This past Friday night God Street Wine guitarist Aaron Maxwell and bassist Dan Pifer were Reid Genauer’s guests as part of the AOD front man’s venue-opening run at Garcia’s in Port Chester, New York. The bar, which is part of the Capitol Theatre, is named after Jerry Garcia and features Captain Trips memorabilia. Reid was performing with members of Assembly of Dust as well as special guests, which on Friday were Maxwell, Pifer and Yahuba Garcia of the Ryan Montbleau Band.

[All Photos by Andrew Blackstein]

At one point during the second set, AOD (and GSW) multi-instrumentalist Jason Crosby teamed up with Aaron, Dan, Garcia and a drummer for fun takes on God Street Wine’s Waiting For The Tide and Mile By Mile. Video of Waiting For The Tide has surfaced thanks to Joe Madonna…

Here’s more photos from Friday night thanks to Andrew Blackstein…

READ ON

Reid Genauer brought Assembly of Dust to New York this weekend for gigs in New York City on Friday night and in Syracuse on Saturday. Regular AoD keyboardist Jason Crosby was across the continent playing Spring Rambles at Terrapin Crossroads with Phil Lesh, so Genauer and his band called upon Rob Marscher (Addison Groove Project / Matisyahu) to fill Crosby’s role this weekend. On Friday, AoD brought out guitarist Scott Metzger for a scorching rendition of Second Song.

[Photo via Assembly of Dust Facebook]

Metzger emerged towards the end of the first set and not only handled his solos impressively, but he also duels with Assembly of Dust guitarist Adam Terrell near the finish of Second Song. Check it out…

AoD has the rest of the month off before a pair of shows with the Ryan Montbleau Band in early May.

Back in 1991 guitarists Reid Genauer and Jon Trafton started playing shows together under the moniker “Strange Folk.” They went on to add bassist Erik Glockler and drummer Luke Smith soon there after and changed the name to “Strangefolk.” Last year the original quartet reunited and have performed a handful of shows. For those attending the Assembly of Dust gig at The Independent in San Francisco on March 7th, you’ll have a chance to see the acoustic “Strange Folk” in action as the opening act.

[Screen Shot of Relix Performance]

Reid and Jon will open a full evening of music and we’re hopeful Trafton will stick around and guest during AOD’s set. Tickets for this show are currently available.

• Previously on HT: Strangefolk’s Return To The Cap, Strangefolk: A Great Long While In The Making, Poland Video and Brooklyn Bowl Recap & Photos

Roughly six months after the passing of Davy Jones, the surviving members of The Monkees – Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork – have announced that they will head out for 12-date cross-country tour this fall. Last year the iconic ’60s pop act reunited to celebrate their 45th anniversary with a world tour, sans Nesmith, who last performed with his former band mates in 1997 for a handful of European shows, and has traditionally sat out on any reformation of the group since they dissolved in 1971 . According to Rolling Stone, the trio, “will perform a selection of their biggest hits and deeper cuts from their first five albums, as well as music from their film Head and their TV series. Accompanying the tunes will be a multimedia show filled with rare films and photographs,” which will also include a tribute to the late Jones.

• List Time: 15 Best Guitar Faces
• Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park will host Lollapalooza Israel in in August of 2013
• Cover Alert: The Shins tackle The Magnetic Fields
• HBO to air a doc about The Rolling Stones 50th anniversary this fall
• Download This: Television – Double Exposure – Live ’74/75
• Beck’s Philip Glass remix album to feature Dan Deacon, Amon Tobin, Memory Tapes & more

Finally, HT faves Assembly of Dust are currently in the midst of recording their new studio album Sun Shot, and are looking to their fans for some financial assistance via the power of crowd sourcing. Reid Genauer & Co. have set up a Kickstarter campaign to help them do everything from recoup recording costs to marketing the album to help them tour. The band’s campaign, which will run until August 30th, has a variety of fan friendly pledge perks that run for little as $1 – which will let you request a song at an AoD show- all the way to $10,000+ – which will get you your very own private solo acoustic show from Mr. Genauer.

Wait, what year is it? God Street Wine and Ray’s Music Exchange were playing on the same night last week? We round out our look at the week that was with Boston’s world/jazz/fusion collective Club D’Elf and we lead off with Reid Genauer & The Assembly of Dust. Enjoy.

[Thanks to belexes for this week's photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: Assembly of Dust – Light Blue Lover, Sometimes
Date & Venue: 2010-07-08 Brooklyn Bowl – Brooklyn, NY
Taper & Show Download: Z-Man

Taper Z-Man often shows up in this weekly feature, but the tapes are normally from down south. I guess Z-Man had some business to attend to in New York, so this show by Reid Genauer & The Assembly of Dust got taped. Jason Crosby, who opened the show, joined AOD for the majority of their set supplying fiddle and keyboards. The audio selection is from the encore which features one of AOD’s newest tunes and an old Strangefolk classic. Reid and the gang next play Friday July 23rd in North Conway, NH with The Brew supporting. Hey speaking of reunions, what do you say Reid?

