BIG HIT…
Last Thursday, I arrived at Second Street Brewery (1814 Second St., 982-3030) a little after 6:30 pm, and every single table was already claimed. My companion had beaten me to the place and had snagged the final table-a fortunate thing, since it was clear no one was even close to giving up their cherished spots. The standing-room-only remainder of the crowd did just that: They stood. For about three hours. They were so enraptured by the cold locally brewed beer, the vibe and-most importantly-the music, that they were oblivious their knees were locked in basically the same position for the duration of an entire NFL football game. I wove my way through the tightly packed mass of humanity and cocked an ear toward the stage to hear the Santa Fe All Stars.
The All Stars consist of local roots luminaries Joe West, Sharon Gilchrist, Ben Wright and Susan Holmes, all brilliant on their own and full of potential as a supergroup. West, of course, has long been the slightly askew alt.country king of Santa Fe, a songwriter as smart and talented as they come and completely fearless when it comes to either campy parody or straight-up emotion. Gilchrist, who often appeared a touch uncomfortable singing and playing with the now defunct-and once massively popular-nouveau bluegrass group Mary & Mars, has come into her own; her voice sounds confident, her grin a little wider. Wright, a man just as comfortable ripping through a weird rock set as fingerpicking through an old standard, is as dependable as they come, and Holmes has been a rhythm section stalwart for years. Collectively they are a can't-lose proposition.
As they picked and grinned through a set that was a little bit country, a little bit bluegrass and a little bit traditional, it was all there: West's slightly perplexed intelligence marking his face; mandolins trading hands; the spotlight shifting from Holmes to Gilchrist; Wright's omnipresent lopsided grin. Some of the songs worked, some didn't; this is a band that hasn't quite gelled yet, but when it does, it just may end up the best band in Santa Fe, and certainly one of the most popular.
Traversing the way from my table, dodging sharp elbows and tapping toes, to the bathroom, I remembered an article I once read in some magazine or other that claimed Oasis was the British Lynyrd Skynyrd. Just as Skynyrd can get a barroom full of Miller-swilling rednecks with dubious teeth to bond in a nationalistic fervor by caterwauling "Freebird," an Oasis song on a pub jukebox prompts ale-swilling hooligans, also with dubious teeth, to come together in a happy, drunken spirit. The two bands provide less pop music moments and more a requisite national soundtrack.
There was a similar feel at Second Street that night (catch the All Stars every Thursday this month there-no cover). Not that the crowd was full of yokels; everyone there boasted a mouth full of choppers, and the collective intelligence seemed at the usual high Santa Fe level. What connected the scene to the Skynyrd/Oasis scenario was the concept that a certain type of roots music-smart, fun, a little twisted-is the soundtrack to Santa Fe. Pare down the nationalistic fervor to a regional one, replace Strats and Teles with fiddles and standup basses and it's instant Santa Fe pride.
While the buzz and energy of the crowd proved a touch overwhelming, the Santa Fe All Stars, in their own way, proved a comforting presence, a familiar entity,
the reason why we're all here at this little brew pub in the middle of the work week, after all
. As West, Holmes, Gilchrist and Wright sashayed through a fairly traditional version of "Good Night Irene" and a sloshed crowd swayed along, I realized the All Stars and their ilk are the Oasis of Santa Fe, and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply barking up the wrong piñon.
…AND BIG MISS
Even in a town such as ours, with such a hodgepodge of aesthetics and strange bedfellows, it felt a little odd a few days after the deluge of roots music to find myself at Saturday night's Warehouse 21 show. Featuring Austin's Zookeeper, the W21 event draped me with sadness, and not just because an emo band was the headlining group.
It's not that Zookeeper's main man, Austin emo king Chris Simpson, didn't try; it's not that he doesn't write good songs. Something was just…missing. Part of what was missing was a drummer (I figure if you've got a bass player plugged in, you need a drummer to boot), but more so it was a connection. W21 is so valuable because it is a truly alternative space. With its carefully coiffed disaffected teens and bands culled from the generationally specific Myspace.com, W21 is what I wish Santa Fe should be: in touch, hard-rocking and thoughtful. But this night the chemistry was off, due mainly to Zookeeper's lackluster performance and, frankly, the group's teeny bit of pretension. I couldn't help but think our own Cherry Tempo, which opened-and which solicits more emotion and just plain rocks harder-should have been the headliner. Sometimes you just need a drummer.
