Author: andrew-cedermark

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Living

Gypsies in the wood

Between songs at a concert last Friday, Old Calf frontman Ned Oldham said that he’s been working nursery rhymes into lyrics since the mid-’90s. It started when he was studying for an MFA in fiction at UVA in the 1990s, and the poet Charles Wright used Mother Goose to illustrate lessons in rhyme and meter.





Old Calf gave a good reason to get out of town last Friday, sharing a Gordonsville barn with labelmate Doug Paisley.

As is the case with much of what we pass off to children as entertainment, taking art meant for kids and making it for adults exposes some bizarre nuts and bolts in the human psyche. On “Do Not Play With Gypsies,” a renovated British nursery rhyme, Oldham sang to a crowd crammed comfortably into a Gordonsville barn, “My mother said I never should play / with the gypsies in the wood / if I did / she would say / naughty girl to disobey.”

Old Calf and the evening’s other act, the fingerstyle guitarist and folk songwriter Doug Paisley, both have new albums out on the Brooklyn-based label No Quarter Records. On tour together for a brief stint, they passed through on a string of dates that would head to The Mockingbird in Staunton on the following evening.

If there was a lesson to be learned at the concert, it’s that context is everything. A wise man I know (O.K., it’s my dad) always complains that wine tastes good at the winery, but bring it home and it’s no good anymore. Writing this two days later from a balmy apartment, it’s tough to conjure the perfection of the series that the old-time fiddler Alex Caton hosts in the barn beside her house in Gordonsville: a big, fat dog roaming past Paisley as he played; a natural swimming pool fed by a lily pad-covered lake; a throaty chorus of frogs that would eventually came to overwhelm the music. Caton says she hosts it infrequently, just a handful of shows per year, to keep the series fresh for its regulars, and also so she doesn’t compete with real venues.

Old Calf’s regular members are a who’s who of local professionals, including the multi-instrumentalist Matty Metcalfe, drummer Brian Caputo and bassist Michael Clem. The rote showmanship of which these guys are surely capable would probably get boring fast, but Oldham leads the band with an looseness that gives the same feeling much great music does: a riveting sense that all the layers might tear apart at the seams. The group continues to surprise with each concert, first, because they’re careful not to outstrip local demand for Old Calf concerts, and second, because simple changes in the lineup make each show surprising in a new way. The night’s show welcomed Caton on fiddle, plus the supremely versatile electric guitarist Aram Stith, a member of Oldham’s former band The Anomoanon, who also appears on many recordings by Ned’s brother, Will Oldham.

The full band also returned (after a lengthy intermission between sets) to back Paisley on a couple of tunes. On his guitar Paisley is a soft and precise plucker—and a lefty to boot—rooted in a lineage of unassumingly dark songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. He apologized for his appearance through an impressive mustache, by way of a good story: He had recently been invited to play on Canadian television, and had in mind to wear a particular pair of jeans with a small stain near the knee. Paisley said he sanded the stain and threw the jeans in the wash. When he took them out, the knee was worn through—about an inch away from the stain, still very much there.

The cover of his new album Constant Companion, released in January, is an eerie double exposure photograph of normal Doug Paisley sitting next to Doug Paisley in a mask, pointing to the two Doug Paisleys: the one you hear on first listen, timeless and well-worn but not without blemish. And then the one you hear when you take the record home, whose morbid words suggest that he’s more worn-through than you realized in concert.

But at the concert, Paisley was gazing over the crowd as if at some distant star. It wasn’t time to process his poetry. It was time to listen and enjoy.

 
Freedom
Campout East hits Crozet this weekend, headlined by two David Lowery-fronted acts (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven) and locals Sons of Bill, plus Bowerbirds, Those Darlins and more. Go to the Feedback blog at c-ville.com for a chance to win a pair of free weekend passes.

The Batesville Store is “closed until further notice”

Owners Cid and Liza Scallet have closed the Batesville Store, the historic general store and regular host to great music just southwest of town. Cid Scallet told the Progress over the weekend that, because of the number of chairs inside the store, the state demanded that the store meet health code requirement for restaurants. The shop was previously defined as a country store.

"The legalities of the store’s historic status as well as the limitations of the building itself make it impossible for us to meet the state’s other requirements for operating a restaurant," the Scallets wrote in a note on the store’s website.

