Monday, November 3, 2008
Music news Live review: the Hold Steady & the Drive-By Truckers at The Tabernacle. Sat., Nov. 1.
Posted by Web Editor on Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:52 PM
By Michael Gerber
The Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers take different approaches to essentially producing the same experience. This, of course, makes the experiences completely different. The experience: Using classic rock radio anthems to whip the crowd into a frenzy. Success is reached when everybody’s pumping their fists along with loud, guitar-driven songs of defiant down-and-out optimism. Success was achieved quite a few times during the long evening that, despite the double billing, was The Hold Steady opening for the Drive-By Truckers.
The evening began as Bulldog fans were coming to terms with the Saturday afternoon embarrassment against the now hated even more (who knew it was possible) Florida Gators. And it’s safe to say most of the DBT fans were watching college football all afternoon. Like football, DBT give you a smash-mouth experience of collision and repercussions. HS fans, on the other hand, are more like baseball spectators and prefer a well-told story drawn-out at a more intellectual pace. Like the famous George Carlin routine, football fans are out for blood and guts, while the objective of baseball is to be safe at home. HS tell their stories of debauchery from the safe perspective of looking back after sobering up.
This approach has helped the HS release two of the better albums of this decade so far, Boys and Girls in America and this past summer’s Stay Positive. On Saturday night at The Tabernacle, the HS played faithful versions of the best cuts from both albums. The delivery was polished, clean and didn’t differ from the album versions, other than the added excitement that they’re doing it right in front of you. You can’t underestimate that quality with this band. Craig Finn, the lead singer, is more of a storyteller than singer. With exaggerated hand motions, he sing-talks his tales of kicking it with cousins or getting inebriated with townies in the party pit. Finn appeared so excited to tell you his stories that he could hardly contain himself. Along with guitar and piano solos that are rarely matched by the non jam band sect, this made for an enthralling set, where I found myself saying, “wow, that’s a great song” as if I were hearing them for the first time.
The gloss of rock and roll was stripped away for DBT’s set. Lead singer Patterson Hood is a large, gregarious man sweating his way through the two-hour set that seemed to nearly kill him, in a good way. By the last third of the set he was falling over and sitting on the ledge of the stage, giving us sincere rock and roll hard living dramatics.
Finding their footing after the first song, DBT plowed their way though the night with hard riffing and mud covered solos. With three guitars going on full throttle, the sound was muddled and it was hard to understand what was being said. With subtly not even an option, the band reveled in the sloppy and loud. And it wouldn’t have sounded better any other way. In fact, the quieter songs from the new album, such as the beautiful “Houston,” fell flat, while what seemed monotonous on CD, “The Man I Shot,” packed a punch that put me in the trenches. That is, it was powerful and took me to the place Hood intended when he wrote it.
The person who seemed to be enjoying the show the most was Finn, who could be seen backstage taking pictures and singing along with his favorite songs. When the band called him up to sing “Rockin’ in the Free World” during the encore, he acted like it was his “Make-A-Wish Foundation” dream come true. As the members of both bands took turns taking swigs from a bottle of Jack Daniels, it was rock and roll at it’s most authentic and enjoyable. These are two bands that wear their devotion to rock and roll on their sleeve and have a reverential respect for a sound that’s keeping them alive. You can tell that the music is important to them not only from their lyrics, but by their inspired performances when they get to do this for an audience. Nights like Saturday at the Tabernacle are what rock bands live for. For the fans, it was the full rock experience, not metal, not alternative, not indie, not jam, but pure unadulterated rock and roll.
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