A surprising year

I caught 80 or so concerts in 2019, and had many great moments. But sometimes it was the happenstance of unexpected discovery — small moments if you will — that also brought me pleasure.

Take the evening of Sept. 27. I was walking down Willy Street, lost in thoughts about the Madison Symphony concert I had just seen (loved Dvorak's 7th Symphony, not so much the other pieces), when I heard this insistent rock ‘n’ roll coming from The Wisco. Whoa! What was this?

It had been decades since I had been in there, back in the days when it was the Wisconsin Inn and the CC Riders considered it home turf and biker chieftain Dick Smith held court.

Now I was an old guy surrounded by 20-somethings, leaning in to the ’90s cover band Star 67. Covers? Hell, I had never heard this music the first time around. But I loved how lead singer Madeline Westberg joyfully embraced the songs and made them come alive. I had a Bulleit on the rocks, caught two or three tunes, dropped some bills in the bucket and strolled out the door to The Weary Traveler a happier man.

Earlier that summer I was out walking the dog when I heard a full-throated blues voice rising from Mickey's canine-friendly patio like a beacon searching for lost souls. Talk about serendipity, I had stumbled across Blythe Gamble with her band of savvy greybeards, the Rollin’ Dice. They were killer. The dog and I had to have a drink. We did that three or four times, admiring Gamble’s unabashed blues conviction. She could be singing in Chicago.

One last tale of pleasurable barroom serendipity struck as I wandered into the Crystal Corner, a vintage drinking salon I hadn't hung out in for years. I was dutifully honoring my neighbor and friend Andy Moore's request that I check him out in as he guested on a few songs with Loving Cup, a band I had never heard.

Wellllll, what a great scene!An east-side reunion was breaking out. The joint was buzzing with conversation, couples breaking moves to a polished tribute band, with a horn section no less, doing the Rolling Stones. (Turns out Isthmus' Cat Capellaro and husband Andrew Rohn share the Jagger leads.)

Soon percussionist Tony Castañeda and pianist Dave Stoler wandered in from their own gig. Hey, man, how’s it going? I looked across the room and — another surprise — saxophone player Hanah Jon Taylor and his buds were strolling in from his nearby club, Cafe Coda. The stars must have been in alignment. The east-side music community was coming together on an early October evening to hear Loving Cup at the Crystal. I felt lucky to be present.

As for the big stuff, my rundown of favorite 2019 shows follows in roughly ascending order. This is the 14th year I've assembled this annual list. Consider it a fan’s notes. I claim no musical expertise to offer as a reviewer or critic — just my passion.

Last Call

Alejandro Escovedo, High Noon Saloon, July 5, 2019

I'm hard-pressed to name another musician who grasps the mythos and communal experience of performance better than Texas alt-legend Alejandro Escovedo. So a little bit of me died at this concert when Escovedo, who’s 68 and a punk rock survivor (he beat hep C), announced he was probably finished with touring.

I’ve heard Escovedo live many times over the years, and his stagecraft is always transcendent. Not just the crunching rock ‘n’ roll mixed with the most tender of ballads, but the magical stories he recounts like a battle-worn traveler standing before the tribe at the campfire.

Meeting Johnny Rotten at the storied Chelsea Hotel. Playing O'Cayz Corral in Madison when his band blew apart. Fearing death in a Mexican hurricane with his new wife. And on this night, getting more personal. Sending his love to his ailing ex-bandmate Jon Dee Graham. Giving a shout-out to his great songwriting partner, Chuck Prophet. And thanking veteran promoter Tag Evers for staying true.

There's just a great humanity to Alejandro Escovedo. It's only gotten stronger as the years have passed. He seemed to be reaching out on this night more than ever. He told us he'd be taking an extended break now. He'd be writing his autobiography. He probably won’t come our way again.

Sailors on the wide ocean

John Raymond's Real Feels, Arts + Literature Laboratory, Feb. 20, 2019

Sooo many great trumpet players in jazz. But how about its cousin, the flugelhorn? Not so many, unless you go back decades to Art Farmer and Clark Terry and, I suppose, Chuck Mangione.

