Jeff Tweedy, etc. — 12/18-19/12, Chicago, IL (Letters To Santa)

[bböp]

As I said in the thread in Just A Fan, I feel like the musical performances at this year's recently concluded 24-hour Letters to Santa event at the Second City's etc. stage deserved a thread of their own, so here it is...

 

Most of the songs Jeff played have already been mentioned in the other thread, but despite his claiming when he first took the stage that "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?" was the only song he currently remembered, he turned in another terrific intimate set for the crowd that completely packed the theater (as well as to the many folks waiting in line to get in, thanks to one guy's generosity). That crowd wasn't actually outside on the street, as I think one report suggested. These were folks who were outside the theater — but still inside the building where the event is held — and were lined up on a staircase and around a corner leading up to the theater entrance.

 

Here was Jeff's complete "setlist", as it were:

 

What Are They Doing In Heaven Today? [Washington Phillips]

You Are Not Alone

California Stars

Dreamer In My Dreams

Someday Soon

Sunloathe

Capitol City

 

As far as the rest of the music, I thought this year was definitely one of the best overall years in the decade or so this event has taken place.

 

Glen Hansard and friends Skyped in from backstage after finishing a show in Dublin, and did a few songs. The connection, especially visually, was pretty bad, but you could hear most of their performances fine. They did Leonard Cohen's "Passing Through" and Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and one other, which I'm forgetting right now. When he asked for requests, one audience member's request for "Falling Slowly" was sort of shouted down, which was kind of funny.

 

More later about JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound's blistering set at 2:30 a.m. as well as Kim Deal's charmingly ramshackle performance and Robbie Fulks and friends' great set and of course, the Blisters' Crosby, Stills and Nash-esque turn as the Hungry Pilgrims, among other performances...

[Preferred B]

The first song Glen Hansard and band played was "The Auld Triangle."

[gogo]

 Ooooooohhh...

[bböp]

Oh yeah! Mind freeze this afternoon. How could I have forgotten that one...thanks, B!

[bböp]

Anyway, to briefly finish up the musical recapping from the Letters to Santa event...

Playing solo electric guitar and laughing out loud a lot, Kim Deal did three mini-sets of three songs or so apiece, including the Breeders' Cannonball to end the second set and the Pixies' Gigantic to end the third. One surprise, at least to me, was her great cover of Chris Bell's You And Your Sister. I totally didn't realize that she and Tanya Donnelly had sung it on a This Mortal Coil record more than 20 years ago, but I'm glad she still sings it.

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound definitely provided a jolt of energy around 2:30 a.m., getting virtually the entire room on its feet with their cover of IATTBYH and then following it up with Bowie's Let's Dance. I'm pretty sure they also started out their set with a cover of Clarence Carter's Back Door Santa, and they also did a couple of (I think) new songs. One highlight was Fred Armisen joining the band on lead vocals for a performance of his punky song Fist Fight, which I guess was originally written for a Saturday Night Live sketch. I think JCBUS were the only group to get called back for an encore, and they gladly obliged by finishing it out with their song Baaadnews.

Around 7 a.m. Will Oldham aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (accompanied by Emmett Kelly) played a couple mini-sets of gentle acoustic tunes, including a cover of the Everly Brothers' Christmas Eve Can Kill You and his own There Is No God. It was a typically offbeat performance by BPB, especially with a lot of younger children arriving for their traditional improv session before heading off to school.

The only performer on the bill I wasn't at all familiar with was Jenny Gillespie, who is apparently the wife of Groupon head honcho Andrew Mason and a folkish singer-songwriter in her own right. I actually missed the first half of her set, unfortunately, but the few songs I saw were pretty enjoyable. After struggling a couple times with the start of one song on her acoustic guitar, which she attributed to a recent bout of insomnia, she wound up finishing her set on piano with a lovely rendition of Kate McGarrigle's I Eat Dinner (When The Hunger's Gone).

Mid-afternoon, we were treated to several mini-sets of songs by the always-entertaining Robbie Fulks. He brought along bassist Beau Sample and guitarist Robbie Gjersoe — who occasionally perform with Fulks as the Pussycat Trio — as well as longtime percussionist Gerald Dowd and together, the quartet did several Western swing and bluegrass-type numbers, including a Bob Wills song. Then Sample and Gjersoe ceded the stage to Fulks and Dowd and the duo proceeded to delight the audience with their perenially amazing "Rap of the Dead" for 2012, in which they recap the year's notable and not-so-notable deaths in a humorous series of rhymes. Trust me, it's worth the price of admission for the whole event by itself. Fulks closed out his performance with a new song called Those Goddamn Russians (about some wealthy Russian neighbors of his) that he literally taught Gjersoe, Sample and Dowd on the spot, as well as his rousing anthem Let's Kill Saturday Night.

And last but not least, the Blisters (joined by their friend, singer-songwriter Alaina Stacey on vocals) closed out the music for this year's show with a terrific set of rootsy covers. The band was actually marking their 10th straight year of playing the Letters to Santa event and, I guess in part because their regular bass player was away on vacation, they decided to temporarily rename themselves the Hungry Pilgrims and do a sort of acoustic trio thing sans drums. So instead of bashing away behind the kit, Spencer stood out front with the other three and strummed an acoustic guitar and even sang a bit, which was great to hear. The group of teenagers did, among other songs, The Weight, Long Black Veil and I Shall Be Released and closed with a very nice version of the gospel classic I'll Fly Away (probably best known from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack).

I'm sure there are plenty of other great moments I'm forgetting, but that's what my somewhat sleep-addled brain is coming up with right now so perhaps others will fill in the blanks. At any rate, it's sort of ridiculous to get a chance to see all of these performances in such an intimate space — saying nothing about all of the excellent comedy — for just 20 bucks. One of the best deals in town, year in and year out.