"…The state representatives who suddenly appeared yesterday afternoon and shut us down without warning told us that it was decided (note the passive voice, please) that we do too much business to remain a country store. They went on to say that our only option for remaining open was to convert the store into a restaurant that would comply with all Virginia Health Department regulations," reads the note.

Less than a month ago, the store was celebrated with a piece in Virginia Living. Stepping into the store "feels like stepping back 50 years without losing the comfort and taste of modernity," read the piece.

Everything in the store—including the offending chairs—are on sale through tomorrow.

 

Invisible Hand at the Southern (plus a new video), Old Calf (twice) and LOOK3 (again)

The LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph runs through the weekend. Tonight is one of the more welcoming events for non-photographers, a free gathering at the Pavilion called "Shots," where photographers will screen their recent projects. Saturday night, more established photographers screen their projects at "Works" ($10 and also at the Pavilion). A complete schedule is available here.

As part of their infinite touring schedule, Charlottesville’s flagship indie rock band the Invisible Hand headlines a fun show tonight at the Southern, with two other groups, Sharkopath and Historic. Fun! Details.

Meantime, check out this video for standout "Two Chords," starring a horse, mysterious liquid, filmed at DUST and released today.

Also tonight, the vintage poetry-riffin’ folk quartet Old Calf plays with their No Quarter labelmate Doug Paisley play at the old-time fiddler Alex Caton’s Gordonsville Studio. Calf and Paisley head to Mockingbird in Staunton tomorrow night, and, man, I’m having a tough time thinking of something better than spending a blistering hot evening drinking beer, eating fried oysters and cole slaw while listening to this: 

Doug Paisley’s "End of the Day"

What are you up to this weekend?

Arcade Fire played in town last night. What does it all mean!?

You couldn’t blame the confused baby boomers walking by, wondering who, exactly, this band was that sold out the Pavilion and whose fans snaked around the lightpoles well beyond The Nook. And it wouldn’t be the first time in the last year that it’s happened.

The band they were waiting to see yesterday, Arcade Fire, occupies a very interesting place in the music industry; young people today grew up watching big-budget videos on MTV today consume music in a market where independently released music regularly reaches the top of the Billboard charts. No independently released album accomplished that feat between the years 1997 and 2007, but four did in 2010, including Arcade Fire’s third album, The Suburbs, lyrically centered on a poignant concern for people who like music like Arcade Fire: what it means to come from the suburbs. The album was also the first #1 on the charts for Merge Records, the Durham-based label that two members of the band Superchunk founded in 1989 to release their own music.

Arcade Fire.

The circumstances of the album’s release and its widespread acclaim (The Suburbs shockingly won Album of the Year at this year’s Grammy awards) give fans the sense, seven years after the band’s first album came out, that they’re a part of something that’s still flying under the radar—even if not for long. I didn’t really even want to go to the concert, until I saw the line stretching down the Mall. Then all of a sudden, I had to. There was no choice. A Craigslist search and $45 (cash) later, I was at the packed Pavilion with an eclectic audience far different from the small, young crowd that I saw at a couple of 2004 Arcade Fire shows up north.

With the eclectic mix of people in the heat, it was fitting that the show got off to a bit of a slow start, with new cuts like “Ready to Start” and “City With No Children,” plus Neon Bible standout, “Intervention.” By the second half of the set, it was very, very hot near the front of the stage, so I went to get a beer. It was then that the band broke into the propulsive “Month of May,” from The Suburbs, and the lines, the cost and the fervor of Arcade Fire’s fans, who were eagerly awaiting a singalong, began to make sense. 

Arcade Fire’s "Month of May": A highlight from last night.

From afar I swore that the Pavilion had never been rocked so hard. There was so much happening onstage—two guitars, two drum sets, an accordion, pianos, two violins, bells, assorted electronics, a selection of floor toms that members of the band slammed dramatically when there was nothing else for them to do, and something like a hurdy-gurdy—that it was difficult to hear what, exactly, was happening. (My show-going companion wondered whether some of the sounds were being piped in.)

