'All the spindles whine'
On 'guest singers,' Gillian Welch, Fruit Bats, and songs as microcosms.
Welcome back to Light Up Schmaltz, the Minor Moon newsletter. We’re on tour in WI, MN, IL and IN this week.
Perhaps you are like me and experiencing a lot of political anxiety right now. This newsletter is not about the election. It’s about music and collective experience. I hope it’s a little source of respite. Writing it has been for me. And I hope you’ll vote.
This month on the newsletter I talk about being a part of Fruit Bats’ My Sweet Midwest weekend in Chicago. Plus: reflections on the guest-singer-led rock show format, songs as ‘manifold’ objects, and celebrating the music of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.
I also include a live rip of Minor Moon performing ‘Revelator’ by Gillian Welch at Color Club in Oct ‘23. It’s a little raw with a lot of joy.
Thanks to everyone who subscribed this past month. I’m really enjoying this open ended outlet and I appreciate that folks are coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or share with a friend if they might dig it.
The Fruit Bats & Friends Midwest Jam, 10/18/24
This past week was deeply special. On Friday night, 10/18 the Fruit Bats & Friends Midwest Jam rocked the Empty Bottle with a wide array of songs from midwestern-rooted artists and a bunch of incredible guest singers. We also played a collection of Fruit Bats deep cuts and a couple FB favorites. Then, on Saturday, Minor Moon got to open up a dream bill with Fruit Bats, Kevin Morby and Hurray for the Riff Raff. The whole weekend was a true honor to be a part of — and it was such a deep joy to share such a big stage with my friends Chet, Jason, Max and Sam. Thanks to everyone who came early :)
Zooming in on the Empty Bottle show, I got to help Eric D. Johnson, frontman of Fruit Bats and a real hero of mine, and his team by contributing musical direction to the Fruit Bats & Friends Midwest Jam, helping put together our stellar rhythm section (shoutout Sarah Weddle & Kelly Hannemann! Also, an additional cheers to Frank LoCrasto, Fruit Bats keys maestro and all around superstar who joined us for the jam), coordinating with the Chicago guests and playing guitar in the band.
The whole set was, frankly, sick. Some highlights include: Andrew Sa singing Arthur Russell’s ‘I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face’ with EDJ on harmonies (!!!), Kevin Morby crushing The Replacements’ ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ (a song he was apparently born to sing), Eric Slick on Violent Femmes’ ‘Kiss Off’ (that man has a completely singular energy and I am grateful to know him) and playing the Fruit Bats deep cuts: ‘Rainbow Sign’ & ‘Little Acorn’ from 2003’s Mouthfuls, and ‘Dragon Ships’ and ‘Buffalo & Deer’ from 2001’s Echolocation. But really and truly, every song was a highlight. Liam Kazar doing Chuck Berry, Hawk Nebula on John Prine, Izzy Olive (of Half Gringa) crushing a Red Red Meat into Liz Phair two-fer-one, Rahila & Clarence (of Family Junket) lighting up the whole room with their Tracy Chapman duet, and Julia Steiner (of Ratboys) making us all (including my guitar string) SURRENDER to the priceless majesty of Cheap Trick … just peep the setlist for yourself:
I don’t think I’ve ever played the Bottle with that much energy in the room. It’s one of those nights that is hard to explain, and it was impossible to take in the whole thing as it happened.
I think all of favorite shows I’ve played are too much to take in at once (see last month’s post, about a show that took like 6 months to even partially digest). These kinds of shows always have a dimension that breaks an expected formula, they live on the edge of chaos and magic, they are defining their own reality as they happen, and so they warp time: being in the show is pure flow, reflecting about it is an ever-changing and expanding palace of connections and meanings.
Maybe that’s at least partially true for any performance, but there’s something thicker and more textured when there are all of those moving parts, all of those “let’s rip and see how it goes” components. I think this is why, as a category, I love being in the thick of these guest-singer-fronted shows like Friday 10/18/24 at the Bottle. And it really took me back to another one that I led a week and a year prior.
Time’s the Revelator
It’s been a year and change since we did the last Gillian Welch Night at Color Club. I got to bring in a ton friends and folks I admire in Chicago to sing these songs that have defined what I love about songwriting so much. In the context of the shows and season this month, plus a new Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings album (and tour, I’ll be seeing them live for the first time in a few weeks!), I’ve been really reflecting on that show last year.
I think great songs hold the capacity to be many-faced mirrors of our manifold selves … and what the fuck does that mean? To me, it means that our individual “self” is always in flux, and is not one uniform being, but an interconnected and often contradictory set of forces and tendencies, affinities, desires and metabolized experiences, always moving and reassembling in different constellations, and all shrouded in a lot of mystery.1 And I think that’s also true of the songs that stick with us and get song over and over. Same chords, same melody, same song; and somehow it is shifty. Like we are.
No one I know of does this particular kind of dark magic better than Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings. Their songs often appear to tell concrete stories, but they leave an uncanny amount room for multiple meanings to twist around in. They work with references to biblical verse, mythology and (of course) folk music traditions — forms that are themselves a culmination of a patchwork of different versions, synthesized or quilted together to form a whole over generations and decentralized cultural practices. They are a slice of our collective consciousness folded into a song-shaped microcosm: they contain contradictions, moral ambivalence, desire without clear direction, a geography that ripples in time and space, and memories so hazy they manage to say more about the fraught act of remembering than any concrete event in the past. But, unlike the attention-grabbing bricolage of, say, a social media feed or a listicle, these shiny things are about orienting us towards mystery, love, movement, life, joy and sorrow.
In October of last year, we sang a bunch of these songs, many with fresh arrangements and each with a different singer or singers. Today I’m sharing the one I sang, ‘Revelator.’ This one resonates today — it’s about activity, movement, deception, the thrill and danger of a coming change, the onslaught of time, the mythic and the mundane wound up into one exhilarating and haunting thing.
Up in the morning
Up and on the ride
I drive into Corning
And all the spindles whine
And every day is getting straighter
Time's the revelator
The revelator
I’m finishing up this writing in a moment when so much seems to hang in the balance. And I’m about to go on tour — its hard to keep the day-to-day tasks of teaching and tour-prep together while there’s so much collective anticipation and ennui in the air. In this context, I’m finding that thinking about ‘time’ — ungraspable, cosmic and historic time — feels weirdly centering. Somehow, sometimes, with music and language and the right mindset to create or receive it, we can tap into the incomprehensible bigness of things and it can remind us where our own power really lies: in our relationships, our actions, our will to connect, and the act of choosing what kinds of processes we put our energy and hope into. That remains true no matter what happens in this hectic, often heartbreaking moment we’re in.
Meanwhile, the mini van spindles are gonna be whining around the midwest this weekend:
Ticket links, etc.
11.7 ~ Madison, WI at Der Rathskeller (The Rath at UW Madison)
11.8 ~ Northfield, MN at The Cave (at Carleton College)
11.9 ~ Urbana, IL at Rosebowl Tavern supporting Sweet Megg
11.10 ~ Bloomington, IL at Blockhouse Bar with Kay Krull & Logan Boyd Carithers
and…. finally: here’s ‘Revelator’ by Gillian Welch. Performed by Minor Moon (10/11/24)
Track credits:
Sam Cantor - guitar, vocals
Tristan Huygen - bass, vocals
Sam Subar - drums
Chet Zenor - guitar
I recorded this on my little Zoom H4n Pro with some help from Dorian Gehring & Sully Davis. I did my best to mix it for ya. It’s live, baby. Enjoy.
For any lefty Nietzsche fans out there, this podcast is for you.