Flugelhorn is a marvelous niche for John Raymond. Pretty much singular in his field, Raymond is not hemmed in by comparisons. His warm and silky solos with occasional electronic flourishes captivated me. His copacetic (and bass-less) band — drummer Colin Stranahan and guitarist Gilad Hekselman — was perfect in an ECM way. A rolling and sometimes urgent rhythm meshed with a shimmering, darting guitar. It was exactly the right setting for Raymond's painterly solos.

Five years into their collaboration, these guys seemed like veteran sailors on the wide ocean, going for thrills but never losing control. I closed my eyes and felt myself carried away on their trip. I left ALL wondering why they were not more famous.

Fearless revisionism

Disaster Passport performing its film score of director Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, The Venue on Winnebago, Oct. 18, 2019

I was knocked out by the creative audacity of Disaster Passport. This local quartet took a breakout documentary film from the early 1980s — Koyaanisqatsi is a relentless cavalcade of film clips documenting industrial society's destruction of nature and the oppressive nature of urban life — and performed its own score as the film played.

Devoid of any narration, the original doc was held together by a mesmerizing, pounding Phillip Glass musical score that drops your jaw as you witness the onslaught of discombobulating images of destruction. Note the title is a Hopi word for “life out of balance.”

I'm an unabashed fan of Glass' music, and I walked into the club skeptical that the band could win me over. Within 10 minutes, I was swept up by Disaster Passport’s act of radical reinterpretation. Gone was Glass' layered multiple keyboards. The quartet — Luke Bassuener, Karl Christenson, Colin Crowley and Andy Moore — deployed banjos, percussion, electronic loops, guitars, voice and more in their nonstop act of musical revisionism.

They were fearless. I loved it.

Forgotten history no more

Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi, Stoughton Opera House, Nov. 3, 2019

I was never a fan of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and its take on old-time string-band music. I dislike revivalism. I don't want to hear how the music was played in the old days. I flee from Dixieland bands. I shudder at musicians wearing period clothes while recreating Finnish logging songs from northern Wisconsin. I want to hear fresh takes on old music, or the real McCoys making it.

But now I've changed my tune, to a degree. Increasingly I think recovering historical memory is essential for identifying the good and bad of our shared cultural legacy. Rhiannon Giddens, the ex-Chocolate Drops singer and banjo player, is not just blessed with a gorgeously rich voice, but she's engaged in a necessary campaign to reconnect the rich history of country music with its purposely obscured African American roots.

And, yeah, that means giving an honest nod to demeaning minstrelsy and how white musicians in blackface began to bring African American music into the broader Southern vernacular, while mostly forgotten black musicians were simultaneously remaking the Scots-Irish tunes for their own purposes,

All this sounds much more pedantic than Giddens' performance. Good music is good music. Giddens is great because she can break your heart singing Patsy Cline as well as Nina Simone ballads, not to mention the sad old Scots-Irish laments that became foundational to the "high lonesome" sound of country music

Hey, it probably helps that Giddens, this quintessential American musician, lives in Ireland.

You must remember this

Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Symphony Center (Chicago), Feb. 23, 2019

I heard lots of symphonic music in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago. None better in 2019 than the august Riccardo Muti at the helm of the world class Chicago Symphony performing Mozart's Requiem. Certain pieces just blow me away. I might as well be strapped in my seat for safety reasons. We're talking sensory overload. A huge chorus. Massive orchestra. Opera soloists (led by soprano Benedetta Torre) who shook the walls. This was the music of transcendence, a meditation on death and God.

But Muti, shaped by his Italian upbringing, had something else in mind for the concert opener: a requiem of another sort marked by raw anger and pain. This was not Mozart's calming acceptance of fate. Muti wanted to honor the victims of the Le Fosse Ardeatine massacre outside of Rome on the 75th anniversary of the event..

He chose little-known American composer William Schuman's 9th Symphony. This somber, dissonant and sometimes clamorous piece was inspired by the memory of 335 Italian civilians summarily shot, killed and buried unmarked in an Italian quarry by the retreating German SS in 1944.

