Posts Tagged ‘ City Winery ’

the Mountain Goats: April 19, 2016 City Winery

April 24, 2016
By

tMG Winery 3 Lowden
[photos by Andrew Lowden]

Over the course of three shows at City Winery, John Darnielle gave his Mountain Goats bandmates a subtle but meaningful tribute that you would have missed if you were not paying close attention. For the first song of each of the three John “solo” segments in each show, a different band member was featured in a duo with the band’s protagonist. On Sunday, Matt Douglas played sax on “Foreign Object”, on Monday Peter Hughes played bass on “Jenny”, and for this Tuesday night finale of the residency, Jon Wurster joined John for a cover of Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” — a song Darnielle revealed that Wurster had never played before this performance.

These are some of the little things that bring the fans back to see the Mountain Goats time and again. There were many fans who attended each of the three nights at City Winery and perhaps other East coast shows. What brings them back night after night isn’t just the promise of different and sometimes rare songs at any given show, or the often hilarious banter, or the chance to hear their favorite songs — the most compelling aspect of the Mountain Goats experience is the feeling of belonging. There is a strong sense of unity within the band, between the fans, and between the fans and band. The music offers a sense that no matter how difficult things are for you, there are people out there who know what you’ve endured and can tell you from experience that you’re going to be alright.

The final night of this special set of shows became the “celebratory” performance in large part because this particular crowd was quite rambunctious. And John rewarded the energy with a couple of first-time covers and a few songs that had yet to appear on this tour. In particular “Cobscook Bay” and “Nine Black Poppies” were familiar but welcome additions to the tour itinerary, both not having appeared on a setlist since last year. For a final night of the tour and likely the last NYC Mountain Goats show until 2017, this show was exactly what we’d hoped to experience.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the previous night and the sound quality is equally superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show in FLAC and MP3 from Archive.org [HERE]

Stream the Complete Show (minus banter tracks):

Mountain Goats
2016-04-19
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Brandon Eggleston] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:42:44]
01 Get Lonely
02 Foreign Object
03 Woke Up New
04 Until I Am Whole
05 Cry for Judas
06 [banter – gimmick intro]
07 Werewolf Gimmick
08 Rainbow in the Dark [Dio]
09 [banter – thanks]
10 Superman [Goldfinger]
11 Nine Black Poppies
12 Cobscook Bay
13 Lakeside View Apartments Suite
14 Southwestern Territory
15 Love Love Love
16 Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan
17 Damn These Vampires
18 [banter – game show intro]
19 Game Shows Touch Our Lives
20 The Young Thousands
21 Liza Forever Minnelli
22 [encore break]
23 See America Right
24 Up the Wolves
25 Home on the Range
26 No Children
27 Spent Gladiator 2
28 [second encore break]
29 This Year

SUPPORT the Mountain Goats: Website | Twitter | Buy Official Releases | Tour Dates

the Mountain Goats: April 18, 2016 City Winery

April 21, 2016
By

tMG City Winery Lowden
[photos by Andrew Lowden]

We saw all three of the Mountain Goats performances this week at City Winery. And while this is not the first time we’ve experienced three straight tMG shows (Bowery in 2011 was 3 in a row), this set of shows was so emotionally rewarding. As we’ve pointed out already this month, the tour that concluded in NYC was inspired by a show we recorded at this very venue one year ago. Each of the nights took on a different personality and on night two, the song choices geared in a subtle way towards the positive and inspiring — perhaps motivated by the birthday of band member Matt Douglas (check out the slowest happy birthday song ever). Monday night included the only NYC performances of “Dennis Brown” and “Never Quite Free”, and the only appearances all tour of the New York-based duo of “Going to Port Washington” and “Going to Queens”. And there was reason to be positive. This tour was entirely successful on its merits, the band is playing at its peak, and City Winery seems to be the perfect fit for the current incarnation of the Mountain Goats. Indeed, this tour also contained a stop in Chicago for two shows at that branch of the venue. The balance of the set consisted of primarily songs we’ve seen on this tour which have included inspired 2016 versions of “Woke Up New” and “Damn These Vampires”, which continued to shine on this night. We expect to post the third and final night in the next few days, so stay tuned.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards clamped to a pole 20 feet from the stage and mixed with a perfect soundboard feed provided by the band’s longtime FOH Brandon Eggleston. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show in FLAC or MP3 at Archive.org [HERE]

