by Cheryl Mathis on November 23rd, 2008
Date night with the husband featured live music at The Fillmor as we bundled up against the cold to venture out to see Mean Tooth Grin. Weeks ago I sat in a van with guitarist Tom Jordan and listened to him geek out about guitars and amps with Scott Holt. He invited me to come hear him play in November when he’d open for Steepwater.
Tom Jordan played with a gravity, feeling the weight of all the rock and blues greats who influenced him resting on his shoulders as he leaned into the rock, jamming his body against the beat. It seemed like he’d been loving this since he was a kid, this dream of performance, this open sharing of his first love. He presented it as a gift on a steel platter, asking us to love the music, too.
Tom growled into the microphone, the rough edge of the vocals shaping the gritty feel of the melody, an unpretentious declaration of being a good ol’ boy from the country. I felt I had been teleported to an outdoor music festival. I was sitting on a concrete wall, the rough surface of the stone scraping my thighs. I held a cold beer in my hand while the hot sun turned my face red and the music turned my body into an extension of the hard rhythm of the rock jam.
In reality, I was sitting in a draft at The Fillmor, my body growing colder as the music heated up on the stage.
Seth Heffner on bass played with an easy grace, a well-practiced and effortless skill with his instrument. The low repetitions of the bass line beat forth from his body, and all he had to do was pluck it from the machine he held. Seth smirked under his baseball cap, his hands curled over the strings, balancing on the notes, scratching it out like an itch he just had to relieve.
Brian Miller on the drums was a beefy jock of a man who played like this was the only place on earth he’d like to be: behind the drums, the sticks in his hands. Playing the beats with force and energy, he drove the music forward. Brian would shrug into the song, throwing himself into the rhythm, an easy grin on his face.
But Tom Jordan shined in his shy way, standing taller as the set aged. This is not a hobby. It’s his blood, boiling dirty and coarse through his veins, inexplicable, as part of him as nothing else. He played around with the melody, taking liberties with it, slapping it around, caressing it, sliding it around the stage, but always bringing it back where it belongs, coming back to the recognizable riffs to bring the song back home again. Tom hid behind a curtain of long brown hair that fell down in waves. Often he turned his body away from the crowd, unsure of himself but damn sure of the music.
Tom’s voice rode above the deep drive of the song, rolling on top of the bass. There was nothing syrupy sweet about the vocals. They were steeped in an elixir: one part snarl, one part sandpaper. He took turns with his guitar as he created a perfect balance between the lyrics and the melodic rampage of the jam.
I remembered the basement bedroom of a high school boyfriend. Black lights glowing, the hormonal heat keeping me warm, the music loud and the bass heavy. Leaning back against the second-hand couch, I learned the basics of the hard blues my mom never told me about. And so it was last night at The Fillmor, listening to Mean Tooth Grin display the skill of years of experience in the old school-style of raucous blues and country.
by Cheryl Mathis on October 13th, 2008
Friday night brought a fantastic line-up of music to Downtown Wausau. I had the pleasure of being at The Fillmor for the all but the first of a three-band marquee, missing the first only because I was on a roady road trip with some guitar guys until 7:30.
Aaron Williams stood on the stage, oozing subdued sexual energy. Maybe it was his broody black hat tipped forward across his lean angular face and the effortless cool of his clothes. His forearm muscles were sinews, strong cords pulling at the guitar, drawing the music out in a frenzy of the beat, the guitar a machine strapped across his body. It was funk, it was rock, it was blues. He pursed his lips like he was sucking the fumes steaming off his guitar. He seemed lost in the music, mesmerized and manic at the same time.
ZT Auner on the bass guitar was a sight to see. Rail thin body, blue bandana across his forehead, he stood with his feet planted in place, twisting out once in a while when the riff traveled down his body and escaped out his toes. Moving mostly from the hips, he leaned and tilted his upper body to move with the chords and the flow. His face gave the distinct impression that he was on the climax of physical ecstasy, and he was just doing his part to keep the magic going on just another minute longer.
Their music was less melody and more art installation at times. Aaron tweaked and manipulated a lick and put it forth as modern art.
When Scott Holt came on stage, the mood changed. He summoned the ghosts on stage with Dalai Lama-blessed incense burning on side stage. Audience members were easily entranced by the performance. He began effortlessly spinning out the licks, a spider wrapping a web around a grateful prey. The masterful riffs felt like an afterthought in his worshipful meditation at the feet of all the other rock and blues gods who have gone before him.
From such subtle fingering against the strings, this sweet blues aria sang out. His voice went from a playful shout to an exasperated sigh to a low sexual growl that purred into the microphone. He was first rock god and then delicately sensitive lover. Watching him onstage with a song was like a delicious foreplay with a man who has all the time in the world to make you feel every last sigh and shudder.
Without an ego, he stepped back several times to let his bass guitarist Richard Sanders take the spotlight and do his thing. Sanders playfully tickled out songs on the bass like he was sharing a great joke with a friend who had seen it all, too. Marshall Weaver on drums, with a smile on his face, looked happy to chase after them both with frenetic and skillful beats. At times, Holt was the conductor on stage, orchestrating the best of the blues, leading his players through tight tempos and structured, but impromptu, melodies. Sanders and Weaver followed him intently, rising to the occasion, playing their roles in the blues man’s show.
Yeah. You could say that Scott Holt can play the guitar. You could also say that Beethoven could compose, that Renoir could paint, that Frank Lloyd Wright could design a building. For me, his level of mastery was very apparent. He was so confident with his instrument that he could start ignoring all the rules of guitar playing and could create new sounds and new beats that were totally outside the box. That’s a comfort level not often seen. As a man who says that the blues should not be sad, he romped on stage, having his playtime, soaring through creative covers and originals.
by Dino Corvino on June 8th, 2008
Just so that we can get it out of the way, I am not going to include BB King or Aretha Franklin in this list. To say that Aretha and BB King are a tie for the best thing I have ever seen, well, that is like saying that the sky is full of clouds, and Nazis are bad. It just is true for me. The fact that the Grand Theatre was able to have something like that, then that is simply the sign that the Grand is an amazing place to be.
So, this list is not supposed to be your list. This is my list. I might have been lucky enough to spend a lot of time at a music venue, or work on a lot of shows, and maybe you have not seen some of this, or maybe I have not seen some of the things you think are better. I think that Wausau has a very significant musical history, and as a result, I wanted to share some of them with you.
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