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Avett Brothers in Teaneck
Thursday, August 25 2005
In the early part of the day I focused my attention on bolting down the eastmost pillar of the laboratory deck. This was a much more difficult procedure than the westmost pillar had been because I wanted to correct a warp that had allowed the pillar to wander somewhat downroof from its initial position, causing the deck surface to slant northeastward. To straighten that leg, I'd have to jack up the deck on that side and then, using some sort of "come along" tool, I'd have to pull the leg back into its old position and then pin it in place with a lag bolt. Jacking the deck was simply a matter of piling up enough wood as a fulcrum and then using a wrecking bar as a lever to raise it to a suitable level and then rest it on a piece of wood. The first such assembly failed spectacularly, sending wood pieces sliding off the shallowly-sloping shop roof. So the second time I set up such a structure, I fired a bunch of drywall screws into it at various angles to hold it together.
I made my makeshift come-along from a piece of chain I'd happened to buy several weeks ago. I wrapped it around the bottom of the warped 4 by 4 pillar and then used the wrecking bar as a lever to pull pry the other end of the chain so it would tug the pillar away from the direction it had wandered. When I had it in position, I tied the bar in place and ran around to drill a hole and pin the pillar with an eight inch by half inch lag bolt. Its wandering days were then over.
In the evening Gretchen and I went to a little barbecue party being held by our friend Jon, a National Geographic adventurer. But we had plans to attend a performance of the Avett Brothers an hour and a half away in Teaneck New Jersey at 10:00pm, so we could only stay for about forty five minutes (which, for me, amounted to two Coronas). There were only four or five other people at Jon's party by the time we left, and they were all rolling their eyes about Teaneck. Why would anyone leave one of Jon's barbecues to go to Teaneck? So then Gretchen had to explain the Avett Brothers, and how she aspires to be a groupie and all of that. But there's no way to really understand the special magic that is the Avett Brothers unless you go to their shows. Whatever it is isn't easy to capture on CD, although that's all we had to work with. Unfortunately, though, the CD that Gretchen had burned for Jon refused to play in his CD player.
The drive went quickly and for most of it we were listening to a compilation of Sunny Day Real Estate tunes.
The opening band for the Avett Brothers was a band called the Otters, a youthful New Jersey bluegrass band with technical skills but not a whole lot of stage charisma. Gretchen put their deficits all down to age. "Is he even old enough to be drinking that beer?" she asked me at one point, in reference to the singer/guitarist and his Heineken.
Then the Avett Brothers took the stage. Oh sweet Jesus! I'd only seen them once before and was at the edge of my seat the whole time. It was the same story tonight, but it was in a smaller, more intimate venue and they played a full set as the featured band. They keep getting lumped in with bluegrass bands, both in terms of who opens for them and how they're advertised (the poster Gretchen snagged tonight had "Killer Bluegrass!" scrawled across it in magic marker as a promotional afterthought). But this is only because of the instruments they play and their obsession with geography. The complex structure of their songs has a lot more in common with progressive rock, with influences that appear to range from ragtime to The Cure. But all of that can be captured on CD. What can't be is their stage presence. It's something utterly unique. Like all truly excellent musicians, they seem to channel some sort of awesome force that enters their bodies from an unseen dimension. In doing so they stomp the stage and jump up and down in ways that would be unimaginable in polite company but make perfect sense in the context of their music. I love the little drum kit pieces they stomp on when they need to kick things up a notch. Never has a "bluegrass" band ever been able to register so many levels of dynamics.
All this energy channeling comes at a price, one that actually reminds me of the thermodynamic limits that mold the lives of Emperor Penguins (remember, I just saw March of the Penguins). Both Seth and Scott (players of guitar and banjo, respectively) break strings in nearly every song. Some songs even succeed in destroying less easily-replaced parts of their instruments such as bridges. As these things break, the Avetts hand them off to their manager, who rapidly restrings them. But he can only do so much, so the Avetts have developed all sorts of ways to cope with missing strings in arbitrary parts of any song. Seeing them perform live, one gets the sense that they are bumping up against the upper-limit of whatever energy can be channeled by the technology of their traditional instruments. But it's not just their technology that is running into limits; it's also their bodies, which are quickly drenched in sweat even when the air conditioning is in top form. And unlike other bands, I notice they don't drink beer while they perform. I have a feeling they would if they could.
Tonight the Avetts made many brief interjections of what amounted to stand-up comedy, and these were uniformly hilarious. Sometimes these would serve as a comic relief during a particularly severe episode of broken instrument. Other times they would provide intros for songs or as realtime footnotes for lyrics.
The show ended abruptly without encores. As usual, the Avetts were very convivial to the fans who milled around afterwards. Gretch and I found ourselves with a couple young women from New Paltz, would-be Avett Brother groupies themselves. One of them is running as a Green Party candidate for Ulster County representative. "Hudson Valley represent!" they shouted when they learned where we were from. They were over-the-top extroverted and casually shocking in the same way that Gretchen is. But because Gretchen knows almost no one like that, I half-expected her to not like these girls. She looked at them funny for a little while when they first showed up, in the same way that people look at Gretchen funny for a little while as they try to figure out whether or not she is in fact for real. In the end, though, Gretchen decided these girls were awesome.
For some reason the ladies made made the mistake of badgering the Avett Brothers until they'd extracted their political views. This wasn't easy; initially they said they didn't pay much attention to politics. But we all know that's the lie a Republican always tells to lefties when they're demanding a statement of political position. In the end it turned out that both of the Avett Brothers are closet Bushies, though Bob their bass player is blue state all the way. It just goes to show that you can't expect all your heroes to think the same way you do, assuming they're really thinking at all, something that (in their defense) the Avett Bushies had claimed not to have done.
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