Young Livers

Things have been a little nuts around here lately, coinciding with a concert drought over the winter. The last show I saw was in November when the Smithereens played in Salem, but I had April Fool's Day circled on my calendar because I managed to procure a ticket to the sold-out Rocket From the Crypt show at Brighton Music Hall.

I saw RFTC at the Middle East downstairs in the fall of '95 on the Scream Dracula Scream tour and then a few years later when they were opening for Foo Fighters at Avalon and at the State Theatre in Portland. The band has been on hiatus for several years while frontman John "Speedo" Reis toured with Hot Snakes and the Night Marchers, but when they announced a short tour, I acted fast. And I'm glad I did.


Opening the show as Ex Hex, Mary Timony's new band now that Wild Flag is no longer a going concern. The all-female trio traffics in '70s glam rock sounds, with a 7-inch out and an album on Merge due out later this year. Ex Hex embraced the rock, with Timony breaking out big riffs and hot solos and bassist Betsy Wright high-kicking all over the place. Just fun, big rock that kicked ass and made me excited for that new record.

RFTC was resplendent in their matching outfits and wasted no time blowing the roof off the club. Reis mixed in some funny stage banter between songs, riffing on the "Beantown" moniker, April Fool's and coyotes and doing some tongue-in-cheek crowd baiting, but primarily the band was all business. Reis and lead guitarist Andy "ND" Stamets laid down some seriously heavy riffage, while the two-man horn section wailed and provided backing vocals and Mario Rubalcaba (who has been playing with OFF! in recent years) thundered on the drums.

The band's 18-song set (give or take a few) was peppered with music from throughout their catalog, but the biggest response was from material from their classic Circa Now and Scream Dracula Scream albums. The mid-set trio of "Middle," "Born in '69" and "On a Rope," which lead off SDS, was mind-blowingly awesome. So furious was the set that a decent mosh pit was raging just to my right; don't see those much anymore. For the encore, Reis went into an extended intro about how the band was going to play a new song that was going to be available as a free download...and then RFTC launched into "'Glazed" from Circa Now. It was perfect.

Brighton Rock

I had never been to the club once known as Harper's Ferry in Allston, but in the last week I saw two shows at the venue now called Brighton Music Hall. Last Saturday, it was to see the sold-out double bill of Jason Isbell and Hayes Carll; I knew the former from both his stint in the Drive-By Truckers and his subsequent solo work, but I was unfamiliar with the latter other than to know that his star is rising.

Isbell and Carll had been trading off headlining status, and this last show of the tour found Carll in the top spot. After a rousing set from Shovels & Rope, Isbell and his band the 400 Unit launched into an hourlong set sprinkled with selections from their new album Here We Rest and old DBT favorites. The newer material leans more toward introspective country on songs like "Alabama Pines" and "Codeine," but Isbell and crew showed they could still bring the rock with DBT's hard-driving "Never Gonna Change," which included a chunk of Hendrix's "Stone Free," and "Goddamn Lonely Love." A highlight was "Outfit," an Isbell-penned classic from DBT's "Decoration Day" album. It was all-too-short but potent performance.

Carll was only a minute into his first song when a loud cheer arose from both ends of the bar, where patrons saw the Bruins beat Montreal in double OT. That distraction out of the way, Carll and his band went on to play two hours of folk-country that leaned heavily on boozy honky tonk. A Houston native, he noted that as a child, he watched the Celtics beat the Rockets in the 1985-86 NBA finals. He had wanted to be a sportswriter, but said he couldn't handle the emotional distress involved, so he became a songwriter instead. With songs like "My Baby Left Me for Jesus," "Bottle in My Hand" and "Another Like You," a duet with Shovels & Rope singer Cary Ann Hearst, it's clear Carll made the right decision.

Four days later, I trekked into Allston again to see Ted Leo and Buffalo Tom's Bill Janovitz play solo at BMH. The show had originally been scheduled for January, but Leo postponed because of a family emergency or something. As with the show a few days earlier, the Bruins were once again engaged in an overtime battle with Montreal, this one being game 7 of the series. The OT began about 10 minutes before Janovitz took the stage and I was so engrossed in it, I continued watching from the front room while he was playing. He was about two songs in, playing Buffalo Tom's "Porchlight," when Nathan Horton scored the series winner (he also scored Saturday night's OT winner). A huge cheer erupted and Janovitz congratulated the B's before continuing on. Armed with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, Janovitz played an eclectic collection of Buffalo Tom and solo songs and covers including a spot-on rendition of Elvis Costello's "Man Out of Time."

Ted Leo opted to play the majority of the show with an electric guitar, churning out a frenetic 22 songs in 100 minutes or so. He noted that his voice was a bit shot from a recent upper respiratory ailment that required hospitalization, but you wouldn't know it from his typically chatty between-song banter and his passionate high-register vocals. As he is wont to do during solo shows and radio appearances, Leo played several covers, including Husker Du's "Could You Be the One?," The Waterboys' "Fisherman's Blues," Nick Lowe's "And So It Goes," and the evening's closer "Do Anything You Want to Do" by Eddie and the Hot Rods. He played a new song that he said he's still working on called "The Little Smug Supper Club" and many old favorites including "Bridges and Squares" (written when he lived in the Boston area), "Timorous Me," "Me and Mia," and "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?" He broke out an acoustic guitar and stood at the edge of the stage to lead a singalong of "Bottled in Cork," which turned into a bit of a round. But the highlight of the set was when he played a cover of Buffalo Tom's "Reason Why" and was joined by Bill Janovitz and opener Drew O'Doherty for the choruses; Janovitz kept running off stage and back on to sing. Leo said he and his old band Chisel listened to a lot of Buffalo Tom when they were touring in the early '90s and they covered this song. When Leo announced before the last two songs that he'd be wrapping up soon because his voice was shot, someone groaned and he joked about the injustice of a 20+ song set.

Indeed, it was a value-packed evening by two veterans of the alt-rock world. I'd say everybody got their $12 worth.

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