Tom McRae And The Hotel Cafe Tour/Live: 05/14/08-Simon Staake
Tom McRae and The Hotel Café Tour/Live: 05/14/08
By Simon Staake
Things are boiling over in the milk factory tonight. The milk factory, that’s la laiterie, the premier music club in Strasbourg, France. It has been a hot day, but the afternoon heat is nothing compared to the degrees achieved in the small club concert hall of the laiterie later that night. It is incredibly hot, even by the standards of this three-quarters-filled hall with little to no air conditioning. Around half time of the show, the band musicians walk on stage with bottled water to throw into the audience. Jim Bianco even springs out some beers, but the supply is immediately seized by the first row. „Wow, these guys are like animals,“ quips Bianco. Well, nothing like a cold one to go with some damn fine music, Jim. And some damn fine music we’re in for, not to mention one hell of a show. This does come as a surprise. The Hotel Café Tour is by all logic a bunch of folky singer-songwriters, not rock’n'roll animals. But any such preset notions will be dispelled in great fashion during the course of the night.
The concept behind the Hotel Café tour may sound like little more than a bunch of musician friends on the road together“ but the genius behind it becomes increasingly clear during the course of the evening. The performers have taken great pains to show off their different facettes, usually alternating a slower acoustic number with a more uptempo band-backed one during their two song mini sets. All the while it’s the overall conception that works incredibly well: By having six different singer-songwriters alternating on stage, the samey-ness that unfortunately permeats so many singer-songwriter shows, especially those of the acoustic mopey variety, is avoided. Instead, the Hotel Café band whips even the delicate songs into bona fide rock and pop numbers that are often more effective than their stripped back original versions.
Especially the headliner benefits greatly from this. Tom McRae’s albums suffer not onlv from the very samey-ness that is so spectacularly avoided tonight, but also from a claustrophobic, ambient sound design that at times obscures the songs. No such danger tonight, though: McRae’s hymns of heartache have rarely sounded as vital as here. And the audience is thankful, joining in into his more anthemic tunes with great enthusiasm. So much so that during a rousing rendition of „End Of The World News“ the audience takes over after having called on by McRae to do so. But they simply won’t stop, repeating the chorus over and over, with the singer staring on as amazed as he is amused. From the moment McRae gets on stage to open proceedings, it’s clear who the star and headliner of the evening is. While his Hotel Café comrades at first only get the requisite gentle welcome round of applause (something that will change considerably later), McRae gets the biggest pops of the evening throughout, especially when he brings out old favorites like the sole encore „The Boy With The Bubble Gun“ that finishes things almost three hours later. During his introductions he also shows something that’s suspiciously absent from his music: a sense of humor. McRae furthermore gets the prize for being the sharpest dressed man of the evening. Temperatures notwithstanding, he never once loses the sacco jacket or gets his coiffure messy. Must be a british thing.
Yes, his hair was perfect.
The not-so-secret weapon of the evening is the Hotel Café houseband. The weeks, months and years of touring have this crew function like a well-oiled machine. Despite the need to adapt to half a dozen lead singers and their individual styles, the band is incredibly tight, propulsed by the stoid, solid backing section and the electric guitar licks of John Kanakis, who also functions, together with McRae, as the m.c. to proceedings. Special mention must be made of „Professor“ Brad Gordon, the multi-instrumentalist mostly hidden in a back corner, who, as his nickname suggests, is somewhat of the mad genius of this band. Whether it’s the accordion, the organ, the french horn or the trumpet, Gordon brings a fantastic number of musical colors to an already rich band sound. And during the more prominent spots, such as Jim Bianco’s sets, his evocative trumpet playing gets the spotlight it deserves.