Stream the Complete Show:

Mountain Goats
2016-04-18
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Brandon Eggleston] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:34:54]
01 Song for Dennis Brown
02 Woke Up New
03 Until I Am Whole
04 [banter – stay on tour]
05 Werewolf Gimmick
06 New Monster Avenue
07 Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan
08 [banter – say yes]
09 Jenny
10 Going to Port Washington
11 Going to Queens
12 [banter – day pants]
13 Black Pear Tree
14 [Happy Birthday Matt Douglas]
15 Lakeside View Apartments Suite
16 Deuteronomy 2:10
17 Get Lonely
18 Alpha Rats Nest
19 Damn These Vampires
20 Oceanographer’s Choice
21 The Young Thousands
22 Liza Forever Minnelli
23 [encore break]
24 Never Quite Free
25 This Year
26 Spent Gladiator 2
27 [second encore break]
28 The Diaz Brothers
29 No Children

SUPPORT the Mountain Goats: Website | Twitter | Buy Official Releases | Tour Dates

The Mountain Goats: April 17, 2016 City Winery

April 18, 2016
By

tmg2016-04-17
[photo courtesy of music_defined‘s instagram page]

As noted in our review of the New Haven show, the concept of this Mountain Goats tour grew up around the band’s City Winery gigs of last year, of which we recorded both. That the band found inspiration in this particular room isn’t surprising; while some younger fans may not be used to seeing bands in more sedate environments, this venue must be an absolute dream for any performer who plays a wide dynamic range of music and whose fans hang on every word. The Mountain Goats took the stage at one of last year’s shows not with the type of upbeat number you’d need to launch a typical club gig, but with the gorgeous “Get Lonely,” which set the tone for an evening of wide-ranging sounds and deep catalog dives. Yes, the pro-wrestling-themed Beat the Champ made a few appearances, including a stripped-down take on “Foreign Object” and an inspired “Werewolf Gimmick,” and an encore of “Southwestern Territory,” but the deep dives were the real meat of the evening. John Darnielle reached all the way back to 1993 for “Water Song II,” followed by “Horseradish Road,” from 2000’s Coroner’s Gambit, played so rarely of late that Darnielle skipped a verse. Not that a rough spot here or there matters; only the hardest heart wouldn’t have wept at the night’s fragile, emotional peak, from “Steal Smoked Fish,” followed by “Black Pear Tree,” to “Lakeside View Apartments Suite” to “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace,” the night’s most musically dense number, and a note of hope.

Among many gifts, Darnielle’s ability to swing from spinning metaphors about wrestling to such deep emotional fare, and back to lighter-hearted territory like “Damn These Vampires.” Despite the seriousness of the material, Darnielle’s freewheeling, conversational style with his audience makes the show itself intimate and light; especially in this seated, dinner situation, it feels like being part of a very large living room show. And, as we’ve noted before, Jon Wurster’s drums, Peter Hughes’ bass and multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas give Darnielle a backdrop that adds discipline and welcome twists to both new and old songs.

Darnielle closed with one of the band’s most poignant recent numbers, “Spent Gladiator 2.” As with “No Children,” the closer of the 4/12/15 City Winery show, Darnielle performed most of the song in the audience,  circling through the crowd, singing the lyrics without amplification. That refrain, to stay alive, just stay alive, felt like both the universal plea that it is and a personal one to each of us. If you were lucky enough to be sitting there, having taken in this exceptional hour and a half, you knew life was worth living.

I recorded this set with a feed of engineer Brandon Eggleston’s live mix, together with Schoeps MK41V microphones mounted on a post forward of the board. The sound quality, as with all of our City Winery recordings of this band, is exceptional. Enjoy!

