In sunny Portland, Maine there’s The Expo, our as it’s known on legal documents, the Portland Exposition Building. It was built in 1914 and is the second-oldest multi-purpose arena still in use, with Matthews Arena in Boston coming in first (this is a reoccurring them if you’re from the Northeast.) The Expo is primarily used for high school and middle school sporting events. Basketball and track mainly. I believe the Boston Celtics G League team plays there, but don’t quote me on that.
Now, back in the day, (cough cough…the 1990s,) we would go see shows at The Expo in addition to spending our weekends there sitting on hard bleachers watching sports. Phish played there and even further back in the day The Beach Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and even Queen played at the Expo, which is conveniently located across the street from a Denny’s. Still to this day, one of my favorite concert memories is seeing Rusted Root and hometown heroes Rustic Overtones play there in 1995.
Peak high school concert-going at it’s finest, kid and in short, it was a damn good time.
Now I thought of this damn good time last night not in sunny Portland, Maine, but in Brooklyn, where ominous dark clouds were able to do little to dampen the collective spirts of those gathered in the Barclays Center to watch Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds.
As with other shows on the Mutiny for the Masses tour, it was far from a sell out and a good part of the upper level was shrouded behind black curtains. Because of this regular occurrence on the tour, there has been a solid bit of back and forth on the old socials with people lamenting the fact that the band wasn’t playing different rooms, rooms better suited for the band, both in terms of drawing potential and overall vibe.
And yeah, I get it.
Sturgill and company playing all these big rooms without any support has definitely been a stretch but they had their reasons, reasons I believe had at least something to do with keeping ticket prices at a reasonable level because Sturgill Simpson is nothing if not a dignified man of the people. He has become a valued practioner and advocate for common sense and for that, we salute him.
I thought the show was fine in the Barclays Center, but I also get the naysaying. Crowd size aside, we’ve become accustomed to a certain level of production from artists we go see in concert and the JBS show was decidedly old school, not just when it came to the sound of the music, but in the production surrounding it.
There weren’t any screens to be found. There weren’t even any spot lights. There was a stage, a couple of amps. two, maybe three light rigs and a fabric backdrop adorned with the tour logo, with some space in the middle for projections that looked either like the inside of our cedar closet or the inside of a ancient temple.
Kind of a weird mix there but it worked.
It was that general vintage aesthetic that had my thoughts drifting back to those Expo shows because the JBS concert would have ripped in a place like that, a place with a comparable bare bones quality. Basketball hoops raised up along the sides above wooden bleachers. Would have fit in perfectly.
But hey, if not the Expo, in a perfect world, a Johnny Blue Skies show in a dive bar, a real sketchy looking road house with minimal views of the outside world, would be spot on because these shows are essentially Shit Kickin’ Country jukeboxes. With those dive bar gigs, bands are in it for the long haul and expected to play a minimum of three hours, a stipulation JBS and company would happily agree to. They’d do four hours and not think twice about it.
These Johnny Blue Skies shows are also not for the weak or faint of heart. If the tour was sponsored by Advil it would be a marvel in brand partnerships because after jamming out with the band for three hours, my dogs were barking up a storm and if a handful of Advil Liquid Gels couldn’t right the ship that are my creaky ass bones, nothing will and all hope is lost.
Ah but we knew this going in. I would say almost everyone in attendance knew what the score was with a Johnny Blue Skies show. They’re long and don’t feature much in terms of let up. Dave Matthews Band play long shows these days and like JBS, there isn’t a set break. DMB turns the lights down and in their own way, take a beat about halfway through their shows, seemingly to let everyone catch their breath. It’s very considerate of them.
Not so much with ol’ Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds. Those dudes don’t stop.
When the lights went down, the band rambled onto stage, Sturgill gave a little hoot and with “Long White Line” starting off things, the train had left the station and wouldn’t stop for a while. With the bebopish swing of “All Around You” and the hillbilly stomp of “Living the Dream” coming in hot on the opener’s tails, it became clear that it’d be hard to know what was coming next. This was also to be expected. The setlists on this tour, and really since the band started playing these barnstormin’ shows, have largely consisted of the same selection of songs, including a handful of covers. The mystery was how these songs were picked and then slotted in the setlist. It could be so easy for the band to trot out the same setlist each night, or a similar set list each night. Few could blame them for doing so.
Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds don’t do easy. They change up the set list each night and I would love to know the thought process behind the set list construction. Are we talking about a random draw kind of selection situation or is there a lot thought put into what goes where?
Is their a code?
A hidden message?
Are darts involved?
If I could ask the band one question and one question only, it’d be how do you all put the set list together?
I doubt they’d give me a straight answer.
A Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds show is a wave that you spot in the distance and it’s pretty far out, but it catches your attention. You can’t take your eyes off of it and you look around to see other people are seeing what you’re seeing. They are. Not seeing it would be impossible. Ah, but it may disappear from view briefly or look like it’s starting to break up and that would be the end of that. But then the wave casts any doubts aside and is back; back and looks to be gaining steam. The wave is inevitable, unavoidable, impressive and awe-inspiring. We are all witnessing something never really seen before and likely never to be seen again. We’ve seen plenty of waves before. We’ll see so many waves in the future. But all waves are different. This wave is one of a kind.
This wave is also a jam band.
YEAH, Sturgill. You have denied in the past. Scoffed at the suggestion and with a smirk, making it clear that this isn’t a jam band, it’s a band that jams.
And that’s true.
The Dark Clouds are tight as hell. They turn on a dime, veer & swear with precision. Sneaky bastards too because they mask their intentions and muddy the waters of their jams and it takes a minute before you get your footing on whatever path they’ve rambled down now.
Dudes jam hard too. I fell in love with moe. oh so long ago largely because they got heavy and jammed like monster trucks. Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds are punishing in their jams and yeah they’re jams and from now until eternity, if I hear Johnny Blues Skies OR Sturgill Simpson laugh off any jam band accusations…
About two-thirds of the way through the show, after imploring the crowd to stretch their legs a bit, Simpson admitted that shows before they have a day off tend to get weird. And they had day off tomorrow. So yeah. To borrow a phrase, brace for impact.
If the show were three acts, the second was brief and the third was set on world domination and I have no idea when it started. Was it the “Make Art Not Friends” run that included “Viridescent,” “Sitting Here Without You,” “Situation,” a mammoth “Jupiter’s Faerie” and “Stay On That?” Or was “Stay On That” the spark? The songs came stalking down streets in menacing packs and there was no giving up. You could feel the love. Feel how much fucking fun the band was having and that was one of the best parts. We were witnesses to a full on labor of love and shit’s weird man and it was refreshing to be privy to something so pure.
And just so simple.
So simple that all that was needed was a stage and a couple of amps and to hell with the spot lights. It was about the music and the music was awesome. Who needs bells and whistles when you ARE the bells and whistles?
It’s not a stretch or hyperbole to say that we live in complicated times. We are inundated with information and entertainment and things that get our motors running in good and bad ways. Our movies are enormous. Our TV shows are massive. Our podcasts are countless. And out concerts are typically Chinese buffets of stimuli. Simplicity is a lost art and perhaps something we need more of in wildly complicated times.
Simplicity is what Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds brought to Brooklyn Friday and what they’ve been bringing to every stop on the Mutiny for the Masses tour. It’s five dudes playing music and that’s about it because that’s all it needs to be. We don’t see much like it anymore; at least not at this level and not in a venue like the Barclays Center. Such simplicity is reserved for lower tier acts who likely don’t have the means to level up their production. Simpson has the means but felt the need to eschew any desire to kick things up a notch unless doing so meant playing a song like “Best Clockmaker on Mars” even harder than normal.
It wasn’t an arena-quality show on a few fronts but it also was on other fronts and I think that’s what is getting lost in the sauce when people argue that the band should have chosen different venues for the tour. We are prisoners of the moment and if we allow ourselves to look beyond that, Johnny Blue Skies demolishing the shit out of arenas, whether they’re full or not or whether there is enough lighting or theatrics, makes total sense.
Concerts are about a lot, but first and foremost, they’re about music. A Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds show is all about the music from start to finish and the music is incredible. I don’t care where something like that happens and how many people may or may not be there to enjoy it. I was there, loved it and consider myself lucky to have done so.
Now…where’s that Advil, kid?
Categories: Music
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