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READ ON for tracks from Club D’Elf, GSW and Ray’s Music Exchange…

This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

We’ve come to the end of our week long countdown, let’s check out our Top Five…

5) The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Key Tracks: Evil, Gemini Syringes, Watching the Planets, Powerless

Sounds Like: Trent Reznor, Mars Volta

Skinny: Beware Yoshimi fans, there’s a lot less beautiful stuff this time around. Alternatively, what the Flaming Lips forgo in placating, they more than make up for with dark themes, mayhem and a heavy storyline. While at times Embryonic gets weighed down by knobs and buttons (see Aquarius Sabotage), with some fatty basslines, a heavy dousing of effects and a deeply cynical overarching theme, the Lips provide more to think about and less with which to sing along. If there’s a credit to Wayne Coyne and crew, it’s an ability to push way beyond the conventional, while somehow getting through to the conventional.

READ ON to see the final four albums of our Top 25…

Last Week’s Sauce features recordings of shows from the previous week. This week we’ll look at almost exclusively shows that took place on New Year’s Eve.

[Thanks to sonicsound for this week's photo]

Artist & Title: Assembly Of Dust – Brown Sugar
Date & Venue: 2009-12-31 Tupelo Music Hall, Salisbury MA
Taper & Show Download: SmokinJoe

“You should have heard him just around midnight”. A few covers, an acoustic section and a fan requested bustout of Strangefolk’s Far From Yourself round out this New Year’s show from Reid Genauer and Assembly of Dust. Reid hits the road again solo for a few shows to start 2010. Catching him solo is highly recommended, I’ve said it before, Reid is one of the best screamers of our generation.

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READ ON to hear highlights from many other bands New Year’s Eve shows.

Last Week’s Sauce is a recurring column featuring recordings of shows from the previous week. Thanks to Kevin Browning for this week’s photo.

Artist & Title: Assembly Of Dust – Arc Of The Sun
Date & Venue: 2009-09-25 Port City Music Hall, Portland ME
Taper & Show Download: SmokinJoe

If you haven’t heard Assembly Of Dust’s 2009 release Some Assembly Required, what are you waiting for? It’s a great selection of tunes and the album overflows with collaborations from legendary musicians. Assembly of Dust plays tonight with the Emmitt-Nershi Band at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom.

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READ ON to hear tracks from the likes of Bruce Hornsby and Built To Spill

Assembly Of Dust f. Richie Havens – All That I Am Now

If you’re not familiar with the story of Daniel Johnston, then immediately stop reading this post and find yourself a copy of the riveting documentary The Devil And Daniel Johnston. Johnston’s homespun recordings made him into a cult figure amongst musicians, for everyone from Kurt Cobain to M. Ward – who put a version of To Go Home on his Post-War album. Johnston, who is afflicted with bi-polar disorder, has returned to touring in recent years and will again be hitting the road this fall in support his next album Is & Always Was – which will hit stores on October 6.

If you’re not into a night with the quirky singer-songwriter, than maybe you’ll be interested in hitting on of these recently announced tours…

• Soul legend Bettye LaVette schedules dates into 2010
• Camera Obscura line up a 14-date mid-November run
• The Ravonettes and Black Angels team up short two week jaunt
• JJ Grey & Mofro head out for a lengthy cross-country fall tour
• Gypsy-punk act Gogol Bordello will spend October on the road
• Dan Deacon brings is electro-rock weirdness to a city near you

Finally, this fall Assembly Of Dust will team up with the recently formed Emmitt-Nershi Band for an 18-date cross-country run that kicks off on September 24 at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, MA. The two bands filled with stalwarts of the jam scene, will both be touring behind new releases – AoD with their guest-laden album Some Assembly Required and EMB behind their debut New Country Blues – due out on September 29.

After patiently waiting over four years for Phish to reunite, we admit, we got a little excited. Now with two legs of a summer tour behind us and the Hampton shows feeling like they were actually about four years ago, it’s time to regroup and look around a little. Our other favorite bands have been playing too and it’s time to see what we missed.

Sure, Phish may have snagged the headlines throughout the summer, but there have been no shortage of big shows and bust outs around the horn, so lets share the wealth and see what’s been going down.

Frog Legs – The Disco Biscuits, Mariaville, NY 7/18/09

Billed as “The Perfume vs. Tractorbeam” at this summer’s Camp Bisco, the Disco Biscuits treated fans to a set of instrumental non-stop jamming and creative twists on their originals. Don’t quote me on this, but essentially Tractorbeam plays jammed out lyricless Disco Biscuits mayhem, whereas The Perfume takes the existing material and transforms it into alternative genres like honky tonk, techno, hip hop, etc. Here we have a sample from the Perfume in the form of a fun “Devo” version of Frog Legs.

