Steve Kimock: Further Adventures

Before this March, it had been over three years since Steve Kimock had hit the road to tour with his own band. Fortunately for those of us who lurk in this part of the world, he closed out the last tour of the Steve Kimock Band in 2006 with a series of gigs in North Carolina, one in Asheville, and the last, a few days later, in Carrboro, only three and a half hours east by interstate. As I mentioned in a post at the time, they were excellent shows.

Since then there have been many sit-ins and one-off gigs, jams and shows in various repeated configurations, more shows, up until the death of horn player Martin Fierro, integral to Zero's sound, with his old band Zero than any time since 1998, and lots of good playing. Very little of it, though, occurred in the context of Kimock's own material, which is, for me, where he best displays his gift for the architecture of sound.

The most interesting of his various recurrent gigs, for me at least, Grateful Dead fan that I am (or was; I have to admit that I've put their work aside for the last few years. So much music to explore, so little time), have been his performances with various former members of that band. He was an integral part of the Rhythm Devils during their tour in the summer and fall of 2006, along with Micky Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mike Gordon, and during the summer and fall of 2007 he toured with Ratdog, Bob Weir's band, filling in for Mark Karan, who was undergoing treatment for cancer. He toured again with Hart in 2008.

Hart appreciated Kimock's strengths as a player, of course; they've played together in various configurations through the years. The context of the Devils, though, with its emphasis on percussion, didn't often give him room to stretch out.

Ratdog proved a more congenial context. In fact, Kimock sometimes transformed that band's sound. Weir said that he found himself astonished five or six times every show, and if you listen to the shows, you'll hear why.

In the summer of 2008, the Mickey Hart Band included more players on strings and keys, and proved a fine context for Kimock's style of extended playing. Their July shows are still worth a listen.

Curiously, before working with these post-Dead bands, Kimock had little relation to the Dead's material. He wasn't a Deadhead; he had his own work to do. And when he helped form Zero, it wasn't to play Dead material. The Zero songbook was much less rooted in Appalachian Americana, more bluesy, and their playing, initially driven by the guitars of Kimock and Quicksilver Messenger Service veteran John Cipollina, sounded very little like the Dead's, even if both groups explored the boundaries of small band improvisation.

During Mark Karan's convalescence, Blair Jackson interviewed him and relayed this recollection at Dead.net:

Kimock's been playing the Dead material now for years, and has played with almost every band that's emerged from the Dead family, from Missing Man Formation, The Other Ones, Phil Lesh and Friends, to the current incarnations of the Rhythm Devils and Ratdog. He may not have been so well versed in the material initially; Mark Karan said awhile back that Kimock often got credit for his work when they were both in The Other Ones.

That tour with The Other Ones went down in 1998. By the next year and the 1999 incarnation of Phil Lesh and Friends, though, there's no disputing that Kimock's playing on Dead classics was magisterial and magnificent. Listen, for instance, to the version of the Dead standard "Terrapin Station" from 10/23/1999 (but give yourself plenty of time, since it's forty-five minutes long - and worth every minute. If you're too busy for the whole song, hang in through the twelve minute mark for an extra-tasty ensemble transition ). The jamming is sharp and tight, and offers a richer development of the song's motifs, especially the later, Terrapin-proper, ones, than any other version I know - including, even, any ever played by the Dead. Paul Barrere (of Little Feat) plays wonderful counterpoint to Kimock's "anti-gravity guitar"- that's Phil's description - and Bill Payne (also of Little Feat) complements the guitars with powerful and tasteful playing on keys.

Still, the material in which Steve Kimock is most at home is his own, and the tour with his new band, Crazy Engine, featuring Melvin Seals on keys, Trevor Exter on bass and vocals, and John Morgan Kimock (Steve's son) on drums, gives those of us who are his fans new cause to rejoice as we prepare for transport on the waves of sound Kimock generates with his guitar.


Steve Kimock and Crazy Engine play the Orange Peel Thursday, November 12. Doors at 8:00, show at 9:00 PM. Tickets are $15 in advance, $17 at the door.