Download the complete show from its page on the Live Music Archive: [MP3] | [FLAC]

The Mountain Goats
2016-04-17
City Winery
New York, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Brandon Eggleston) + Schoeps MK41V (FOB, ROC, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix
down, adjust levels, light compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC (
level 8 )

Tracks [Total TIme: 1:32:53]
01 Woke Up New
02 Until I Am Whole
03 Maize Stalk Drinking Blood
04 [banter1]
05 Werewolf Gimmick
06 Get Lonely
07 [banter2]
08 Foreign Object
09 [banter3]
10 Water Song II
11 Horseradish Road
12 Steal Smoked Fish
13 Black Pear Tree
14 Lakeside View Apartments Suite
15 Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
16 Wild Sage
17 Damn These Vampires
18 Game Shows Touch Our Lives
19 See America Right
20 The Young Thousands
21 Liza Forever Minnelli
22 [encore break]
23 Southwestern Territory
24 Up the Wolves
25 [banter4]
26 No Children
27 [banter5]
28 Spent Gladiator 2

SUPPORT the Mountain Goats: Website | Twitter | Buy Official Releases | Tour Dates

tmg-JLB

Robyn Hitchcock: November 20, 2015 (Early Show) City Winery

November 23, 2015
By

Robyn Hitchcock City Winery Quartly
[photo courtesy of Chris Quartly]

There are a few things you can expect at any given Robyn Hitchcock performance — namely humourous and often strange banter, a completely different setlist from the last time you saw him, and ninety minutes of entertainment. Robyn has been a profoundly influential and productive artist for the better part of four decades in a series of different bands and in many different formats. Its truly inexplicable why he does not receive the accolades of some of his contemporaries but he doesn’t seem fazed by it all. For the City Winery shows this past week, Robyn added a new wrinkle. For the November 20th shows (early and late), he promised vintage material and accepted requests, “everything considered, nothing guaranteed.” Fortunately for Andrew our taper on the scene, Robyn played his request “The Ghost Ship”, an ancient b-side that ultimately saw wide release on 1995’s You & Oblivion. The balance of the setlist drew primarily from the early catalog, including quite a few from the late-80s set of Eqyptians records. Robyn was joined midset by the Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift, who provided ethereal backing and duo vocals, the most memorable of which was her turn in “Pale Blue Eyes” during the all-covers encore segment.

Robyn Hitchcock recently announced more tour dates, which includes a return to the NYC area in January. All dates here.

Andrew recorded this set with the Sennheiser compact omni microphones mounted on a stand at the soundboard area. As this was a quiet acoustic show essentially in an active restaurant, there is quite a bit of typical ambient noise. Additionally, in post-production, I had to manually reduce each burst of crowd cheering following the songs but the crowd can still be a bit overwhelming at times. With those caveats, enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show (banter removed):

Robyn Hitchcock
2015-11-20
Early Show
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Recorded at Soundboard area

Sennheiser MKE-2s > Zoom H4 > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded by Andrew Lowden
Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:35:32]
01 Mexican God
02 Balloon Man
03 My Wife and My Dead Wife
04 [banter – tiny towels]
05 The Ghost Ship
06 [banter – early divorces]
07 The Devil’s Coachman
08 [banter – psychic payload]
09 San Francisco Patrol
10 Trouble In Your Blood
11 [banter – banjo]
12 Death and Love
13 Goodnight I Say
14 [banter – beanbags]
15 I’m Only You
16 Nietzche’s Way
17 Linctus House
18 [banter – harmonica holder]
19 Queen Elvis
20 [encore break]
21 River Man [Nick Drake]
22 Pale Blue Eyes [Velvets]
23 Motion Pictures [Neil Young]

If you Download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Robyn Hitchcock, visit his website, and purchase his official releases from the Store at his website [HERE].

Blitzen Trapper: April 17, 2015 City Winery – Flac/MP3/Streaming (Neil Young Harvest show)

April 23, 2015
By

BT City Winery
[screen shot from this video]

Blitzen Trapper has always been a band who embraces their influences. Whether it be country-folk, 70s rock or even Zep, we’ve seen the band play some pointed covers over the years. I even had the pleasure of seeing lead singer Eric Early perform an outstanding mini-Dylan set at the Complete Last Waltz show in 2013.

