By Mike Faloon
“No more guitar heroes!”
—The Clash, “Complete Control”
The pine tree outside our dining room window is being cut down today. Last winter its branches—sagging with snow and ice—started snapping off and plummeting, falling fifty or sixty feet and spearing the ground. My son and I are glued to the window when the tree cutters arrive, hypnotized by the crew chief’s ascent and the sight of the first broomstick branches falling. As he scales skyward, the chainsaw clipped to his belt, slowly swaying, always running, hangs a few feet below his boots. He digs his ankle spikes into the bark and pushes higher.
***
Ches Smith’s equipment forms a semi-circle. The drums face stage right, electronics straight ahead, vibraphone stage left. A cross section of the inner sanctum, like a Jack Kirby diagram of the Baxter Building, or those scenes in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou that show a cut away of Zissou’s ship, the Belafonte.
Smith concocts snare/bass combinations that pulverize, and the way he favors syncopation over speed allows you to savor each pop and punch. When he rotates to the synth/iPad, he plays with one stick, holds the other in his armpit, goes into a holding pattern, before emerging on the other side with something completely different. Then he returns to the set, this time with mallets, digs into increasingly abstract rhythms, climbs upward.
***
The larger branches have dinner plate diameters. The crew chief ties off them off and lowers them to the ground. The other crew members guide the branches to graceful landings. The sky opens up, shades of blue replacing browns and greens, the ground illuminated by direct sunlight for the first time in decades. The crew chief reaches the top of the tree and slices into the trunk, cuts into the very structure that’s keeping him aloft. The falling pieces grow larger, the thumps louder, the sunlight brighter.
***
Smith rolls on his snare, discharges a blast of synthesizer then turns to the vibraphone. He runs tests and gathers results, takes stutter steps before unleashing full runs. He starts a rhythm, repeats and alters it, plays along with one looped rhythm, then two. Smith builds on and tears down traditions, cuts into the structures he’s leaned on.
Seeing him move from one instrument to another is like watching Steve Zissou aboard the Belafonte, leading a quest to find the jaguar shark, going from station to station, checking on the sauna and the lab, up to the library, and down to the editing room. Each has developed a unique system, fueled by the unpredictable, in the relentless course of running down, engaging with, and releasing something bigger than himself.
***
In the late 80s my cousin was stationed in the navy in San Diego. Near the end of his hitch he needed to get his car back to Syracuse but only had a few days. I flew out with his brother and the three of us drove back across the country, sprinted east to west in just under three days. We spent a day at Mission Beach and then drove through the night, arriving at the Grand Canyon just before dawn.
***
Mary Halvorson moves from side to side, rocks back and forth behind a hollow body guitar. Her glasses slip to the tip of her nose as she dips and dives, rises and rolls across the covers from her solo debut album, Meltframe. There’s something hypnotic yet barbed in the tones she summons. Her songs have an intimacy that might seem at odds with their circuitous paths. She moves full steam ahead before skidding to a stop, smearing the sound, momentarily reversing course before resuming forward motion, like a DJ scratching a record.
***
The park was cloaked in darkness as we approached the canyon. We pulled out blankets and waited, chilly and bleary-eyed from the all night drive, second guessing the wisdom of spending so much time on a sight that remained hidden beneath the night’s shadows. Then the expanse began to reveal itself. As first light trickled in we were struck by the depth, twenty, fifty, hundreds of feet down, no bottom in sight. Then we became aware of the width, yards then miles then lifetimes stretching further and further. Then came the awe. The dimensions melted together, could no longer be considered in isolation. We were speechless before the splendor.
***
Halvorson’s next piece opens with distress signal urgency, exhilarating fretboard dances that quickly evolve into free form freak outs, on the precipice of being too much to ingest. Then she jump cuts, slows the pace and allows her tone to mushroom, wondrously large and enveloping, inducing a subdued euphoria. A rack of pint glasses rattles beneath the counter as Halvorson continues conjuring a six-string version of that Grand Canyon sunrise.
***
I assume that Halvorson’s set is the end of the show. She and Smith are on a “double solo” tour, traveling together but playing solo. Except tonight. While setting up earlier they overhear Steve and James talking and realize that the Quinn’s contingent thinks that the guitarist and drummer will be playing together. “There was a generous spirit in the house and they responded by doing a third set together,” Steve later says. “Everything I’ve seen about their subsequent shows seems to indicate two solo sets and no more. We were privileged.”
There’s so much momentum from the previous sets that I expect the duo show to be bigger, more explosive, a relative summer popcorn blockbuster. Instead Halvorson and Smith opt for a character driven collaboration; it feels like we’re privy to a private dialogue. Across the way a woman shakes her head in disbelief while the man beside her closes his eyes and nods just behind the implied beat. The guy next to me orders a hot dog but doesn’t eat until the set’s over, waits for Halvorson and Smith to finish before taking a bite. We’re mesmerized—staring, basking, monotasking. The music gradually expands and the collective astonishment dilates in synch, Halvorson and Smith breaking down and building up, fostering continuous cycles of depth, width, and awe.
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