Experimental Twang

In the spirit of doing different I wanted to give a second chance to a guitar "hero" I had heard more than ten years ago, Bill Frisell. The first time I heard Frisell at Yoshi's, it was at the old Yoshi's on Claremont Avenue. He played what could only be described as a cacophony of sounds/noise/okay, free jazz, or something. Nails on a chalk board was a more pleasant sound to me at that time. But several years ago, my friend Neo (real name, no, not from "the Matrix") introduced me to a Frisell CD which was country, and "Mikey liked it!"

Neo and I hadn't seen each other in a while (since we had both separated from our former company) and hearing Frisell seemed like a good idea. I told John I was going and he burst out laughing. He recalled our early Yoshi's experience (though he enjoyed that performance tremendously). I really didn't know what to expect - would this be a repeat of the live experience, or of the recording Neo had shared, or something else altogether? We nearly didn't find out, because when I went on line to purchase tickets, the show had sold out! (whouldathunk it?) Luckily for us, Neo worked blocks away and found a small number of tickets still available at the box office and he snatched them up (our luck!).

Tonight was (wait for it...)

like the album, only better! Bill had a special Nashville guest, Buddy Miller. Buddy is a singer, song writer, guitar player, who recently toured as part of the band on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's "Raising Sand" tour and with Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin on the "Three Girls and Their Buddy" tour. Buddy was fantastic. His voice was that rich and silky smooth, deep Southern country voice. The rest of the band was good, but this was really Buddy's show.

If anyone came to experience the virtuoso Frisell, (which they likely did because the show was supported by Guitar Player Magazine) they were likely very disappointed. Bill didn't talk at all during the show other than to introduce the band and he was very much the side-man. All that said, it was an incredibly enjoyable show, in spite of with the crazy drunk guy who was clapping off beat -not on 1 & 3 (like the white people at an R&B show), not on 2 & 4 (like black people at an R&B show), more like on 1,2, 5,6 and 9, if that's even possible.