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milenaferrante

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Posts posted by milenaferrante

    Jeff Tweedy — 3 February 2018, London, UK (Barbican Centre [Barbican Hall])

    in After The Show

    Posted

    Hi everyone!

     

    I will read everything above since I am really curious to know what you think...

     

    But here's my take...

     

    I am forced to write “by heart” since I planned to record the show but my plans fell through. Which is not a bad thing per se. The only warning is that I might write relying more on my impressions than on the real thing. Warning: 1. don’t read if you don’t have time since it’s really long but the reading time is actually 5 minutes :-) 2. excuse my English if it’s wrong (and please correct it) and 3. let me know if you have a different view.
     
    First, the Barbican is a hell of a venue. Nothing comparable to old Italian theatres of the same capacity in terms of fascination, but the urban feeling and the perfect crystal clear acoustics maybe favoured by the wooden floor and wall woodwork made it the ideal venue for a solo guitar show. The feeling you get is the one of antique craftmanship without it being regarded as something “passé”.
     
    That’s exactly what I get from Tweedy solo shows. He uses all tricks of old country and western and the hobo tradition, but he embellishes them with the aura of a contemporary landscape and a metropolitan flavor. What he has in mind, I think, is educated “leftist” audiences, well grounded in literary references and musically savvy. That is evident when one lady at the fronts asks for the chord progression of one of the songs. When he launches in the rather usual remark on the Trump government, apparently casual but well prepared, (he says something like “you wake up in the morning thinking of what “he” might have devised during the night and having nightmares about it”) he utters it with such ironic confidence that he seems completely sure that each member of the audience agrees.
     
    Musically, he’s embarking more and more in a shrinking process which reminds me of late Tim Buckley and Johnny Cash. He keeps the volume of the amplifiers rather low as he were in a room with 12 people rather than 2000, uses 2 mics, one for the voice and one for the guitar, almost no pedal effects, he often re-tunes on the spot instead of changing guitars, but he has at least 3 wonderfully sounding guitars (the black one, a vintage Depression era Gibson and another guitar which doesn’t seem a Martin, but please correct me if you can since I am really interested to know and now I can’t remember) which make the acute and sensitive listener appreciate the variation in sound and dynamics.
     
    But what’s more interesting of all is its use of his voice. Some already commented on its vocal confidence which dates back to the 2002-2003 era. Now he seems to be pushing farther and farther in that direction. When I saw Tweedy in Leuven with his son and band some time ago, he was really showing what a great guitarist he is, not exactly technically, but in terms of choosing the arrangements and the voicings of the chords. His fingerpicking, although really effective, might not be judged as impeccable technically speaking but it relies, it seems to me, on a natural instinct for judging what colors might better fit a certain song.
     
    At Barbican for what I remember (as I told before I might be wrong since I am going by heart) he almost completely left his fingerpicking aside and opted with simple and sparse chords with a few subtle solutions to cover up for Cline guitar solos. One which even made the crowd smile was the one chosen for the solo section of Impossible Germany, basically a cluster of dissonant strings played sometimes as chords other times in different combinations or arpeggios. What I regret, actually, is seating on the right in the stalls rather than on the left. He tends to turn to his right with the guitar and since I was on his left I couldn’t watch what he was doing with his fingers most of the time. The Gibson vintage Depression era guitar prompted a discussion with the audience. A now well confident Tweedy decided to start a question and answer session. Among the questions was one on the guitar. He explained it was one of the guitars he collects, with hand painted birds on the body done at a time when people losing their jobs started painting guitars to pass the time and you can tell it’s true if you look at the way they are painted, with some strokes made on a Sunday at 4.45 in the afternoon when you’re bored. But as I was saying before, guitars were not the leading actors in the play. This time the main focus was on the voice. With it, he chose subtraction: a colloquial mood, a denial of rhetoric of any kind, a trend towards the intangible and whispering for dramatic effects. These are the tools he is using more and more. I think of Nick Drake as the easiest, almost inevitable reference which comes to my mind, but I don’t know if that’s the case. He uses the higher octave in the same way: rarely, for specific and well studied dynamic variations, on songs which need an extra boost for not allowing the live setting to be too subdued.
     
     
     
    The chatting breaks are one of the reasons why I really like his solo shows. The fact that he adapts his repertoire of jokes to the circumstances is a craft he has refined. It shows how he’s able to add an extra value to the package which I think is essential not to make a 2 hour solo show too standardized and let it be perceived as ultimately unique. He jokes on his hat, a Stetson adorned with his name, on the fact that during soundcheck his beard got trapped and he started to cry and one might think he was really involved in the song. In summary, as it always happen, he doesn’t allow himself to be taken seriously as the usual rockstar does, at least up to a certain point. Because lately he makes sure the audience understands he is in full confidence.
     
    But what is the real plus of the solo shows? Why should one be attracted to a one man band without complex arrangements and the musical variety which only a full band can provide? In my case, simply the fact that the stripped down versions on the guitar makes me well aware of the real value of songwriting. You can hear the songs, you can feel the heart. I don’t know if London was one of his best solo shows, I think he might be better. What is true is that when you play only with a guitar it’s really evident which songs really work and which ones not. Naked songs cannot cheat. And I also think that a person able to entertain for 2 hours with a guitar must be either really boring or really brave. Ultimately, I think he was the latter.

    2 Tickets Chicago

    in Need Tickets?

    Posted

    Hi, coming from Hamburg, Germany to Chicago in August for a short trip and just saw that Wilco is playing Aug. 21 - so, if anyone has two extras, let me know, would be really appreciated, thanks

    I have one in the lawn. Let me know at milenaferrante@hotmail.com

    Schmilco!

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    Hi, do you know if the orange vinyl version exists. It is listed in the pre-order but when you pre-order what comes up is black vinyl. Does it mean orange is over or it really does not exist? Thanks

    TWEEDY - Leuven Het Depot, 15-11-2014

    in After The Show

    Posted

    Hi, I was trying to get the recording of this show but apparently there are no seeders on dime. Anybody who can help let me know...I also might have a problem on dime since I have a connection which doesn't allow me to open ports as they should be and I cannot do anything about it.

     

    I didn't have time to check the board earlier due to the fact that I was overwhelmed with my job but I made the trip on purpose from Italy to Leuven to see Tweedy play. I am trying to write a review for my 'zine and I will do it in English so that it can be read by everyone...let me know...for the first time in my life I brought a new dat rec but I forgot the right batteries at home so I couldn't record, which is what I usually do on a regular tape cassette (as in the old days).

     

    However I am glad to hear the show in Leuven was better than the German one. I honestly think it was a hell of a show, but I thought I was biased since I love him playing solo acoustic.

     

    Anyway, I was the one who asked for "Simple twist of fate" and got answered I was ungrateful eh eh eh :-) but I would love to hear him play that song live one day since I'm a huge Dylan fan so I gave it a try...you never know...

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