It’s interesting and painful to be a music lover in my mid-twenties, now watching the music I grew up with live through the great drama of legacy-building—especially since the Pavilion has given the community glimpses at some of the most talked-about music of this decade. One, last night, was a glimpse at the power of independently released music and, more specifically, Arcade Fire. The other time confused adults wondered what the hype was all about, was likely when LCD Soundsystem played the Pavilion in October.

What’s yrs is yrs: LCD Soundsystem’s "Dance Yrself Clean"

I must admit that I missed that show. But the New York Times’ music critic Jon Caramanica compared a later LCD show at Madison Square Garden to one The Strokes had flubbed there the night before. For LCD Soundsystem, who had announced it as their last show, they had made the choice that it would be their last tour. But The Strokes had blown it—the group that was heralded as the harbinger of a new rock revival had ditched the blown-out grit that’s been the hallmark of New York rock ever since the Velvet Underground. They went futuristic, impersonal, glossy. Talk about how The Strokes were supposed to be the “next big thing” finally eclipsed the thing itself.

If there’s anything to be said for the fall of The Strokes, and the dizzying ascent of Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem to the realm of cultural significance, it’s that the latter two are hugely popular on their own terms, propped up by the sense of belonging their apparent smallness gives listeners. They’re indie…but they’re Grammy winners. They aren’t amazing musicians…but they play like they really, really mean it.

Looking at where LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire stopped on these tours—hint: they don’t usually play small cities like Charlottesville unless they’re right next to bigger ones—makes me wonder whether Coran Capshaw is helping to create some artificial market conditions to bring these kinds of bands to his nTelos Wireless Pavilion. (If so, keep it up!) Let’s hope so for him. Signs point to this decade hosting the last gasp of the majors, while earnest, homespun music that makes you feel like you’re a part of something takes over. People don’t buy records anymore. But they will invest in their sense of belonging.

Arcade Fire’s video for "We Used to Wait" uses Google Maps to feature your hometown. Very cool, very inviting.

What is it about Arcade Fire that makes people feel like they belong? Like The Band and Neil Young before them, Arcade Fire is a group of mostly Canadians making music that captures something about life in America now. In early press photos, the group echoed the morbid aesthetics of “Six Feet Under” (to which they contributed a song, “Cold Wind”) and laced their music with wordless, almost patriotic shoutalongs. When I heard the band’s first—and still best—album Funeral in late 2004, it appealed to the part of me that was still feeling hurt by 9/11. This band of many members offered companionship in a shared sense of doom. Anybody who was at last night’s concert and heard the audience sing along to "Wake Up" heard how powerful a singalong can be.

Speaking of togetherness, the music video for the early Strokes single “Someday” remains my favorite thing that band ever did. It’s a bunch of cool young guys, dressed well—but not so well that they’d look out of place on the street—hanging out, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Some idiots, playing loud, great music. What could be better?

Togetherness: The Strokes’ "Someday." 2002.

Uh, who invited you to this weird dilapidated mansion party? The Strokes’ "Under the Cover of Darkness." 2011. 

Categories
Living

What to see at LOOK3

If you’ve been on the Downtown Mall recently, you probably already know that the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph returns from its off year this week, with a string of events across town that celebrate that which is worth 1,000 words: the photograph. The festival’s broad theme, “Home,” is fitting for the husband-wife duo Kathy Ryan (of The New York Times Magazine) and Scott Thode. To make you feel like you’re at home in the schedule, here are a few sure bets. For a complete run-down, including talks, parties and workshops, visit www.look3.org.




Photographer Mary Ellen Mark and filmmaker Martin Bell turned a three-year project documenting high school proms, including Charlottesville High School’s, into a film called PROM, which screens Friday at The Paramount Theater.

First impressions 

The World Press Photo exhibit has its North American premiere, collecting the year’s best photojournalism in an easy-to-swallow gallery walk. Its photos—of the Haiti earthquake, the Mexican drug war, victims of Agent Orange—put a face to the defining events of our day. One such face can be seen in a photo that took World Press Photo’s top prize: Jodi Bieber’s matter-of-fact portrait of Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by Taliban fighters after she fled the abusive husband she was married to upon reaching puberty. (On view through June 26 at McGuffey Art Center, 201 Second St. NW. Opening reception: Thursday, June 9, 5-6pm.)