For this year’s Record Store Day, Blitzen Trapper took it to the next level — releasing a limited edition vinyl of a complete performance of Neil Young’s Harvest recorded live in Portland last Fall. Accompanying the release, the band went on a small tour playing Harvest along with a selection of their own material. We caught the early show at City Winery on Friday, a venue that so impressed us during last weekend’s Mountain Goats shows. Despite the still-daylight starting time, the band came out ready to play with four of the own songs right out of the gate. The set’s centerpiece piece began with the familiar opening chords of the plaintive “Out on the Weekend” (streaming below), a performance so spot-on that we knew this would be a pleasure to behold. The remainder of Harvest was equally impressive — extraordinarily faithful to the original renditions while adding a very Trapper-like flavor to each number. The rest of the set was equally well played as the band worked through a fine selection of BT classics, highlighted by the well-jammed ten-minute “Thirsty Man” and a terrific version of “Furr” that we’re also streaming below.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted on a pole about 10 feet in front of the soundboard and mixed with an excellent feed provided by the band’s touring FOH Engineer Nathan Vanderpool. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream “Out on the Weekend” (Neil Young cover):

Stream “Furr”:

Blitzen Trapper
2015-04-17
(Early Show)
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer Nathan Vanderpool] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:24:06]
01 Black River Killer
02 Not Your Lover
03 Love The Way You Walk Away
04 Lady on the Water
05 Out on the Weekend
06 Harvest
07 [banter – record store day]
08 A Man Needs a Maid
09 Heart of Gold
10 Are You Ready for the Country
11 Old Man
12 There’s a World
13 Alabama
14 The Needle and the Damage Done
15 Words (Between the Lines of Age)
16 Fletcher
17 Thirsty Man
18 [encore break]
19 The Man Who Would Speak True
20 Furr
21 [banter – NY]
22 Might Find It Cheap

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, PLEASE support Blitzen Trapper, visit their website, and purchase their official release from the Store at their website [HERE].

the Mountain Goats: April 12, 2015 City Winery – Flac/MP3/Streaming

April 16, 2015
By

Mountain Goats City Winery 2 (2)
[screen cap from capnkoons video here]

There are times when the people who book shows make the perfect pairing of a band and a venue and this weekend the Mountain Goats and City Winery were a marriage made in heaven. We caught both nights with two different NYCTaper contributors but we both were in complete agreement that these were outstanding shows in large part because of where they took place. City Winery prides itself on being a “listening room” — a place where people who come to see an artist perform respect the music. There is literally a pre-show message to refrain from talking during the music. For Mountain Goats fans however, the warning may not be actually necessary. They may sing along with the lyrics (all known by heart) and call out the most obscure requests in between songs, but when the band is playing, the listening is happening. And City Winery is both large enough to satisfy the two-night ticket demand for this band, and small enough to maintain a nice level of intimacy.

The Mountain Goats are currently on tour in support of Beat the Champ, which is ostensibly John Darnielle’s tribute to the early days of professional wrestling of the 1970s and early 80s. But as with the Mountain Goats music, there’s much going on beneath the surface of these songs. The basic routines that made wrestling attractive to suburban kids of the time — identifiable heroes and villains, fluid loyalties, physical comedy, and deception — are all themes that Darnielle is comfortable covering in Mountain Goats material as symbols of wider human truths. For example, the protagonist in “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” (streaming below) becomes the “good guy” foil to Darnielle’s abusive stepfather and “Southwestern Territory” becomes a parable for the musician’s life on the road. In a lengthy show at City Winery, these and other Champ songs fit well within a career spanning setlist that offered a “gimmick” of its own. The band had played a pared-down “basement” set for the City Winery’s video series this week and enjoyed the experience so much that the actual stage plot on this night featured a small drum kit and Peter Hughes fretless bass — an “unplugged” set-up if you will. There were also some change-ups, as usual set-closer “This Year” appeared very early in the set, and “No Children” featured a complete-song vocal performance by the crowd while Darnielle led the chorus while standing on a table in the audience. Other highlights of this terrifically entertaining set included personal favorite “Up The Wolves” (also streaming below), “Foreign Object” with the outstanding horn work from new band member Matt Douglas, and a goofy acoustic cover of the Grateful Dead’s “St. Stephen” — and of course a significant amount of John’s usual humorous banter. While the Mountain Goats will not be back in NYC until next year — the current tour runs through June and then its off to Europe in the Fall — we expect that when they do the NYC shows will again be at City Winery. At least we hope they are, since this was one of my favorite tMG shows of the many I have seen.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards clamped to the same beam that acidjack used for the previous night’s show and mixed with a superb soundboard feed by longtime Mountain Goats FOH Brandon Eggleston. The sound quality is quite excellent. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream “Up The Wolves”:

