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Andreas Kapsalis Trio
The Raven, 142 N. Cortez, Prescott
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008
You Probably Missed It. I Almost Did.
You know what I love about Prescott?
Well, take tonight. I go down to the Raven, to meet my neighbor and discuss a real estate deal. (Yeah, I know. But I want his house, and he wants my money.) I hope it’s going to be quiet, I tell Dan. There’s a band setting up.
So, you’ve already guessed the punchline. We try to talk. But it’s not the volume that takes us off track, it’s the music, and the stories it spins, word-free. It’s the amazement factor: Look! Dan says. He’s bowing his cymbal!
Yep, the front percussion guy, who I later learn is Darren Garvey, has a freaking cello bow or something, and he draws it over the rim of his big cymbal, which he then sets wobbling in cosmic song. (Neighbor Dan left before the part, a few numbers on, where Darren held his electrified glockenspiel upright and bowed its keys. “Unearthly” would be the inevitable cliché.) Minutes later: What the hey is that? He’s playing a small black-and-white keyboard with his fingers, but he’s also blowing into twenty inches of plastic tubing leading into it. A lung-powered accordion?
And shakers — how can you be brilliant at playing a shaker? But there’s this one round cheese-grater doodad, I swear Darren gets it talking, chattering in Hindi…
And, Look, I say to Dan, how does that guitarist do that — playing harmonics and normal notes at the same time? (Still haven’t figured it out. Later it occurs to me to wonder how his fingers dance in exactly the right place, at speeds that defy the laws of physics, even though he never opens his eyes.) Andreas Kapsalis, the trio’s eponym and guitar genius, does a lot of that two-hands-on-the-neck thing, no picking or strumming involved, where his left hand plays a bass figure and his right punches a melody only a few frets downstream (or sometimes up). Fingertips banging strings against the fretboard, that’s all that makes the sound.
You’ve seen it before, but this guy uses it to do things that may be illegal in some states. The music sails through everything, tango samba koto little-French-jazz-combo, often in one song — but, rocking rhythms notwithstanding, clearly Andreas has done harvest time in the groves of flamenco.
Can I just say something? If I’m uttering “flamenco” and you’re hearing “Gypsy Kings,” you can stop right there. What jumped into my listening brain was: LSD flamenco. Not like the musicians were trippin’, no. It’s more like, remember those experiments in the 70s, when they’d give spiders acid, and then watch how their webs turned out? Well, this trio’s music bears the same relation to flamenco that those webs bear to the static, symmetrical product of suburban garden spiders. Patterns no sober spider would ever have thought of.
Jamie Gallagher, on the relatively normal drum kit and djembe, powers the trio through this funhouse of rhythms with beats that push you so hard it’s really a job to sit still. He’s one of these drummers, the joy is in the groove and all over his face, he’s dancing back there. It’s great when he gets solos, because he has a lot to say and you’re so glad he did. If I’ve given the impression it’s all just a maniacal patchwork of eclecticism, my bad. It’s more like a narrative, with an arc — with suspense, even. And laughs. Jamie’s the pulse of it all, making sense.
Truth, now: I feared at first that the act would be about self-conscious variousness, especially watching Darren picking up and putting down this and that — I’ve only mentioned about a tenth of what he deploys, he’s laying out great counter-rhythms with a shaker in each hand, banging one of them on the Chinese cymbal, leaning out to ding the triangle and then stroking a bow around the ocean harp (“An acoustical friction instrument that sounds like a synthesizer. Filled with water it produces a magical sound reminiscent of whales,” says LarkInTheMorning.com).
But this trio lives up to its ambitions. The show grabs you. It wasn’t just me. The rest of the audience appeared to take it the same way, and those I asked gladly testified. Each piece held me like someone telling a really gripping story; the show’s end was like coming to, after sitting through a feature film in the dark where you hope and fear for the hero. Darren says I’m not the first person to tell them that. On their website you can listen to the Film Scoring Reel of pieces Andreas has created for a bunch of films.
And these film flavors roll out scenes from tippy-tap whimsical to lush, dark, mysterious. Throbbing. You’re in a thriller spy flick, Shaft, Bond, Steve McQueen; there’s a circus, a juggling act followed by that swooping tumbling trapeze family, and memories of Mr. Kite; Zorba the Greek segues to manic belly dance swinging out into a little European café dance band. Not for nothing is one tune called “Strangers to Fellini.”
You know what I love about Prescott? Wandering into something that makes me call on the Name of the Lord, just blocks from my home. It’s not the first time that’s happened, and I never had an experience like this in LA, getting to sit four feet from such a high-altitude performance in a place where I just had a tasty appetizer and a great glass of wine. (Props to the Raven for being a leader in Prescott’s cultural yogic flying.) Every member of this trio is a master. They’re all percussionists — Andreas drums his guitar — and shaking you with a beat is the mission. It’s only three guys, and yet it’s an orchestra. Right here in Prescott.
You probably missed it, I almost did. But they said they’d be back at the Raven in February, most likely, and I’ll do my best to keep you from missing it again.
Find them at http://www.andreaskapsalis.com/ .
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