Ahh, Chris Reimenschneider, what did the kids ever do to you? In his Vita.mn blurb for the A Night in the BoxWrite A Letter release (where they played two shows Sunday night—an early all ages and a late 21+) he wrote that he found it difficult to enjoy “these college-age white kids in fedora hats singing faux-gospel and dirt-stomping bluegrass.” He ultimately praised them for their more rocking style, previously noted on HowWasThe Show here and here.
The irony of the blurb, especially the later comparison to Jack White seemed not lost on drummer Alex Dalton. As A Night in the Box tore up their set with goofy, self-assured aplomb, he parroted back the put-down with grin. Dalton had just played a solo guitar number that channeled the ethereal beauty of Blind Willie Johnson, spare and hushed—the audience was dead silent to catch it all. It’s one thing to acknowledge that Elvis stole Chuck Berry’s sound and Led Zeppelin plugged in the blues, but it’s another to condescend to the up and coming crop of re-interpreters and re-contextualizers. It is the beauty of music that it is a document, and not a documentary, not proprietary, but organic, ready for interpretation and innovation. The White Stripes rock so hard because Jack is such an inveterate thief, a curator and collagist of sound.
A Night in the Box have squarely put themselves at the fore of transformative American music, showing great respect for those roots, especially in their rendition of Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues.” Getting the crowd up and dancing for songs like “Can I Bleed?,” wailing out “Let Me Know” and serving as the backbone for banging a cappella standout “The Hustle” show them to be artists unafraid to mine their sonic history and make it relevant, powerful and fun again. The Blind Boys of Alabama can’t live forever, and cross-pollination is life-blood for music, the strongest preservation effort.
First opener Bitch N’ Brown were shit-kickers. Full on, dirty country bar shit-kickers. I felt appropriately attired in cowboy boots, and although I could take or leave them, they seemed totally into their punked-out George Thoroughgood sound, so at least they were fun to watch bounce around.
Second opener Plastic Chord are some sort of mutating beast, they are never the same as when I saw them last and they push their own mix by throwing so many people into the gene pool. With nine people on stage, they were at their best with layered proggy sound morphing into a howling dance party. It’s an electro-clatter, Bowie-channeling mess, a gypsy whirl and rush. Sometimes their numbers worked against them, muddying up parts where simplicity may have served them better, but how can you not enjoy a show that features a theremin played by a skeleton-glove hand? Theatrics and sonic tricks abound in their set, and their free-range nature made for some shining moments.
Clayton Hagen, Travis Hetman and Kailyn Spencer of A Night in the Box all performed with the verve and passion that underlie their desire to make music that matters to them, and can be enjoyed by all sorts of folk. They go on tour to the East Coast later this month and I’m sure their two shows in Cambridge, MA, will give those Harvard kids a chance to give it up for “The Hustle,” the gospel according to our works, the culture we’ve been building.
