Fort Worth, TX - December 30, 2003
~ Tracy
Hey, can you hand me that Advil over there? Thanks.
This is how much I love y'all: on New Year's Day, when I'm lucky to
remember where Gregg is, here I am recalling the Bass Hall
concert from night before last. Actually, I'm joking -- we're not
really suffering today, just napping off and on between football games. I'm all het up about how much the BCS sucks, but that's a rant for
another time.
I was floored when I opened the envelope on Christmas morning. Two
tickets from Gregg to see RK and Robert Earl Keen at the Bass Performance Hall in
Fort Worth ("ORCHPITR AAA", whatever that means)! I decided to invite
him as my date; it was only right. I hadn't seen Robert Keen since
Oysterbake in San Antonio; it was the kind of show an REK fan has come
to expect, with piles of drunken kids throwing beer cans on stage and
screaming through the whole thing. Great times. (that last bit? Is a
little trick us writer types use called sarcasm.) And I was
sad about missing the Reckless New Year's down at Jovita's in Austin,
so I thought this might be an all-around nice departure from the norm.
I was apprehensive about the show, because I know Bass Hall is a
button-up sort of place, where symphonies and operas and ballets
happen. I didn't want the frat-boys-throwing-stuff atmosphere, but
neither was I really looking forward to the blue-hairs with their
pince-nez and shawls, you know? But, Brandi reminded me of the
fancy-pants fundraiser she and I attended with our friend Forrest a
couple of years ago: it was at the Paramount Theater in Austin, and
even though we were in formal dresses and assigned seats, we still
managed to rock out to Dwight Yoakam. So, this couldn't be bad.
The facility is gawwwgeous. From what I understand there was a
multi-million dollar remodeling a while back, and every penny shows.
When we got down to the floor of the hall, we waited behind some other
attendees to get playbills and directions from the usher. One of the
girls in their group looked at her ticket and murmured, "We're Row A.
That's front row." You should have seen the look on her face when the
second usher explained that row A would be the front row -- but
when they fill in the ORCHestra PIT, they add rows CCC
and BBB, then AAA is in front. I felt like Wayne and Garth at
that point, and would have held up my front row ticket and gushed
"backstage pass! backstage pass!", had we not been in such a
sophisticated venue.
(Speaking of sophisticated, it turns out that in the fancy halls, you
don't get to drink. For real. No food or beverage allowed inside.
And naturally, the lobby bar lines were out the door onto Main Street.
"F.D.", as Gregg would say. So, it was a no-smokee-no-drinkee concert.
No cameras allowed either, but we snuck one in my purse. Gregg didn't dare use the flash, though -- two of Fort Worth's finest were right at
the front of the stage on either side, and we didn't want to get kicked
out.)
Front row! We sat there and jabbered waiting for things to start, and
I gaped at the interior décor. The exquisite lighting, and the white
clouds painted on a blue sky in the dome at the roof, and the gilded
everything... it was definitely the most elegant place I'd ever seen
Reckless Kelly. I wondered for a second how they'd fit in.
Didn't have to wonder long at all. A chattery DJ came out and
introduced them, and they were off! The set list had the flavor that I
always think of as "for company." Old RK'ers know what I mean:
Millican and Under the Table-heavy, and the more mellow
of those songs to boot. It makes sense though -- when you are looking
out over a sea of faces that are 15-20 years older than your average
fan, and you know some of them are season ticket holders who have never
heard of you, and you only have 40 minutes to hook them, and you are in
Fort Worth, Texas, you pick the stuff that best shows off your
repertoire for that unique little one-night demographic. A wailing,
freestyle "So Lonely" medley or a "Goodbye, f@#$er, I'm gone" isn't
exactly gonna go over like hotcakes, you have to figure
.
Muzzie came out for "I Saw It Coming", and it made me feel a pang of
I-don't-what for having missed the Ego's show on 12/23. Jealousy?
Probably. But also a little bit of knowing that any time we get to see
the Muzz on stage with any of the boys, it's a rare thing and us
Texans should make a point to catch it (don't even get me
started on having missed all five of them together at Jovita's).
I didn't note much about the rest of the songs in particular, but
y'all know them all: imagine them as pure and clean and tight as they
are on the album, but live, and that's how it sounded.
The one exception was the one cover: I have to give grudging props for
"1952 Vincent Black Lightning." For those of you who don't know it or
haven't heard RK's version, here's some background. The song is by
Richard Thompson, a folk singer/songwriter from London. As Willy likes to point out, it's about redheads and motorcycles, "two of the greatest things in the world." (He went on to add that when the Brauns were growing up, his mom was always worried about the boys getting on bikes, but she never bothered to warn them
about redheads.)
Now, I've heard the Richard Thompson version a bunch -- he's a regular on the KGSR playlist. And, the way
Richard Thompson sings "Red Molly" makes me nuts. It sounds like he is
saying "Rid Moley." (Yes, I know he has a British accent.
Still, you know how something just irritates you for no good reason?
This is in that category. I've heard plenty of his other songs and
they don't make me nuts.) [Ed. Note: Audio courtesy of the Richard Thompson Discussion List - go check out their site but don't steal.]
But on this second hearing of the Reckless cover, I have to confess
that the band has done with "Vincent" what they've done with all the
offbeat songs they've plucked from obscurity (witness the
aforementioned "So Lonely", "Wild Western Windblown", and "Wheels") and added to their repertoire:
made it their own. It's a fantastic song, and it fits them like a
glove, and I'm over my Rid Moley hangup.
Reckless was perfect, but it was a different kind of perfect than we
usually get to see. You know how you walk out of a Gruene Hall show
all hoarse and high on the music and you've been singing at the top of
your lungs and bouncing around (and so was Willy) and the whole night
sort of flies by and you don't know how it's already 1:00 am? We go in
all worked up so they get all worked up so then we get more worked up,
ad infinitum. That's the buzzy live energy kind of perfect, the kind
that has made us all such insanely dedicated fans and allows us to
truly pity anyone who's never seen RK live. That's about the
show itself.
This was the sort of perfect that reminds you that these guys are
professional performers. This show was all about the music; it
has to be, when fans like Gregg and me that you know are diehard
are sitting there silently (I couldn't even sing along! It was
so quiet in there I had to mouth the words lest I disturb my rowmates).
Everyone in the audience was listening very raptly and paying
attention, but there wasn't exactly energy to feed from (I couldn't
really gauge the gang up in the balconies, but there was at least one
other hardcore Recker back there -- we'd hear him holler
appreciatively from on high every so often. Rock on, dude.).
The acoustics in Bass Hall are incredible; you could actually hear
Jay's brush on the snare drum bouncing off the back of the room during
"Set Me Free." Our musician friend Dave said that Bass Hall is built like a big sound stage, essentially.
Without all the yelling and bar noise, we were able to really
hear the band, hear all the voices and instruments, in a way
that you usually only get to do while listening to the CD at home on
really good speakers. They were perfectly tight, and didn't even lose
momentum when there was an electrical snafu with one of Willy's cords.
We weren't the only appreciative ones. Robert Keen was watching RK
from the wings for the better part of their set, and Muzzie would
appear at times too. (I was hoping and praying that the whole pile of
musicians would get together at the end of Robert Keen's set for an
all-star jam, but it was not to be.)
And, proving that some things about an RK show will never, ever, ever
change: during a pause between songs, while David changed guitars and
Willy adjusted his mic, some girl about ten rows back from us yelled
out, "Hey Say May!" In Bass Performance Hall. Swear to God. WB didn't
miss a beat -- he just chuckled and replied "Here's one from the album
it's on, called Millican," and they went right into "Back
Around" instead.