Stream “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero”

Mountain Goats
2015-04-12
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Brandon Eggleston] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:45:07]
01 [wrestling intro]
02 Get Lonely
03 [banter – basement]
04 Werewolf Gimmick
05 This Year
06 Animal Mask
07 Slow West Vultures
08 [banter – weapon]
09 Foreign Object
10 Luna
11 Deuteronomy 2:10
12 Shot in the Dark [Ozzy Osbourne]
13 [banter – audible]
14 Steal Smoked Fish
15 St. Stephen [Grateful Dead cover]
16 Cotton
17 The Ballad of Bull Ramos
18 Cry for Judas
19 Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph Of
20 Love Love Love
21 Choked Out
22 Up the Wolves
23 The Legend of Chavo Guerrero
24 [encore break]
25 The Diaz Brothers
26 [banter – fiefdoms]
27 Southwestern Territory
28 No Children
29 [second encore break]
30 Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, PLEASE SUPPORT The Mountain Goats, visit their website, and purchase Beat the Champ from the Merge Records website [HERE].

The Mountain Goats: April 11, 2015 City Winery – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

April 12, 2015
By

IMG_8411

John Darnielle possesses the writer’s gift of universality. From his very specific songs come truths that touch the hearts of listeners who have never lived his life. You may never have felt the humiliation of being a burned out tweaker, sweating it out in a dingy hotel room, but you understand what it means to feel you’re at rock bottom. You know what it is to be dumb and wild and free. You know what it is to desperately, desperately, survive a year that hasn’t gone the way you hoped. In John’s quirky  new songs about wrestling from Beat the Champ there are classic themes about underdogs and alienation, themes that you don’t need to wear a mask to understand. The Mountain Goats built their fervent fan base not on the strength of riffs but on words. Listening to Darnielle’s stories, feeling the emotions he projects, his heart becomes your heart; his trials, yours.

The Mountain Goats played NYC shows on this tour both at Webster Hall and two nights at City Winery, in lieu of a single large show at Terminal 5 or a similar venue. For that, we can be grateful, as City Winery — where as John said, he could actually see the back of the venue from the stage — vibed perfectly with what he wanted. For this tour, the regular trio of Darnielle, Jon Wurster and Peter Hughes is joined by the NC-based journeyman and Swiss army knife of a musician Matt Douglas, who has now appeared on this site with three different bands, if you count his solo show. The addition of Douglas on sax, guitar, horns and keys adds welcome texture and complexity to the full-band numbers, and takes some pressure off of Darnielle, whose massive catalog is always a challenge on tour. The intimate room amplified the songs’ emotional heft; it was a joy to see the rather well-heeled crowd of (probably) former nerds, geeks and rejects sing along to one of Darnielle’s most approachable verses:

people were mean to you
but i always thought you were cool
clicking down the concrete hallways
in your spiked heels
back in high school

That’s Darnielle’s magic, distilled: A song about a single person that many of us could see in ourselves, even if what made us different had nothing to do with spiked heels. If proof were ever needed of the value of being yourself, Darnielle and his slow-burning but runaway success would be the best of it. That he has created an entire community of people who feel the same way is his gift to all of us. Happiness isn’t conformity, or cowing to others’ idea of who you ought to be. It’s doing every stupid thing that makes you feel alive, and the joy you feel at coming out on the other side, still breathing. Long live The Mountain Goats.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones in a position forward of the board, along with a stereo feed of The Mountain Goats’ engineer Brandon Eggleston’s excellent house mix. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [FLAC] | [MP3]

Stream the entire set:

