By: Bob Longmore
The Hexagon Bar in South Minneapolis showed what it’s made of, some Mohawks and some mohair, some Vikings hoodies and black T-shirts. A diverse crowd for sure.
Opener Chris Koza, just back from tour, played a low-key set of material mostly by himself, but sometimes joined by guitarist, Peter Sieve. Koza plugged the headliners by saying, “They have a lot of instruments, so they are going to be good.”
Dressed in sport coats and looking like university professors, Romantica played a schizophrenic set of alt-country flavored sing alongs and introspective soul confessionals. Singer Ben Kyle’s voice was surprisingly delicate yet strong.
It seemed as if the crowd was not in the mood for as much introspection as Romantica dished out. Playing as a three-piece, the band’s performance was by definition stripped down, but they seemed to take this even further, often leaving Kyle alone strumming his acoustic guitar sparingly and letting his voice alone tell the tale. Kyle with his eyes closed, singing lilting tales of love, seemed to dare the audience to try to connect with him.
While the band did seem to lose a portion of the audience during the middle part of their set, if you were able to filter that out and focus on the songs, they were beautiful. Romantica did pull the audience back in with their last two relatively upbeat songs, including “Oscar Wilde,” with a catchy syncopated chorus that had a couple people at least clapping along as Kyle sang, “You just sit there quoting lines / from the irresistible Oscar Wilde.”
If Romantica’s set was ill suited to the Hexagon, then I can’t imagine a better match for the venue than Big Ditch Road. Their songs have the dirty, gritty sound that suits the blue-collar vibe of the place.
The band started with “Seven Hours” off their last full-length album, Suicide Note Reader’s Companion. I have to interject my personal opinion here, this is one of my favorite songs I’ve heard in the past couple years, dare I say that I have ever heard. It is a perfectly balanced tale of melancholy with desolate lyrics and swirling guitar parts provided by Ted Held and slide guitarist Brian O’Neill. Then the song doesn’t end, it explodes and dissolves in a furious rush of noise.
I can’t imagine anyone singing BDR songs except Darin Wald and this one in particular is so personal and so charged, so tuned to his voice and the band’s sound, that they are interminably married.
His unique voice has that high lonesome feel like so many of country music’s dark heroes. He lets the words out with an easygoing pace, not really in a hurry to get to the chorus, leaving space to reflect and leaving time for the words to hang in the air. By the time he gets to the part where he says, “Seven hour ago / I was really close / I was really close,” it just makes my skin crawl.
Okay, I will try to make my way back to objectivity now.
The band was here to celebrate the release of their new EP, The Great Dissent. The first track off that album, “Detroit City Mouse,” features a thundering drum intro by Tim Baumgart and is peppered with great lines like, “As long as I am able / can I come to your house? / As long as I am able / to get up off the couch.”
Held provided a haunting percussive backdrop to another song off the new EP, “My Body May Hover,” by beating his guitar with a drum mallet. The song, wrought with anticipation, creeps along quietly. A contrast to that was the stop and start melody of “I Am a Diplomat,” which had Martin Devaney (the guru behind BDR’s label, Eclectone) cheerleading the band through the song’s up and down permutations.
The Hex audience that ebbed and flowed from the music room to the rest of the bar for most of the night stood at attention for most of BDR’s set. I saw more than a few with knowing smirks on their rapt faces. It was the look of knowing that you are seeing something special.
Wald introduced “Aren’t These Condos Killer(s)?” with a rant about “all the fucking condos” going up around town; a notion that was received well by the Hex audience. The straightforward rock song eschews the deep introspective Wald for the pissed off variety, as a wailing slide guitar moans beneath, he sings, “I’d Burn your precious condo to the ground / while people in the suburbs run their mouths.”
Big Ditch Road’s live show contains all the elements required for a memorable night. At times soft and slow, at times seething and loud, the band knows just the right formula to build drama and tension in their songs. Then it’s all over and you feel like it just started.
Photo by David de Young.
Location Info:
Hexagon Bar
Artist Info: Big Ditch Road, Chris Koza, Romantica
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