On and on

Full festival passes were sold out days before the festival started. Mercifully, local galleries host work by some of photography’s superstars free of charge throughout the month. The three to see are this year’s INsight Artists: Second Street Gallery hosts work by Nan Goldin, the New York- and Paris-based photographer whose “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” helped set the aesthetic tone for the 1980s. Chroma is showing “Natural Habitats,” distant, bemused shots of people at leisure by Massimo Vitali that match anthropology with a page torn from Where’s Waldo. The Czech-born American photographer Antonin Kratochvil’s work, “Dominova: Homeland” shows at 306 E. Main St. (The entrance is next to the C-VILLE office and Bank of America ATM.) Kratochvil calls the show a therapeutic photographic journey to the homeland from which he was exiled. (Check out the Galleries section on page 39 for listings.)

Bad dreams

Poignantly placed across from the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall is a thoughtful look at the cost of war, through the lens of Australian-born photographer Ashley Gilbertson. For “Bedrooms of the Fallen,” Gilbertson traveled to the homes of American soldiers killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Each photograph is accompanied by a short sentence that details the soldier’s hometown and the circumstances of his or her death. But in the images, the soldiers’ lives are fleshed out by the rich detail of the books and movies they enjoyed in life, the sheets they slept in, the sunglasses they wore and more. The exhibit is up through the month, and well worth a stop. (At the east end of the Downtown Mall through July 10.)

Formal attire

In 2008, a C-VILLE writer went on an unusual assignment: to the Charlottesville High School senior prom. Photographer Mary Ellen Mark was there to continue a three-year project capturing images of students on the big night, wearing the nicest outfits they’ve ever worn. While some local students might like to forget the evening, Mark and the filmmaker Martin Bell return this year to screen a film, PROM, that documents their adventure through 10 states, including imagery from Charlottesville’s prom. (PROM screens Friday, June 10, noon-1pm, at The Paramount Theater.)

Beginners

The Festival of the Photograph has distinguished each year with its advocacy for young and emerging photographers. This year the fest reprises its “Shots” and “Works” evenings, featuring large-scale projections of works-in-progress by up-and-coming fine art photographers and photojournalists. A sample: “Shots” opens on Friday night with Kendall Messick’s “The Projectionist,” a photo essay about an elderly man who resurrected the golden age of cinema by building a tiny cinema palace in his basement. Saturday’s “Works” ends with Jacob Krupnick’s project “Girl Walk // All Day,” which Krupnick describes as “an epic, 71-minute dance music video set to All Day, the new album by mash-up musician Girl Talk.” Also featured: a slideshow of images of Charlottesville by locals. (“Shots” is free, on Friday, June 10, 9-11pm at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion; admission is $10 for “Works,” Saturday from 9-11pm at the Pavilion.)

 

Shows recently announced: Neko Case, Anthony Bourdain and two nights of Avetts

Another Tuesday, another C-VILLE: Inside this week’s paper, have a look at some of my picks for what to check out (mostly for free, though you’re encouraged to attend ticketed events) at the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. Exhibits are already posted at McGuffey, Second Street Gallery, Chroma and in a few surprising places. Pick up a copy of the paper and flip to the Galleries page for a guide to what’s around.

A few shows have been announced in recent days that I wasn’t able to individually mention. Now enough have crept up to justify a paragraph devoted to them. Here goes:

  • The redheaded queen of alt-country Neko Case hits the Jefferson Theater on August 11. Tickets are $30 in advance and go on sale Friday.
  • Here’s one of these situations where I’m shocked by how popular a band is: The Avett Brothers have been playing rootsy folk-rock for more than a decade, and now it appears that they have "made it." For it has been announced that the Avetts will play not one, but two—count ’em—nights in September at the Pavilion, on the Downtown Mall. Tickets are $35 and go on sale Friday.
  • The Paramount also announced an exciting show, the confusingly punctuated, "Bourdain and Ripert—Two Chefs. Good and…Evil?" That’s Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert. The unlikely allies will bring the restaurant business repartée they’ve shared on like "Top Chef" and at New York’s 92nd Street YMCA to the Paramount. Tickets for the October 30 event run from from $44.95-99.95.

