well, I sure feel D.U.M.B.er... (part 2)

Welcome back to the next installment of the thrilling, chilling tale of our crazy little weekend mini-tour!

(To read the first part of the story, head here.)

After we bailed on the latter part of the Umphrey's McGee we worked out way into the inside room of the club, known as Heaven. What a bad choice of a name! First of all, the entire place was painted black, and all of the staff were semi-freaky looking goth kids. It was only slightly cooler inside then it was outside, except there was a humidity level of about 99 percent; if you went into the restroom it got considerably worse. Luckily the bars were cash only or I'd still be hungover today; I drank some seriously stiff vodka/sodas up in that place.

Perpetual Groove needed to bring their A-game to this show, and they definitely delivered. I stopped by the merch table to chat with my favorite band manager/generally nice guy Ben (thanks for the t-shirt) who told me that they were ready for the Ruckus.

Perpetual Groove
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When the band came out it was immediately evident that he was right. Over the PA a majestic fanfare played, and the quartet from Georgia came out and took their places on the small stage. Here's what went down:

I: Teakwood Betz, A Day the Way, TTFPJ*, Save for One, Suburban Speedball, Pepper**, Two Shores, Robot Waltz

Set II: Speed Queen, Diggin' in the Dirt, Occam's Blazer, Under Lock and Key, MOTA, Out Here> Space Paranoids

E: Crapshoot

*With Allen Aucoin on drums and Aron Magner on keys, Disco Biscuits
**With Joel Cummins of Umphrey's Mcgee on keys

The show started strong with Teakwood Betz, one of the group's major tunes that always pleases. Next up was A Day the Way, which is one of their newer songs and one that I have yet had the chance to fully appreciate, perhaps due to its late placement in the two shows I have seen it at. Plus, it is a tad on the slow side. But when they dropped into the funky dance party of TTFPJ the crowd returned to get down mode.

And that was before the special guests took the stage. Aron Magner and Allen Aucion, the keyboardist and drummer from the Disco Biscuits, respectively, joined the band for an extended electronic jam in the middle of the tune. Magner even gets to drop his "wish I was a gangster" line in the middle. There's so good stuff going on here, take a listen:

Perpetual Groove w/Aron Magner & Allen Aucoin - TTFPJ - 6-30-07

After the first guests left the stage pGroove played two of my favorites: the relatively new rocker Save For One and the hauntingly beautiful Suburban Speedball. Next up, they invited Joel Cummins, keyboardist of Umphrey's McGee, onstage for a rousing rendition of the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper". Two Shores followed up before a massive Robot Waltz closed the set.

Disco Biscuits' drummer Allen Aucoin fills the drummer's seat for a tune
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

I would have probably left at this point thinking that the show was over if the keyboardist's lovely wife didn't let me know that they were coming out for a second set. I'm pretty glad that the rest of the crowd did not receive this same heads up, as the crowd thinned out nicely during setbreak.

Bassist Adam Perry celebrates his birthday with some rock star moves
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When they came back on they wasted no time dropping into the rocker Speed Queen. I could hear some faint teases of Peter Gabriel's "Diggin' in the Dirt", so I has happy when the played the song as their next tune. It happens to be one of my favorite covers that they play, and I haven't heard it for while, so I was happy. Next up was Occam's Blazer, another one of the group's instrumental monsters. Sometimes when the band locks into a good psychedelic groove I lose track of time, and this Occam's could have been 5 minutes long or a half an hour long as far as I could tell. Under Lock and Key is another new one I can't talk to much about, but it gave me a chance to catch my breath before MOTA--another trippy tune--started. Next up the band dropped into the fist-pumping ballad Out Here, which segued into the old school favorite Space Paranoids.

That sexy Matt McDonald
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

A quick Crapshoot encore, I said my hellos and goodbyes, and we were out the door. All in all, a great performance from Perpetual Groove, the late addition to the lineup who actually got the opportunity to play longer their either of the more popular bands on the bill. Food for you guys; it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of dudes.

I said a quick goodbye to my lovely lady before jumping in the back seat of the car for the ride back to South Florida. I'm not embarrassed to say that I slept nearly the whole way back.