Mantis Ghetts – Umphrey’s McGee, Des Moines, IA 7/15/09

Presumably named as such because it would make for some mean backround music to a ghetto gangsta rap tune (or not), Umphrey’s McGee busted out Mantis Ghetts for the first time ever at the great highway 80 food oasis, Des Moines, Iowa. Mantis Ghetts made for an exciting bust out as its only previous circulation came in level 8 of the special downloads made available by the bands innovative PUSH technology in conjunction with the recent studio release of Mantis. This all-instrumental beat-driven jam maintains the same dark feeling throughout, but remains fresh all the while with dueling guitar melodies, a big buildup, and an eerie keyboard lullabye to close it out.

READ ON for more jam band bust outs…

Last Week’s Sauce is a recurring column featuring recordings of shows that took place the previous week. Thanks to spreetaper for the photo.

Artist & Title: BBVD – You & Me & The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight (Baby)
Date & Venue: 2009-07-15 Wednesday in the Gorge, Lewiston ME
Taper & Show Download: Adam Hudson

BBVD, that’s – yep, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I know what you’re thinking, what year is it? Well you’re safe and sound here in 2009 and we are well over ten years removed from the swing revival (a movement that was accelerated by a GAP commercial of all things). According to the taper, the band just recently allowed audience taping. The band plays tonight at Lincoln Center in New York.

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READ ON for more tracks from the likes of Mule and Son Volt…

You Can’t Always Get What You Want is the closing track on the 1969 Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed. Regular readers may remember we did our first Stones song edition of Cover Wars two months ago when we took a look at covers of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.

There are some very interesting quotes regarding the drumming on this track included in the book According to the Rolling Stones, you can see the page in question over at Google Books (what an amazing resource).

THE CONTESTANTS:

Aretha Franklin: This cover comes off a 1981 Aretha Franklin album that universally gets bad to lukewarm reviews. The arrangement is very 80′s. Still, it’s worth a couple minutes to hear the Queen Of Soul sing lead on this tune. Source: Love All The Hurt Away

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READ ON to hear the rest of this week’s Cover Wars contestants…

A couple of months back, we told you about roots-jam-rockers Assembly Of Dust’s new guest-laden album Some Assembly Required which includes appearances from a who’s who of the jam scene. In anticipation of the album’s July 21 release the band is offering up select tracks from the album for free through July 14. All you need to do is head here, enter your email address and the songs are yours gratis, so what are you waiting for?

• List Time: 10 Most Underrated Fictional Bands
• Cheap Trick’s new album to be released on limited edition 8-Track
• Cover Alert: St. Vincent tackles The Beatles
• HAD shares a Ryan Adams’ demo – If I Am A Stranger
• Os Mutantes to record first new album in over 35 years
• TVOTR front man Kyp Malone to release a solo record this fall

Finally, earlier this week Scotty shared a fantastic live performance from Brooklyn indie-rockers Dirty Projectors. Today, we have some unfortunate news to share as the band was involved in an accident with their van earlier this week when it flipped over traveling from Michigan to Toronto. According to a blog post on their MySpace page no one was seriously injured in the crash, but it did force the band to cancel of a couple of their Canadian tour stops. We wish the band a speedy recovery and a quick return to the stage.

In what seems to be the hot thing to do among indie acts these days (for examples see Jenny Lewis and Arcade Fire) – Conor Oberst is set to release a documentary called One Of My Kind. The 60 minute film focuses on the last year and a half of Oberst leading his Mystic Valley Band and includes behind-the-scenes footage of their 2008 tour as well as from the recording of their first album. One Of My Kind will be available as a free stream or HD download exclusively on Causecast.org, IFC.com, conoroberst.com, mergerecords.com, and wichita-recordings.com – with the hopes that fans will donation to one of the variety of nonprofits or causes on Causecast.

• List Time: 30 Most Controversial Album Covers
• HAD can’t seem to get enough of French band Pheonix
• Cover Alert: Of Montreal tackle David Bowie
• Rolling Stones to reissue their 14 most recent albums
• IFYAF kicks down Blind Pilot’s recent show at the Iota Club
• Kurt Loder remembers Kurt Cobain 15 years after his death

Finally, highly underrated jam act Assembly Of Dust will release their second full length effort Some Assembly Required on July 21. This marks their first album without keyboardist Nate Wilson, who left the band to pursue solo work. The album features a veritable who’s who of the jam community guesting throughout the effort. Among those who stopped by the studio to lend a hand are Mike Gordon, Keller Williams, Grace Potter, Bela Fleck and Al Schnier. The band kicks off a brief West Coast run on April 23 in Los Angeles.