It’s worth a trip from Santa Barbara to the Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co. in Buellton just for its tasty beer. Its Davy Brown Ale is particularly good, in my opinion. But on Tuesday night, there was an even greater attraction at the brewery — a concert by Bert Lams and Tom Griesgraber, who are on a monthlong East Coast/West Coast tour that includes shows at not-so-obvious venues such as breweries and people’s houses.
Lams is best known for his masterful acoustic guitar playing as part of the California Guitar Trio (CGT), which not too long ago played an amazing show at the Mercury Lounge in Goleta. Griesgraber also has a connection with the CGT, having played the Chapman Stick on a few tracks on their latest album, Andromeda.
OK, you’re probably wondering, what is a Chapman Stick? It’s an intriguing 12-string instrument invented in the 1970s by Emmett Chapman that spans the sonic range of both a regular and a bass guitar. But instead of picking or strumming the strings, the player taps them at the desired frets with one or both hands, making it a bit like a playing a piano. However, the strings can be bent, arguably giving the player more expressive capabilities than what a piano offers. The stick has two sets of six strings, each with a separate output so that each can have a different sound.
Lams, on guitar, and Griesgraber, on Chapman Stick, played an eclectic, virtuosic set of instrumental pieces to the appreciative brewery crowd, including several new pieces that will (hopefully) be on an album coming out in a few months.
My personal favorite of the new pieces was “Search and Destroy,” named after a guitar effect Lams uses for part of the song. Although the name suggests The Stooges, it’s really firmly in the King Crimson camp, with a proggish 7/4 rhythm and ascending chords over an underlying bass riff. Cool!
Another notable new song is the “Prairie Suite,” made up of different sections that, as Griesgraber explained in his intro, tell the story of a family heading west in a covered wagon in search of a better life. At first they’re excited, but they run into a bad storm during which they think they hear voices from the Indian spirits who are being pushed off the land. Ultimately there is a sense of resolution and peace, and one of the travelers plays a bit of guitar while sitting around a campfire. Griesgraber’s instructions to Lams for this part were to pretend he’s not a very good guitar player, even encouraging some wrong notes. This piece has an Americana flavor that captures this story very nicely.
Other songs included “Don’t Look Back” with a cool 3+3+2 rhythmic motif, an almost funky bit, and some sustained, distorted soloing at the end; the Celtic-flavored “Rebecca” in honor of Griesgraber’s grandmother; and “Victor’s Chase,” the first piece that the pair ever worked on together and whose name refers to Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s pursuit of his creation across the frozen ocean at the end of Mary Shelley’s novel. This latter song featured some ominous synth sounds from the stick.
The pair also drew from the 20-years-and-running CGT catalog. In introducing “The Marsh,” Griesgraber joked that Lams, who has notable skills in arranging music, had said, “I’m gonna do my normal part; you do everything else.” This is a pretty piece in honor of CGT mentor (and King Crimson guitarist) Robert Fripp’s 90-plus-year-old gardener who passed away while it was being written. They also played “Punta Patri,” with a Frippertronics-style intro of looped distorted notes, played here on the stick, before the piece takes a more acoustic turn.
Another CGT piece was the “Train to Lamy Suite,” named for a little town near Santa Fe, N.M., that receives a train traveling between Chicago and Los Angeles once a day. The piece was inspired by a cowboy playing outside the town bar, but covers much more musical territory than that might suggest.
The encore started with “El Prado,” a solo piece performed by Griesgraber that showed definitively how amazing the stick can sound in the hands of a master. Lams then played a solo rendition of Yo-Yo Ma’s signature piece, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, a testament to both Bach’s genius and Lams’ talent on the guitar.
The show ended with Lams and Griesgraber joining back together for an abstract, extended instrumental cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”
Cheers to Lams and Griesgraber for putting on such a great show!
— Noozhawk contributing writer Jeff Moehlis is a professor of mechanical engineering at UCSB. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his Web site, music-illuminati.com.
Comments