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The video features a Crazy Engine version of Kimock's composition "A New Africa" from July 25.

Charlottesville

It must have been a touch of wanderlust. This past weekend I made a quick trip to Charlottesville. A dear friend of long standing, a woman with whom I'd seen many Grateful Dead shows in the late 80s and early 90s, had originally invited another friend to make the trip for the Phil Lesh and Friends concert there. When he couldn't make it, she persuaded me (pretty easily, I admit) to fill in. I welcomed the weekend off and out of town, and it turned out to be a great trip.

Phil and Friends, for one thing, sounded great. No matter who the Friends are, they can always play. I'd heard that the new friends, particularly guitarists Jackie Greene and Larry Campbell, were more song- than jam-oriented, but they jammed through most of both sets, nevertheless, and did really outstanding versions of "Cold Rain and Snow", "Althea" (yes, "Althea"), and "Sugaree" along the way. Some of the transitions seemed a little bumpy to me, but I'll certainly download this one when it becomes available to hear it again.

The venue where they played, the Pavilion, proved to have fine acoustics, even though it's basically a fabric canopy open at the sides, and it's beautifully situated at one end of Charlottesville's lovely downtown mall. Which isn't a mall, if that word makes you, as it does me, think of acres of concrete and asphalt surrounding an enclosed commercial garrison. No one we talked with seemed to know when it had happened, but sometime back Charlottesville simply took the traffic out of the heart of its existing downtown, built mostly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I'd say, and converted the street into a brick-paved pedestrian avenue. It's now lined by lots of sidewalk cafes and shops of all sorts under a (still) green canopy of large oaks.


And for another thing, Charlottesville poet Jessica Smith graciously came out after the show to meet us for a drink and some lively conversation. Being poets and fellow Scorpios, we conspired to conduct a little experiment the next day at Barnes and Noble, where Jessica works.

As Jessica tells it (sorry, her blog is open just to invited readers, so no link):

First, we plotted that he would buy my book from Barnes and Noble [Sunday] to gauge the reaction of the other employees. ... Oddly, when he asked for my book ..., no one told him that I worked there or told me that someone had bought my book. But perhaps it is not so odd. Some of my coworkers think it's really cool that I have a book and are supportive of my pseudo-career as a poet; the rest either don't know, don't care, or actively dislike me for whatever reason one dislikes people who have something else to do than the job at hand. (Thankfully there are other talented people at my workplace with whom I can commiserate.)

Her supervisor happily agreed that I could interview Jessica for Wordplay, so we drove to her place, and after I'd set up the mics and other gear, she read several poems and we talked for forty minutes or so about her work and the poetics of what she terms "plastic poetry", poetry that exists in both spatial and temporal dimensions. It was great fun, and I found her poems and what she had to say about them of extraordinary interest; I look forward to getting our talk edited and up on the air.

We've not been holding readings at the Center this fall simply because the gallery is full of vitrines for the fine ceramics show that's now up, but we'll be getting underway again after it comes down at the end of the year. I'd really like to have Jessica come down for a reading, and she's up for it; we spoke of the week of Valentines (it's on a Thursday this year, so perhaps the Saturday after), so you might want to pencil that in on your calendars. I'll post more, though, as we get the details figured out.

Her current book, available, like NatureS , from SPD, is Organic Furniture Cellar; her previous book, or chapbook, bird-book, is available as a free download (it's a .pdf file), and her Juvenalia is available here.

My friend and I left from Barnes and Noble after Jessica and I returned, and enjoyed the five plus hour drive back down the west side of the Blue Ridge through the lovely Shenandoah Valley. Occasional crazy other driver behavior reminded us several times that Mercury is retrograde, and we did get caught in slow inching traffic near what must have been an accident, though there were only a couple of state police cars at what must have been its site by the time we drove past.

The dog was happy to see me when my friend dropped me off, and when I checked my email, I discovered that another Phil and Friends show was being netcast live from Atlanta at that very moment, so I settled in to catch the last several songs of what seemed to have been another fine show - and so put the nightcap on a really fine weekend.


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The photo of Jessica is borrowed from her Facebook profile.