. Not only was I able to catch three very different sets by the wonderful Mary Halvorson, I also caught three by the versatile Nels Cline. 

Cline was my "winner" of Big Ears 2025 with five appearances (that I know of), although I was only able to catch three. I saw him three times this year, too, tied with Halvorson, but I still gave the "winner" crown to the band SML for their three-night residency of two sets per night and the way they used that residency to be the talk of the town this year. But enough about them, it's Nels time.

Thursday night, the opening day, ended with a late-night (11:30-1:00) set by Medeski, Martin, Metzger and Cline, lined up below as Medeski, Cline, Metzger, and Martin, at the Mill & Mine.         

Like Ches Smith's Clone Row earlier that evening, MMM&C were a two-guitar combo, with Medeski's organ pedals providing the bass lines. Here they are free improvising at a Phish after-party at Le Poisson Rouge in New York last December:  

Overall, their sound at Big Ears was more rambunctious and noisy than the relatively polite show above, and Cline seemed to drown Metzger out much of the time and gave him less space to lead. But after seeing Clone Row and two sets by SML, it was a great way to end the first night.

On Friday, even before I saw the "secret set" by Halvorson and Marc Ribot, I saw another "secret set" by Cline and Julian Lage.

The improvisational set was sublime and one of the highlights of the weekend. They played lovely, intricate music and seemed to wrap their melodies around and between each other's lines. I know it's a cliche, but the rapport and communication between the two guitarists seemed almost telepathic at times. Two old friends, they've been playing together for years, and it showed in their performance. Here that are up in Seattle in 2015, although their partnership goes back even further than that:

Here's Lage reacting after Cline apparently just told him the world's dirtiest joke:

Later that same day, I unexpectedly caught Cline a third time, when he made an unannounced and surprise appearance during the finale of Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra playing the music of Sly Stone.   

This set was fun. It's not a widely shared opinion, but I believe Sly & the Family Stone are among the very greatest of the popular 1960s rock acts, and their music has aged better and sounds more relevant today than some 90% or more of the other 60's bands from back then. Listen to Sly's If You Want Me to Stay followed by, say, any track by your favorite Haight-Ashbury acid-rock outfit, and you'll see what I mean. 

Trumpeter and bandleader Bernstein, the chief instigator behind the band Sexmob, brought a punk-jazz energy to the music, radically rearranging the songs so that they didn't sound like a jukebox playing the hits or a Family Stone "tribute" band. The ten-piece ensemble included organist John Medeski (who I saw the night before) as well as two singers, Sandra St. Victor and Joan Wasser, who performs as Joan As Police Woman. 

This isn't a new outfit by any means. Here they are in 2011 playing Stone's Stand along with Medeski and St. Victor.  

Like I said, this was a fun and joyous set, more a celebration of Sly's music than a reverential recreation of his songs. Everyone in the audience was jumping and bobbing along to the music, and the only reason there wasn't dancing was because the tiny Jackson Terminal was packed too tight for a dance floor. The set ran a little long, and I was close enough to the stage to see a venue manager trying to signal to Bernstein from offstage that it was time to wrap up, but he ignored her as the band built up to the planned climax of the show. And then, just as things were reaching their frenzied conclusion, Nels walked on stage for an unannounced cameo and ripped an absolute barn-burner of a solo that tore the roof off the tiny terminal and left the mind-blown audience in absolute ecstasy.     

Nels' showcase performance of the festival was his Lovers set on Sunday with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra. I didn't go. I love Nels and his playing, but I don't share his fondness for Henry Mancini and the other sources of the Lovers suite. It all sounds schmaltzy and overly sentimental to me. And when you have Tom Skinner, Shane Parrish, and Matt Mitchell all performing at the same time (the eternal Big Ears dilemma)  and the Lovers set sandwiched between Simon Hayes' Gargantua and the Dave Douglas Quintet, why subject yourself to something you won't appreciate?