In other news, listings have been popping up on the World Wide Web advertising open positions at the Virginia Quarterly Review, the acclaimed journal beset by tragedy when managing editor Kevin Morrissey committed suicide last August July. Editor Ted Genoways shared VQR’s masthead for the year’s issues, which have included a collaboration with the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, with a long list of contributing editors. Listings for the openings are here (login required for link).

 

___

Updated at 12:47pm to reflect the correct month of Kevin Morrissey’s death.

Win tickets to Campout East, headlined by Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven and Sons of Bill

The festival landscape is shifting. For one, Coachella announced that it would take place over two weekends. And in a bid to keep making money, bands are increasingly leveraging their brands to curate festivals. Out in Wisconsin, Pearl Jam hosts a 20th anniversary festival over Labor Day weekend to feature The Strokes, Mudhoney and Glen Hansard. (Which makes you wonder who Nirvana, that other grunge band, would have invited to such an event.)

Ditto for the superprofitable Dave Matthews Band, which has attached its name to a series of three-day festivals nationwide. And so on: The Roots curated a festival in Philadelphia this weekend, and Wilco’s Solid Sound fest takes place in Western Massachusetts later this month.

Even against this shifting landscape, festivals seem to be proliferating locally. One that caught my eye locally when it was announced earlier last year is Campout East, to be held in Crozet from June 17-18, sponsored by WNRN. If the fest is a band/brand bonanza, it’s thanks to headliners Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, both of which hinge on the talents of David Lowery, frontman to both. But the rest of the fest is eclectic: Sons of Bill share the marquee, and American Aquarium, Those Darlins and—my personal favorite—Jonny Corndawg take the stage, among others. (Full lineup here.)

All of this is to say—and sorry for the delay—we’ve got a pair of weekend passes to give away for Campout East. Just tell us about your favorite festival memory in the comments section below.

What’s your favorite festival memory?

Nine-hundred dogs, famous photographers, roller derby and more

Today’s should be something of a photo-happy First Fridays celebration; galleries that are hosting exhibits for the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph this month open those exhibits today. Visit the festival’s gallery page to see what’s happening where; The Bridge, Chroma, Second Street Gallery and McGuffey, plus a couple of auxiliary spaces, all host photo exhibits through the month. 

Nan Goldin’s "Scopophilia" opens at Second Street Gallery.

If you didn’t catch the Derby Dames’ last bout at the Main Street Arena, they return to that big empty room at the Downtown Mall’s west end for an event called Wedding Smashers. This month’s opponents are Charlotte’s B-Dazzlers. Beware. Details.

Looks like Parachute got an article in each of the three local papers, including this one, so you likely already know that the local group plays Saturday night at the Jefferson Theater. Here’s the best song from that album—it has a nice Peter Gabriel kind vibe happening—"What I Know." Seriously, though, I can’t stop listening to this song and look forward to hearing it next time I visit the supermarket or dentist.

But if you’re looking for me, I’ll be at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Kennel Club’s dog show at the Foxfield Steeplechase Course, where 900 dogs (can you believe it?) compete for titles in various sporting events, as well as best in breed. Appearing for the first time this year, the Daily Progress reports, is a hairless breed of Mexican dog called Xoloitzcuintli. But also expect old classics, like Great Danes, poodles and golden retrievers. The show runs both Saturday and Sunday.

What are you up to this weekend?

 

The ghost of Charlottesville musics past

C-VILLE contributor John Ruscher mentioned the new edition of the UVA alumni magazine in a recent review, and that magazine’s print edition came in the mail earlier this week. 

The issue’s cover story, "Rockin’ the Grounds," provides a nice primer on a host of local bands that were, at one time another, the biggest thing going in Charlottesville, from Johnny Sportcoat and the Casuals, to The Deal (who recorded with the late, great Alex Chilton), to modern day bands like Sons of Bill and Parachute. Can you guess who is on the magazine’s cover? (Check out a jukebox feature at the bottom of an interactive website that lets you listen to almost every one of the groups here.)

The magazine shares some photos in common with a new book about the history of Charlottesville, appropriately titled Charlottesville, by Eryn Brennan and Margaret Maliszewski (the book is part of the "Images of America" series—there’s probably one about your hometown.) One in particular caught my eye: It’s of a contorted Chuck Berry playing a big red Gibson to a huge crowd of clean-cut guys in suits. On the opposite page is an image of Joan Baez, who visited UVA in 1965 on the same night as Harry S. Truman. The crowd in that picture is sitting quietly before her—she’s not even holding a guitar.