At Muti's direction, Symphony Center's rotunda was filled with artifacts and photos documenting the Nazi outrage. When I wrote the first draft of this concert review, it dawned upon me how much Muti has in common with Rhiannon Giddens. They are two artists — though different in their talents — who deeply believe music is a vessel of cultural memory.

The ambassador pays a visit

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Overture Hall, Nov. 13, 2019

Give credit where credit is due. Over the past 30-plus years, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has been the leading popularizer of jazz in America.

The Manhattan-based Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has regularly toured the hinterlands, recorded fascinating collaborations with everyone from Rubén Blades to Willie Nelson to Wayne Shorter, nurtured and supported extraordinary talent, sponsored annual revivals and celebrations of America's most important composers and players, and even runs a classy jazz club, Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, overlooking Central Park. (For a treat, order Miss Mamie's fried chicken.)

The fact that 1,800 fans turned out for the New Yorkers evidences Marsalis' great success. Credit the Overture staff for pulling in just about every area high school jazz educator and their students to the show. The nationally recognized Sun Prairie High School Jazz Ensemble even opened the concert with several JLCO horn players sharing solos with the Sun Prairie kids, who held their own.

In such moments lives are changed.

The JLCO itself is a compelling mixture of Brooks Brothers seriousness (the official JLCO clothier) and hip casualness. Marsalis runs the orchestra from the trumpet section. Like Ellington, he tells the stories behind the music. It's a great way to pull in the audience. The 15-piece band seemed happy as clams.

As for the music, it was killer. The program was organized as a salute to America's jazz ambassadors — those famous cats from the ’50s and ’60s who used to tour the world during the Cold War on the dime of the U.S. State Department. That's to say, the JLCO cherry-picked famous tunes from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and others.

And Marsalis, who unleashed several bravura solos as if he were facing down every trumpeter within a 500-mile radius, left no doubt that today he is America's great jazz ambassador.

Nimble and playful

Parlour Game, Trinity Lutheran Church, May 16, 2019

What a great vibe. This Americana-flavored quartet led by violinist Jenny Scheinman and drummer Allison Miller bubbled up and over with joie de vivre. Only a grump could not smile and sway to such nimble and playful jazz.

Scheinman's sound was anchored somewhere between the French bistros and the Appalachian hollows. Miller was the band’s tour guide. She was all over her kit, including spells of hand drumming. A veritable magician of quicksilver rhythms, Miller never confused loudness with finesse.

Parlour Game was as well balanced as any band I saw in 2019. Bassist Tony Scherr was the essential glue holding the group together, while pianist Carmen Staaf, when she occasionally stepped up to solo, was head-turning good. Clearly a young artist to keep on your radar. As is the beguiling Parlour Game.

For the good times

Kris Kristofferson and The Strangers, The Barrymore Theatre, Nov. 14, 2019

At 83, Kris Kristofferson didn't have much gas in the tank, but he used every drop revisiting his extraordinary songs. That was breathtaking.

Be honest: Is there a better account of the sweet sadness of a relationship ending than “For the Good Times”? Lay your head upon my pillow/ Hold your warm and tender body close to mine/ Hear the whisper of the raindrops/ Blow softly against my window/ Make believe you love me one more time/ For the good times.

Wow. You could have heard a pin drop. I found myself turning to the stranger next to me and saying: “Half the women in the Barrymore would crawl into his bed right now.” And Danny — that was his name, I learned later — said “Yep.”

I almost skipped this show. As great a songwriter as Kristofferson is, he had a voice like a bullfrog even in his salad days with Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. I feared disappointment. Kristofferson would be just another old guy who overstayed his welcome

But age and surviving the travails of a long misdiagnosed illness brought tenderness and vulnerability to Kristofferson's singing. Maybe I'm nuts and overly sentimental, but I think his singing has never had as much emotional depth as it does right now, as the sun sets over his career.

Decide for yourself. Listen to Kristofferson's heartfelt live duet with Brandi Carlile on Joni Mitchell's “A Case Of You” for the tribute album Joni 75.