Next time, the shocking conclusion of the story!

well, I sure feel D.U.M.B.er... (part 1)

Disco Biscuits' bassist Marc Brownstein

(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

...which, if you ask me, is to be expected. I mean, last weekend was a serious one. Serious in terms of partying and good times, not serious like morose and humorouslessness.

We started out on Thursday evening when we packed up a buddy's little Scion (sure is bigger on the inside then it looks from the outside) and set off on the first part of our journey. It didn't take long to make it to Ft. Pierce, where we were picking up our final traveling companion. We tossed him in the back seat and set off for Atlanta. Fast forward to 6 a.m. I've been driving the final shift for a couple of hours. We're so close to my lady's house that I can smell her dog keeping my place in the bed warm. And we hit Friday morning Atlanta rush hour. Although I was tired I was also a bit wired from the caffeine, and my right leg cramped out terribly and I bounced from gas to brake and back again. Finally, we overcame the bottleneck and finally arrived at our destination.

A few hours of sleep before we make breakfast and head out on a food shopping expedition. Normally, a trip to the supermarket does not excite me all that much, but I had been awaiting this trip for quite a while. It was my first opportunity to visit Trader Joe's. I had heard nothing but good things about the store and its' cheap prepared foods and even cheaper bottles of wine. The hype was much deserved, as I filled the cart with bottles of "Three Buck Chuck" and ogled the store's lines of sauces and homemade pastas. There are approximately 479 Trader Joe's locations in the state of California, and not a single one in Florida. Someone should do something about that...

Anyway, we took our groceries home to prepare for a big dinner. The lady and I made both a meat lasagna and a veggie lasagna--from scratch, thank you very much--and fed a full house of dinner guests. Much revelry commenced, and my hazy recollections seem to recall some time spent with Comcast's Karaoke-on-Demand. Good times.

Saturday. Game day. Show time. I had made plans to go to BBQ before the show. In hindsight, eating a sloppy plate of pulled pork with all the fixings prior to consuming large quantities of alcohol and partying really hard wasn't a really good idea. Add to that the fact that it was at least 100 degrees outside and that there was approximately 7-and-a-half square feet of shade at the venue and you'll understand why I felt like I was dancing with a lead weight in my stomach. The heat (and probably the pork, as well) made me thirsty, and next thing I knew I had spend $50 on bottled water. The water added to my stomach discomfort, but I only peed once the entire afternoon. The rest I sweated out my pores as the day went on.

On to the music.

The Disco Biscuits are a nighttime band. They play a dirty trance-rock hybrid that is well suited to dingy, smoke-filled nightclubs. In Atlanta, they were playing in the blazing sunlight in a park in the middle of the day. Not really the ideal local for a Disco Biscuits show, but they wrote an interesting setlist and played it pretty well.

Set I:
Digital Buddha> Crickets¹> Strobelights and Martinis> Mindless Dribble> Voices Insane> I-Man²> November Rain³, World Is Spinning, Save The Robots

¹ inverted
² with "Gamma Goblins" (Hallucinogen) tease
³ ending only; with Brenden Blayliss (Umphrey's McGee) on guitar

the Disco Biscuits
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

Buddha was a good way to kick things off, and Crickets is always nice to hear. It is worth noting that they didn't finish (or in the case of the inverted Crickets, began) either of the first two tunes. The segue into Strobelights and Martinis was a bit sloppy. Dribble gave me an opportunity to punch my boy D00K in the face a few times (one of the only times it is acceptable to do so is during the slamming intro to this tune), and the band kept the pace up by segueing solidly into Voices Insane, which smoothly transition into the meat of the show.

This version of I-Man is one of the best I've heard. It starts out as a rocking version before the jam starts; once it does it turns into a techno monster. Teases abound, including the mentioned Gamma Goblins and the unmentioned "Swingtown" by the Steve Miller Band, complete with audience melody sing-a-long.

Near the end of the tune, Biscuits' guitarist Jon Guttwillig gave his guitar to UM's Brendan Bayliss and picked up what looked like a Strat or Telecaster as Bayliss wailed away. They absolutely killed the > November Rain, with Bayliss taking the lead and tearing it up through out.

Brendan Bayliss (L) and Jon Gutwillig tear it up. Aren't they cute?
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

World is Spinning was throwaway, and Save the Robots was a great way to end a solid set.