Other incredible images from the book: One of The Supremes playing Mem Gym in 1966, Duke Ellington at UVA in 1961, and, earlier, Fats Domino playing in 1959. It’s enough to make a modern local music lover pine for a more "authentic" time. 

What we don’t see in the UVA magazine and in the book is a clear picture of what was happening in the non-UVA community around that time. What were some legendary shows at the Paramount? When the C&O used to host more music? Was there a great band from the past, loved by all, that today has been forgotten?

Chuck Berry at Memorial Gym in 1965, by Ed Roseberry. 

Categories
Living

Just a band. With a choir. And horns.

 When I caught up with Parachute’s frontman and songwriter Will Anderson last year, he had just moved from Charlottesville to Nashville, and his band had wrapped up sessions in Los Angeles with the producer John Fields, known for his work with pop artists like the Goo Goo Dolls and Colbie Caillat. Anderson said then that he wanted the band’s new album, The Way It Was, which debuted in the 19th slot on the Billboard 200 last week, to sound like five guys playing together in a room—just a band, playing its songs.

Parachute’s tour in support of new album The Way It Was brings the group to the Jefferson Theater on June 4.

“I think we matched that,” says Anderson over the phone from his new home, Tennessee. “We were adamant about that with John, and he was totally into it. We made an album that sounds big and obviously well-recorded and well-produced. But it can be recreated live, which, for us, is a really important thing.”

The album’s lead single, “Something to Believe In,” is a spirited entry into The Way it Was. As the full-length record goes the way of the 8-track, with The Way It Was the band has hedged its bets on short and sweet. At a brief nine tracks and 40 minutes, it is custom-tailored to a market that prizes the single more than the album. Billboard reported in 2009 that the band’s first release, Losing Sleep, made its charts based on the strength of iTunes sales; for The Way It Was, says Anderson, “We had very specific goals in mind, but, honestly, [the new album] surpassed them. We were really, really excited about the numbers for the week and the response from the fans, and seeing the feedback was amazing.”

It makes you wonder when Parachute will outgrow the Jefferson Theater —where the group plays on June 4 with Schuyler Fisk and Harper Blynn—for the larger nTelos Wireless Pavilion. “Right now, we’re happy to sell out the Jefferson,” says Anderson. “It’s fun to see it sell out every time, and I’m sure within the next year we’ll move up to the Pavilion and really go for it, and really try to blow it out.”

Meanwhile, Anderson’s central task as a songwriter remains a relentless search for creative ways to apply “love” to “her”—sometimes expressed as “you.” The Way It Was fills in the blanks in some interesting ways. The album’s second single, “You and Me,” tells the story of a pair of outlaws up “against the world” and a vague attempt to “take the money and run.” The hints of violence are so out of step with the band’s middle-of-the-road sound and squeaky-clean image as to sound almost farcical. (“We did our crime and got away / stole the gold and made the day,” he sings.)

But adult contemporary doesn’t make any pretensions toward poetry, and more convincing than the band’s lyrical content is its knack for rich and rousing arrangements. The album’s first track “White Dress” opens with a barrage of percussive guitars that will remind listeners of the band’s more Maroon 5-indebted first album that explodes into a sugar-coated chorus. But on the new record the band’s bag of tricks has grown. Alex Hargrave’s hyperactive basslines recall Coldplay, while the soaring vocal arrangements channeled through Peter Gabriel, aided by drummer Johnny Stubblefield’s able imitations of U2’s Larry Mullen, achieve a driving pop transcendence—granted, with the occasional help of a gospel choir.

But parts of The Way It Was will strike local listeners for how much it draws on Charlottesville’s other very famous export, the Dave Matthews Band. You might mistake Kit French’s percussive baritone saxophone stabs on lead single “Something to Believe In” for those of the late LeRoi Moore, Matthews’ horn player. Ditto for the gospel choir, which riffs on latter-day Dave and is a surprising and welcome addition.

“It’s nine really good songs that I’m proud of,” says Anderson. “I’d show anybody to show them that this is what we can do.”