Unequivocally the best bar band around

The Bottle Rockets, Sessions At McPike Park, Aug. 8, 2019

Like a guillotine, the festival’s adamantly enforced 10 p.m. closing time lopped off the Bottle Rockets’ expected blowout finale. I wasn't that bothered. The Bottle Rockets had already renewed my faith in them as the best bar band around.

Dude, I'm serious: The Bottle Rockets will kick the ass of your favorite band!

After 27 years, these guys are passionate, hard-working, militantly unflashy, and still connected to the hard times and bad jobs that launched all the best heartland rockers.

This makes for an extraordinary solid song catalogue. Not some singer-songwriter's pitiful lamentations about depression and broken love affairs, but pointed and closely observed songs about the opprobrium a welfare mother faces, the financial curse of buying a used car, the destructive tedium of factory work. Not to mention the hell of being stranded in Indianapolis.

So the next day, I jumped into my battered 2003 Subaru Forester, cranked up the stereo and popped in the band's Live In Heilbronn Germany double CD from 2005 and blasted out their jam of Neil Young's epic “Cortez The Killer.”

Whew. That was the concert finale.

A jazz phenom with an old soul

Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few, Cafe Coda, Feb. 2, 2019; Arts + Literature Laboratory, May 3, 2019; Cafe Coda, Oct. 12, 2019; and with the Vincent Davis Trio, North Street Cabaret, Aug. 31, 2019

“Here comes the future.”

Club owner and horn man Hanah Jon Taylor had just finished jamming with 21-year-old Chicago sax phenom Isaiah Collier in October when he took the mic and affirmed what every jazz fan in Cafe Coda had to be thinking.

“Here comes the future,” Taylor said again.

There's a preternatural calmness to Collier. He’s a young man with an old soul. His solos are impassioned but as carefully structured as a cantilevered bridge. As if he sees and hears the notes before he lays them out. When he played “My Favorite Things,” it was impossible to not think of Coltrane.

We're lucky in Madison. The pipeline to the great Chicago players is wide open. The thrill of seeing Collier — and, yeah, I caught four of his shows in town — is wondering how far he will go.

There was a moment in the October show when he sat down at the piano and seemed to be pulling out a fully formed free-rolling melody in the moment of performance. In February at Coda he grabbed on to a Thelonious Monk tune in the second set and opened up its secrets like it was a Rubik’s Cube.

There is more to come.

Summoning the magic

John Prine, Overture Hall, May 25, 2019

John Prine has taken enough bullets to kill a mule. But here he was, kicking up his heels, cancer at bay for at least the moment, a puffy-faced 73-year-old summoning the magic one more time before a capacity crowd.

And Prine was having a ball. He had an ace band. He was taking another big bite out of life, celebrating his first new album in 13 years. Always one of the great storytellers (“Angel From Montgomery,” “Sam Stone,” “Hello In There”), his lasting stock and trade remains poignancy, acuity and no small dose of humor in the face of life's many curve balls

The show ended memorably with a spotlight on a darkened stage. Prine laid down his guitar, then danced around it like it was a sacred object. Gloriously, he was communing with the spirits he had unleashed.

His time is now

Makaya McCraven Quintet, Jazz Showcase (Chicago), Feb. 22 & 23, 2019; and with his trio at Cafe Coda, April 4, 2019, and at UW Memorial Union, June 15, 2019

The Paris-born, Chicago-based drummer is a protean talent. His time is now. Simply put, you must see Makaya McCraven if you’re seriously into new music. (Calling it “jazz” is basically true, but too limiting.)

I caught McCraven four times within six months, and each show displayed a slightly different facet of his prodigious gifts. He’s filtering jazz through hip-hop and ambient rhythms and stirring in different players like tinctures added to paint or herbs to stew.

The Chicago shows featured audacious soloing by sax player (and frequent Madison visitor) Greg Ward and by McCraven's longtime pianist Greg Spero. Harpist Brandee Younger, whose instrument is normally part of the extended palate of a classical orchestra, blew minds by plucking out jazz solos. She was paying homage to the forgotten jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby.