The Mountain Goats
2015-04-11
City Winery
New York, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41 (FOB, ROC, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineer: Brandon Eggleston)>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust levels, fades, downsample)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter, imaging)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:33:56]
01 [intro]
02 Get Lonely
03 The Ballad of Bull Ramos
04 Love Love Love
05 [banter1]
06 Palmcorder Yajna
07 Animal Mask
08 [banter2]
09 Luna
10 Deuteronomy 2:10
11 [banter3]
12 Beyond the Mysterious Beyond
13 Raja Vocative
14 Woke Up New
15 Steal Smoked Fish
16 Never Quite Free
17 Song for Dennis Brown
18 Stabbed to Death Outside of San Juan
19 Foreign Object
20 This Year
21 The Legend of Chavo Guerrero
22 [encore break]
23 You Were Cool
24 Southwestern Territory
25 Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1
26 [encore break 2]/piano jam
27 No Children

Band:
John Darnielle – Vocals, guitar, keys
Matt Douglas – saxophone, guitar, keys, horns
Peter Hughes – Bass
Jon Wurster – Drums

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT The Mountain Goats, visit their website, and buy their records from their online store.

Glenn Tilbrook: September 25, 2014 City Winery – Flac/MP3/Streaming

September 30, 2014
By

GlennTilbrook City Winery
[screen cap from this video]

As one-half of one of the best songwriting duos of the latter half of the twentieth century, Glenn Tilbrook could easily coast on his merits into a comfortable retirement. But Tilbrook last year released one of his strongest records in decades Happy Ending that could rival the finest output of the Squeeze oeuvre and he is currently on tour in the US through the entire month of October. We were fortunate to catch one of the two shows he played at City Winery last week. Glenn was in great form from the start, engaging the crowd with his very Brit sense of humor and meticulous guitar work. We were most delighted to hear that Glenn’s sweet tenor is as strong and clear as it was the first time we Squeeze back in 1981 (Pier 84), the Mercury Lounge in 1996 and through the time when they appeared at the Nokia Theatre in 2007. On this night, he played two sets and nearly two hours of music featuring the strong new songs (“Everybody Sometimes”), material from his Fluffers period and of course a very healthy dose of Squeeze classics. City Winery is blessed with an excellent sound system and good views (along with some amazing wine) and this night really could not have been more enjoyable. In November, he will tour with his writing partner Chris Difford in the UK, and it was announced at this show that the duo will come to the US in May of 2015. We very much expect to be there then.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted directly behind the soundboard and blended with an extremely tastily mixed soundboard feed provided by house FOH Jack O’Hara. The sound quality is quite superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Labeled With Love”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Glenn Tilbrook
2014-09-25
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Jack O’Hara] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
set 1
[Total Time 49:52]
01 Do We Roll
02 Ray
03 [banter – scruffy]
04 Take Me I’m Yours
05 Ice Cream
06 Elephant Ride
07 Untouchable
08 Annie Get Your Gun
09 [banter – Dennis intro]
10 Dennis
11 Black Sheep
12 Some Fantastic Place
13 Letting Go
14 Labeled With Love
15 Chat Line Larry

Set 2
[Total Time 54:08]
16 Is that Love
17 If I Didn’t Love You
18 Everybody Sometimes
19 Persephone
20 Black Coffee In Bed
21 By The Light Of The Cash Machine
22 Still
23 Pleasant Valley Sunday [Monkees]
24 Slap and Tickle
25 Pulling Mussels From the Shell
26 Another Nail in My Heart
27 [encore break]
28 Tempted
29 Cold Shoulder
30 Goodbye Girl

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Glenn Tilbrook, visit his website, and purchase Happy Ending from the links at his website [HERE].

Mike Doughty: March 1, 2014 City Winery – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

March 7, 2014
By


IMG_6775
[Photos by acidjack]

No matter how many times I see Mike Doughty in a year, he’s always got some kind of a new twist. Whether an epic two-plus hours of him breaking out Soul Coughing classics solo acoustic at City Winery, or his full-on all-Soul Coughing full-band set at Webster Hall, Doughty comes up with new ways to keep his loyal fan base interest. This City Winery performance reprised another of Doughty’s fan favorites, the “Question Jar”, which is more or less what it sounds like. Doughty plays some tunes, then he answers questions fans placed in a jar. Beyond learning Doughty’s tastes in ice cream toppings and Beatles, though, what we got here was another hour and a half of Doughty at his best, this time backed by cellist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, who added depth to songs like “Looking At the Bottom of A Well” from Haughty Melodic. 

