The Warfield, San Francisco, CA
December 8, 2006
On a rainy San Francisco night, Trey Anastasio brought the latest incarnation of his solo band to the Warfield Theater. The show had barely sold out by showtime—but that did not stop the group from entering jubilantly down the aisle, playing cowbells in a percussion-and-horns parade through the crowd to the stage. The second line stomp set the tone for a night heavy on New Orleans-inflected funk, with a bit of psychedelia and a solo acoustic mini-set, to boot.
It is still interesting to get a sense of who Anastasio is outside of Phish, where he may have been de-facto front man, but was yet an equal in an ensemble of weirdos who kept each other surprised by perpetually pulling the rug out from under themselves. Anastasio’s solo sound is a much straighter vehicle for his guitar work.
With horns aboard, this TAB is unmistakeably a funk band, similar in vibe to his earlier big bands—only tighter. The band was filled out by several recurring players—Peter Apfelbaum on baritone sax (and occasional percussion), Russell Remington on tenor sax and flute, Santana band member Jeff Cressman on trombone, Jen Hartswick on trumpet and sharing backup vocals with Christina Durfee. The guitarist’s rapport with bassist Tony Hall and drummer Jeff Sipe was particularly on—with the two neckslingers frequently meeting mid-stage to lock in and riff around each other.
As the band marched onto the stage, they switched, one by one, to their main instruments, and jumped into the Phish song “Stash.” Apfelbaum blew the song’s main riff with Anastasio, and Sipe played Santana-esque salsa-rock drums on a full-bore closing jam.
Anastasio strummed fast, funky chops and power-chord stops to lead into “Simple Twist Up Dave,” a full-on big band ‘70s power funk. As Anastasio twisted little riffs around the horns’ fanfare, keyboardist Ray Paczkowski played grungy bwap-bwap tones, then breathed in with some vocorder sounds. The horns left the stage for a bit, too—as they did on and off all night—allowing the core band to jam.
The night was not all grunt: On the rolling Southern rock ballad “Drifting,” Anastasio’s playing recalled Dickey Betts. But after the band’s Mardi Gras entry, the Friday night set had a particularly festive vibe to it, with many in the audience reveling as if they were at a cocktail party. Anastasio seemed to try to bring it down, playing more quietly, like on the quiet and open “Case of Ice and Snow”—to little avail.
Even on the guitarist’s three-song solo acoustic mini-set (“The Inlaw Josie Wales, “Invisible,” “Love That Breaks All Lines”) during the second set, the sound of crowd members trying to shush one another echoed across the floor.
So the band played the party. “Money Love and Change” was probably a half hour jam— again very New Orleans, almost a Little Feat sound, with trumpeter Jen Hartswick singing shimmering backup vocals with Christina Durfee. The jam got weirder, then the rhythm section sped it up and sped it up as Anastasio’s guitar screamed, Hall’s right fingers just flew, and the horns played big-band hits.
“Cincinnati” spotlighted the horns, starting with a dissonant jazz intro, Anastasio scatting the flute part in a section he introduced as written for five horns, and wound up as a JBs-style burner, fast and funky, with Anastasio and Hall locked-in center stage, and each horn getting some love in turn.
After set break, the band picked up right where it left off, with the laid-back groove of “First Tube.” “Mud City” scorched rock ‘n’ roll, then quieted into an intricate, machinelike, three-way prog scramble with Anastasio twisting quiet riffs around Paczkowski’s organ, and Hall adding thump. The singers came in with some sweet high harmony, trancelike and psychedelic. “The Way I Feel” was an in-the-pocket blues, which led into the three-song acoustic interlude, then a cover of Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.”
The band returned for a three-song encore, slamming on a totally smoking “Gotta Jiboo.”
“It’s after curfew, but I wanna keep playin’,” Anastasio told the crowd—then he led into “Last Tube,” a quiet “Bar 17” and another slapping Anastasio funk groove on Phish’s “46 Days.”
As the crowd sang the chorus, the core band swapped their instruments once more for cowbells, climbed down into the crowd, horns a-tooting the second line as the audience clapped and sang around them, and paraded their way back up the aisle and into the Warfield’s hallowed hall, past posters and photos of rock legends, out the front door, down Market Street’s wide brick sidewalk, around the corner, past the trucks. The crowd that had followed the procession outside was singing and clapping time on the sidewalk, and when the band cut back in throught the backstage door on Golden Gate, applause filled the rain-slick streets.
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