At Memorial Union for Isthmus Jazz Festival, McCraven was backed by guitarist Matt Gold and the hard-working bassist Junius Paul. At times, their set sounded like a jazz version of a rock ‘n’ roll power trio. (Given the boisterous indoor setting, this was a good call.) At Coda, McCraven was more subtle and experimental, changing rhythms like a jackrabbit, but giving room to Gold to artfully sketch the soundscape.

Soundscaping — that's McCraven's really deep pocket as a producer. His recent albums — Universal Beings and Where We Come From (Chicago X London Mixtape) — are highly layered musical collages whose DNA is embedded in fragments of gig tapes and studio jams.

Oddly, the music’s intimate aural tone, its lovingly assembled flourishes and the quick-cut segues reminded me of another studio magician, Justin Vernon of Eau Claire-based Bon Iver. Like McCraven, Vernon is a charismatic pathfinder who has built a loyal community of musicians. On a hunch, I made a random-shuffle playlist from Universal Beings and i,i, the mesmerizing Bon Iver release nominated for album of the year at the Grammys

Just like I suspected, these guys — one in rural Wisconsin, the other in gritty Chicago — are brothers of another mother.

So those are my favorite 12 shows. Here are 12 runners-up, in roughly descending order:

Charlie Ballantine, Cafe Coda, June 7, 2019: I wandered in during the second set. There were five people in the audience. Ballantine's looped chiming guitars went straight to my heart. He was playing early Dylan songs. He captured all the yearning. Listen to “The Times They A-Changin'.” Check out his excellent album Life Is Brief: The Music of Bob Dylan.

The Subdudes, Stoughton Opera House, March 24, 2019: This was exultant roots music, New Orleans division. I fervently scribbled in my notebook: “Never, ever, pass up the opportunity to hear The Subdudes.”

Emanuel Ax, Shannon Hall, Nov. 2, 2019: My God, a piano giant played an all-Beethoven program in a hall that has exquisite acoustics! It was to die for.

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin, Capitol Theater, Oct. 13, 2019: Friends for 30 years, these two music vets had the perfect vibe and an impressive song list. The concert opener — Don Henley's “The End of Innocence” — was so good that I was forced to ask myself if I should reconsider the Eagles.

Frank Catalano Trio, North Street Cabaret, May 11, 2019: Just loved his deep funk tenor sax on Eddie Harris’ “Cold Duck Time” and Stanley Turrentine's “Sugar.”

The Milwaukee Symphony, Marcus Center (Milwaukee), April 27, 2019: Music director laureate Edo de Waart returned to conduct Mahler’s tour de force 9th Symphony. No surprise: It was a triumph.

Rodney Crowell, Stoughton Opera House, March 22, 2019: The peerless Nashville songwriter was fearless. His songs cut to the bone of our flaws and failings, including his own.

Roscoe Mitchell Trio, Cafe Coda, Sept. 22, 2019: The great horn improviser is sometimes too complex for mere mortals to appreciate, but not tonight. Backed by the adventurous duo of Junius Paul (bass) and Vincent Davis (drums), the avant-garde legend uncoiled a magical, practically hallucinogenic 60-minute+ piece that included group interplay of finger bells and cymbals.

Marty Stuart and The Fabulous Superlatives: Stoughton Opera House, March 2, 2019: These are classic country entertainers accessible to all, but also dazzling instrumentalists of jazz-like virtuosity and staggeringly good four-part harmonies. Oh, yeah!

Bill Miller, Promega’s BTC Institute (Fitchburg), May 17, 2019: Easy enough for a musician to fade into the woodwork when they're entertainment at a conference. But not Bill Miller, a flutist-percussionist from the Mohican Band in Northern Wisconsin. His music and personal story fit perfectly into a conference on consciousness.

Anat Cohen Quartet, Lawrence University Memorial Chapel (Appleton), May 10, 2019: If I were a dining critic I would write: The clarinetist's glorious tone, washed in honey and nostalgia, resembled a complex Italian amaro. Four stars!

Dan Stuart, Kiki's House of Righteous Music, June 23, 2019: The legendary Green On Red frontman sang his flag-waver “Dreaming of Muhammad Ali.” That's all I needed to hear.