A few Soul Coughing tunes were on the menu this time — probably that band’s two best-known hits, “Circles” and “Super Bon Bon” — but most of the show was dedicated to Doughty’s solo oeuvre. Some of those other highlights included “White Lexus”, “Down On the River By the Sugar Plant” and the night’s somewhat-unintentional highlight, “Busting Up A Starbucks”. Doughty’s a good-natured guy, but as we have seen in the past, he isn’t afraid to call out disrespectful fans, which he did mid-song. For the rest of us who were paying attention, it was pure comedy. I’m not sure when Doughty will come this way next, but when he does, I suspect he’ll have more tricks up his sleeve.

This recording is a straight soundboard feed, which makes sense given the relatively quite nature of the material. Engineer Patrick’s house mix is outstanding. Enjoy!

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive.  You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

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Mike Doughty
2014-03-01
City Winery
New York, NY USA

Download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Patrick)>Roland R-26>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, tagging, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Unsingable Name
02 Super Bon Bon
03 27 Jennifers
04 [banter1]
05 Madeline and Nine
06 Down On the River By the Sugar Plant
07 The Only Answer
08 [banter2]
09 Circles
10 Sunken-Eyed Girl
11 [banter3]
12 Nectarine
13 White Lexus
14 Put It Down
15 Russell
16 [banter4]
17 Busting Up A Starbucks (w/ STFU)
18 Janine
19 I Hear the Bells
20 Looking at the World From the Bottom of A Well
21 [banter5]
22 Day By Day
23 [banter6]
24 Drunk On the Train to Chicago [Drink Me]
25 Put It Down

Personnel:
Mike Doughty – Guitar, vocals
Andrew “Scrap” Livingston – cello

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Mike Doughty, visit his websitesee him on tour this fall and buy his forthcoming record of Soul Coughing songs reimagined from PledgeMusic.

Mike Doughty: July 31, 2013 City Winery – FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming

August 5, 2013
By

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[Photos by acidjack]

I arrived at this Mike Doughty show at City Winery having just finished his autobiography, The Book of Drugs. Reading Mike’s book — which tells the story of his rollercoaster experience fronting the seminal 90s cult band Soul Coughing as well as his battles with addiction — made seeing him perform Soul Coughing songs again for the first time in thirteen years all the more meaningful. As happens all too often with bands that reach a certain level of commercial success, Soul Coughing dissolved at the end of the 1990s in a bitter fight about money and songwriting credit. So Doughty — who by that point was nearing rock bottom in his abuse of drugs and alcohol — struck out on his own a solo act right when the music industry imploded. Early solo shows, where he shared material from the Skittish LP he had recorded in the Soul Coughing days, meant facing crowds howling for Soul Coughing tunes that Doughty felt disconnected from, and disappointed in. In his telling, Doughty not only felt that his bandmates denied him the credit he was due for writing the songs, but that in many cases those better-trained musicians had adulterated the intent of his compositions. So Mike stopped playing Soul Coughing songs, and the fans that weren’t open-minded or intelligent enough to dig the new material fell away. The fan base that remained, though, is fanatical.

Today Mike is in a comfortable groove musically and, as the book makes clear, emotionally. What that means for fans is that Mike decided to rework some of Soul Coughing’s best-loved numbers in the way he intended them to be heard, with a full band backing him. You can purchase that forthcoming record, and keep track of its progress (including previews), on Mike’s PledgeMusic page. In the meantime, he has taken those old Soul Coughing songs off the shelf to be played proudly alongside the songs he’s been writing for the past thirteen years. While there’s no way to take a valid position on Soul Coughing’s past or songwriting process without hearing the story from all sides, it’s clear that there is a consistency to Mike’s work that has spanned his career. Stripped to their essentials, Mike’s songs are hook-driven, lyrically inventive songs filled with unique phrasing and clever observations. Even if the hooks can get repetitive once in awhile — even Mike joked that he keeps writing his favorite song over and over — a great Mike Doughty song is a great Mike Doughty song, and that voice of his can’t be replicated.