I'd post some tunes, but the show has not yet been uploaded to archive...

I'd post Umphrey's McGee's setlist, but since I don't really know any of their songs it wouldn't really matter. It did seem like the majority of the crowd was there to see them, as it really started moving once the band unleashed its' shredding dual guitar frenzy. I had a good time at this set. UM teased Black Sabbath's "Crazy Train" what seemed like a million times, and they really can jam. We left early to try to secure a spot for Perpetual Groove's late night set at the terribly misnamed club Heaven on the inside portion of the venue.

Umphrey's McGee
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

It turns out we missed the Biscuits come out to perform an encore after UM had finished their set; they played Helicopters, which segued (with a band switch off) into UM's Miss Tinkle's Overture.

Tommorrow I'll continue with the late night Perpetual Groove throwdown, the drive home (I slept almost the entire way) and a rainy Sunday night in Pompano Beach.

getting a little bit D.U.M.B. this weekend

Last night, one of my favorite bands and a band that has gone from intolerable to one that I kinda like sometimes began a co-headlining tour which is plagued with the worst name ever:

the D.U.M.B. Tour.

The two bands playing are the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey's McGee; if you mix the four words up and form an acronym, you get D.U.M.B. Pretty dumb, don't you think?

Check the logo, which is a combination of UM's four-leaf clover and tDB's odd little circle logo:

To me, it looks like some brilliant promoter came up with a D.U.M.B. idea, and this is the result.

I kid. Seriously, I've been advocating these double bills for years as a way for small- to medium-sized bands to cross-pollinate their audiences. My first pick to do something like this was Brothers Past and Perpetual Groove. One northern band, one southern band, both with pretty fanatical (though small and virtually nonexistent outside their home territory) fanbases. Set an early start time, alternate headlining spots in clubs around the country, watch fanbase grow exponentially.

Well, it didn't quite happen like that.

Instead, let me tell you the tale of two bands that fell in love with each other so deeply that some of their respective fans got sick of the other group's music. I don't know when or where it happened (though I believe it was in Amsterdam for the first Jam in the 'Dam), but this is the situation with the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey's McGee.

Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits stumble around Amsterdam.

Thanks to PT's SleekLazy for hooking up the photo for me

Some people are sick of seeing the two bands packaged together: they are playing this five show southern tour and Trancegression, a co-headlining festival in mid-July in Colorado (a trip I had to unfortunately cancel). Together, they're also the main attractions for Caribbean Holidaze, a destination festival (that I am happy to be attending). Others know that creatively the musicians play off of each other rather well. Many (myself including) hope for a return of the Brain Damaged Eggmen, a hybridized band featuring members of both groups that plays Pink Floyd and Beatles' covers, exclusively.

Umphrey's McGee has grown on me since I first saw them. My opinion echoes the complaints of many others: technically, they are extremely talented musicians, but much of their music lacks soul. Also, I find that a majority of their jams sound like they were ripped straight out of a Phish setlist. But sometimes they rock pretty hard, and some of their podcasts featuring soundboard recordings of crispy material get regular playback on my work computer.

I really like the Disco Biscuits, and I kinda like UM. But that combination wasn't going to get me to drive to Atlanta on Saturday to see them. However, the D.U.M.B. promoter had a good idea: add a solid Georgia band to the lineup to play a late night show. The fact that the band is Perpetual Groove, one of my top three groups to see live, made the decision to collect the crew and trek to Georgia a no-brainer. Of course, the fact that I have a lovely lady whom I can't wait to see doesn't hurt, either.

What will hurt is leaving Perpetual Groove's late night show (starting at 10 p.m. and ending at 2 a.m.), getting in the car and driving right back down to South Florida in time for the hometown D.U.M.B. show at the Pompano Beach Amphitheatre. Normally the ride back home after a show is brutal, especially if you leave immediately following an eight-hour rage-fest. I'm not saying that this one won't be brutal, but the fact that there is a show the next day is a bright light at the end of a long tunnel.

Tickets for all the D.U.M.B. Tour shows, including tonight's in Portsmouth, VA and tomorrow's in Raleigh, NC, are available here. Hope to see you out.