As that very spotlight shines on Hotel Café artist after Hotel Café artist, it becomes increasingly clear what a wide field the singer-songwriter category is and how much margin for differing styles is possible under even a moniker as undefined as Americana. The artists most safely in the traditional confessional singer-songwriter mold are Greg Laswell and the tour’s sole female Catherine Feeney. Laswell is unfortunately the most unremarkable of the Hotel Café troubadours. Songs such as „High and Low“ or „Sing, Theresa Says“ are your typical friendly but harmless coffehouse folk-pop standard and Laswell is also the least charismatic of the bunch. Feeney starts with an acoustic number that makes her out like a stereotypical willowy waif with the usual number of past boyfriends to write about, and while later outings further this impression they also tend to improve, especially when she’s backed by the band. The shy, sometimes akward Feeney (she is irritated as she introduces a song title in a language resembling but not quite being French, but no one gets it) looks and sounds the part of the girl-next-door with a guitar, approaching one’s stereotypes of what these up-and-coming performers will turn out to be while simultaneously dispersing one’s doubts. Cary Brothers, the initiator of the Hotel Café tour, is probably the one most poised for stardom. Having already made an impression with a contribution to the hipper-than-the-room soundtrack to cult classic Garden State, he is clearly not afraid to go for an anthemic stadium-ready sound with big hooks and sing-along choruses. The first number, unfortunately obscured by his voice too low in the mix, sounds uncannily like classic U2. More anthems in waiting along the lines of the aforementioned „Blue Eyes“ follow. Add to that the required sensitive touch and his scruffy-but-charming looks and here is a possible future poster boy for indie kids with Americana leanings.
Jim Bianco is a whole different animal, however. Where his voice and singing gestures suggest an illicit love child between Joe Cocker and Tom Waits, his looks make this Brooklyn-based songwriter out as a handsome-in-a-scary-way cousin of Tony Soprano. Bianco milks his greasy sex-machine shtick for all that it’s worth, but it’s a good shtick. Bianco is clearly born for the stage, an entertainer who is not afraid of even the cheesiest of touches like a handful of confetti from his pockets. It helps that the music is good, too. Bianco does take a hint from Waits’ more theatrical work and also delves into rhythm’n'blues, even jazz territory. While his idiosyncratic style might be a bit much on a full-length album, here it generates an enormous amount of energy and the audience is thankful for the constant diversion. During his second set he leads the entire Hotel Café troupe, all ten persons, from the stage and down into the audience ranks in the midst of the people where they all join for an acoustic circle sing-along. This moment is indicative of the intimate yet devil-may-care spirit of the Hotel Café Tour. Performers walk on stage at will to back up whoever is presenting his or her songs with harmony vocals, some additional acoustic guitar or some tambourine clapping. And these guys are visibly having an enormous amount of fun, because if they don’t they have nothing on prime time Bobby De Niro in terms of acting.
If Bianco had the biggest show and McRae the biggest cheers it was still obvious that the evening was owned by Brian Wright. With his long hair and full beard recalling a young J.D. Souther, Wright showed that even under the singer-songwriter label you can have the best of all musical worlds, effortlessly mixing folk, country, rock’n'roll and even gospel elements together in what were two showstopper mini-sets. During Catherine Feeney’s set he had already guest-starred for a duet about junkie lovers that recalled nothing so much but a bit of Gram & Emmylou magic. After riding on a Chuck Berry-inspired rockabilly beat for his first solo number he slows things down for the melodic, unreleased „Cordelia,“ abetted by great harmony vocals from McRae and Feeney. He then turns this order around in the second set, starting with the delicate and lonesome folk ballad Falls County,“ which sounds like it could’ve been written fifty or even a hundred and fifty years ago. Then the band kicks into high-gear for a super-charged version of Wright’s faux-gospel rave-up „Glory Hallelujah“ and here is were the promises of no-holds-barred-rock’n'roll get finally fulfilled. With Wright yelping and scatting like a Southern preacher possessed by the spirit of rock’n'roll, the band pulls out all the guns, blasting through the song and tearing it apart. After this tour de force exhaustion and bliss for both band and audience set in and one can only call for a rock’n'roll amen!
Tom McRae takes the stage for a last time now, with the whole ragtag troupe on stage, backing McRae with heavenly harmonies or instrumental licks or just their presence. Seeing these ten musicians on stage together and feeling the cameraderie between them one is reminded of better rock’n'roll times our generation only knows from second-hand tell-tale or books and films. Bold a claim it might be, but there was an air of Dylan’s „Rolling Thunder Revue“ about the concert experience with the Hotel Café troubadours. Twenty-six songs, almost three hours of meticulous songcraft in all its form, and a bunch of folks who in this world of rock’n'roll posers, glorified karaoke American Idols and sell-out reunion bands go out and take up the best of rock traditions.
Tom McRae: Just because he’s kicking ass all over the place doesn’t mean he can’t spare a second for a contemplative photo-shoot.
Glory Hallelujah indeed.
Copyright C. 2008 Simon Staake