This show was comprised of two hour-plus solo sets, with Mike alone at the guitar, relaxed under the lights. First we got “Janine” from Ruby Vroom, followed by “I Hear the Bells” off Mike’s best-known solo album, Haughty Melodic. Then “St. Louise Is Listening” from El Oso, one of the songs that reimagined best as an acoustic number. When Mike played “Unmarked Helicopters”, Soul Coughing’s contribution to Songs In the Key of X: Music From the X-Files, it was clear we were going to have a special night with lots of time deep in the catalog.

Some of the Soul Coughing songs work better than others as acoustic numbers: Without its killer baseline and frenetic samples whirling around, “Super Bon Bon” becomes a bit lifeless, but others like “Soft Serve” and, yes, the band’s biggest radio hit, “Circles”, retain their infectious power. The solo work wasn’t to be ignored, too — Cheap Trick’s “Southern Girls” and Thin Lizzy’s “Running Back”, both of which appear on Doughty’s recent The Flip Is Another Honey, became a single song in Doughty’s live mashup.  But for me, having just read The Book of Drugs, the most powerful solo numbers were the ones that told stories of darker days: “Unsingable Name”, “Sunken-Eyed Girl” and “Tremendous Brunettes”.

It’d be tempting to characterize this show as one of redemption, where the prodigal singer returns to being his old self. I suspect Doughty wouldn’t see it that way; to him, when it comes to being the lead singer of the band Soul Coughing, a guy who existed 13 years ago, he’s still not that guy. And it’d be wrong to assume the artist sees playing these songs as a return to some kind of glory days, either. How you feel about Doughty’s catalog is your business, but in Mike’s mind — and to a good many of his fans — his next chapter of making music has been every bit the equal of his first, and more true to his spirit. Hearing the songs side by side, played just as he wrote them, I think it’s hard to argue otherwise.

Mike will be touring as a three-piece band this fall, performing sets of all Soul Coughing songs. Tickets are available from him here.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from Mark, the outstanding house engineer at City Winery. The recording is flawless. Enjoy!

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive.  You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream “Unmarked Helicopters”

Stream “Soft Serve”

Stream the entire show:

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[PledgeMusic contributor Josh Rosenblum prepares to smash one of Mike’s broken guitars to fulfill his PledgeMusic reward]

Mike Doughty
2013-07-31
City Winery
New York, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Mark)>Aerco MP-2>Sony PCM-D50>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (light reverb)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter)>Audacity 2.03 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 2:22:06]
Set 1
01 Janine
02 I Hear the Bells
03 St. Louise Is Listening
04 [banter1]
05 Your Misfortune
06 Unmarked Helicopters
07 [banter2]
08 Mistress [Red House Painters]
09 Shunned + Falsified
10 Year of the Dog
11 [banter3]
12 The Idiot Kings
13 [banter4]
14 Sleepless
15 Sunken-Eyed Girl
16 [banter5]
17 Grey Ghost
18 Busting Up A Starbucks
19 True Dreams of Wichita
20 [banter6]
21 Take Me Home, Country Road [John Denver]
22 The Book of Love [Magnetic Fields]
23 [encore break 1]
24 Circles
25 [banter7]
26 27 Jennifers

Set 2
27 Super Bon Bon
28 Unsingable Name
29 Soundtrack to Mary
30 Down On the River By the Sugar Plant
31 [Josh Rosenblum smashes Mike’s guitar]
32 Soft Serve
33 Madeline and Nine
34 $300
35 Day By Day By
36 Southern Girls/Running Back mashup [Cheap Trick/Thin Lizzy]
37 Where Have You Gone?
38 [banter8]
39 So Far I Have Not Found the Science
40 Tremendous Brunettes
41 Mr. Bitterness
42 Looks [The Student Teachers]
43 Put It Down
44 Na Na Nothing
45 Lazy Bones
46 Looking At the World From the Bottom of a Well
47 Is Chicago Is Not Chicago

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Mike Doughty, visit his website, see him on tour this fall and buy his forthcoming record of Soul Coughing songs reimagined from PledgeMusic.

SUPPORT NYCTaper




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