Review: Mickey Hart Band @ Lincoln Hall

Mickey Hart Band @ Lincoln Hall, December 17

Words and Photos: Charles Izenstark

As Mickey Hart led seven other musicians onto the tiny stage of Chicago’s Lincoln Hall, for their last show of 2011, he had a wicked gleam in his bespectacled eye as he announced, “You know what, I’ve got ‘that feeling’ tonight.” With the promise of a special evening still hanging in the air, the band launched into a set of music that was heavy on new material.

First up was the rocking Let There Be Light, featuring vocalists Tim Hockenberry and Crystal Monee Hall in an energetic call and response exchange that set the tone for the evening. This was followed by the trippier, slower-tempoed Time Never Ends during which it became clear that the focus of this band was not on simply playing “a song” but to engage in a free flowing musical conversation.

Next up was I Can Tell You More, a spoken word piece, featuring Mickey’s haunting voice set over a spacey, trance-inducing musical cocktail party in which the musicians drifted in and out of their own private conversations. It was the sort of magical performance that evoked memories of the great “word jazz” collaborations between Chicago’s own Ken Nordine and the late Jerry Garcia.

The band resumed a more up tempo approach with Who Do You Think You Are? before starting an exploration of the cosmos, a theme that would recur much of the evening, with Starlight a setting of the traditional nursery rhyme lyrics (“Starlight, Star Bright, First Star I See Tonight”) to a simmering, very adult bluesy jam that showcased Ms. Hall’s sultry vocal depth.

This was followed by a very straight forward version of the Grateful Dead classic Scarlet Begonias which, predictably enough, transitioned into a set ending version of the Hart-penned Fire on the Mountain. But, unlike when the Dead made this well-known shift, from the sweetness of Scarlet to the percussive Fire, with a seeming lightning strike as ignition, this Fire was lit from a small ember that was carefully stoked by the deft fingers of guitarist Gawain Mathews, who gradually built the intensity of the flame until it ultimately had to explode and engulf the entire mountain in flames. The subtle dexterity with which Mathews handled this transition, creating such a huge conflagration from such a seemingly innocuous beginning, makes one wonder if the East Bay resident was fleeing an arson charge when he left his native Wales.

Upon returning to the stage, Mickey hunched himself over his electronics suite and started to produce a sort of crackling hum which he proceeded to tweak, with a twist of a dial here and a slide of a fader there, until it met his requirements and could only be described as cosmic. At this point, Hart informed the audience that the original hum was the recorded sound of our Sun. The resulting Heartbeat of the Sun, a mélange of harmonious vocalizations, slide guitar and subtle keyboards supplementing Mickey’s continued tinkering was one of the evening’s most attention commanding moments. Even clearer was the fact that Hart is no longer content with simply scouring the far reaches of our planet for sounds and rhythms, he now has set his sight on the final frontier for inspiration and source material.

Returning to earth, the band launched into Slow Joe Rain, a song which must have been received by any of the Spreadnecks in the house due to the explosive bassline from Dave Schools. Schools, who in the first set seemed content to merely play the role asked of him, namely as the backbone of a stellar rhythm section that also featured South African drummer Ian “Inx” Herman and Sikiru Adepoju on Talking Drum (dubbed by Schools as the “Secret Weapon”), dominated this rocker.

The band then resumed their interstellar adventures with Supersonic a piece that served as a both a compliment to Heartbeat of the Sun and as a launching pad for a very down to earth version of the Dead’s (That’s It For) The Other One. Schools supplanted Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus to Neverland and led the band through the story of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters with a relentless rumbling earthquake of a bassline that was not for the faint of heart.

Next was Cut the Deck, a sweet tune that allowed everyone to regain their bearings from the wreckage wrought by Schools and provided a nice bridge into a gospel tinged version of the Hunter/Garcia classic Brokedown Palace. Mathews’ slide guitar and soulful organ from Ben Yonas provided the perfect bed for Ms. Hall’s soft sweet vocals in what was most certainly the evening’s most poignant moment.

It was time for more new material as the band played No One Wants to Die, another rocker that served to raise the tempo and became a natural segue into the Bo Diddley beat of the Buddy Holly classic Not Fade Away. Here, Mathews grabbed the wheel and guided the band from the crisp simple tones of Holly’s era to more raucous tones evocative of Chuck Berry and finally to dirty grungy slide tones that ultimately evolved into the familiar Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad. It was at the end of this traditional chestnut when Mathews again asserted control with a plaintive slide rendering of the We Bid You Goodnight tease, that Garcia also played, which was so moving that Hart kept nodding to him to keep going while he called Hall and Hockenberry to attention and readied them to add their vocal harmonies to complete a truly joyous version of the spiritual lull-a-bye that concluded with Hart remarking “Oh yeah, it has been a good night!” before the band left the stage.

The crowd’s ovation quickly devolved into the familiar rhythmic clapping and vocal refrain from Not Fade Away that Deadheads used so often to call their heroes back onto the stage. After Mickey took a moment to advocate for Music Therapy and introduce the band, there was a too-short reprise of NFA before the band retired for the evening. With content that ranged from the most familiar of Deadhead classics to avant garde material culled, in part, from the far reaches of our solar system, Mickey Hart refuses to rest on his laurels and continues to expand music’s horizon.

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