|
Los Lonely Boys Cap a Terrific Solar Fest
July 27, 2010
By Steve Fox
Solar Fest came back! Yahoooo! Rain—didn’t matter. Busy weekend—so what? Taos and visitors welcomed back a trimmed-down Solar Fest, embracing the music, dance and the chance to dude it up. People were hungry for the whole experience after losing it last year to the recession and losing the KTAO live music venue to neighborhood protest. Programmers Dawn Richardson and Danny Sherman delivered another weekend of memorable magical moments with their eleventh Taos Solar Fest. Like all their Solar Fests, there was music for many tastes, the musicianship and showmanship were top-grade, and the vibes were all good.
The show starts when you get your wristband and stroll into the park, where you see how everybody’s all tricked out! Solar Fest liberates your inner costume freak. There were braids and dreads, poofy shake-drys and fresh fades, ponytails loosey-goosey and righty-tighty, knit caps, ball caps forward and back, Panama and potato chip hats, leather and silver hatbands, do-rags, bandanas, hairspray and a beret or three. You got beards from George Clooney to Charlie Daniels, moustaches and cleavage of all lengths. You’ve got your true T-shirt versatility, from shrink-wrapped to XXXL, bustiers and vests, leotards and halters, knee-high trapper moccasins, floral inlaid boots, even high heels aerating the grass. Of course, many folks looked like they’re just in the back yard grilling hamburgers.
The costumes keep you visually stimulated and proud to be from the Taos second-hand-store music-lover’s melting pot.
I didn’t see it all, but here are the highlights that sent me and my friends away starry-eyed. As it happens, the article will end like the Fest ended, with my personal favorite performance, a fabulous power set by the Vargas brothers, Los Lonely Boys.
At noon on Saturday, That One Guy, looking like a Rabbi Gone Wild with his black beard and black flat-brimmed hat, showed again how much funk you can get from a fretless stack of tubing that looks like a blow-out preventer. He’s amazing!
After That One Rabbi came the first revelation of the Fest, the bluegrass family band, Cherryholmes. The band plays barnburners and original keening ballads, and their picking and harmony blew people away. They’re also very striking: Jere and Sandy Cherryholmes (bass and mandolin) are the parents, daughters Cia Leigh (banjo) and Molly Kate (fiddle), and sons B. J. (fiddle) and Skip (guitar).
Dad looks like Sean Connery in a prison movie with shaved head, tats and bushy beard. The emerging star is oldest daughter Cia, 26, who wrote words and music for six of the 13 songs on their latest album. She has a voice that people say reminds them of Emmylou Harris or Rhonda Vincent. Cia stunned the Taos crowd with her lead in the closing a capella gospel tune, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep.” She has also stunned crowds around the country with her own song, “This Is My Son,” sung to God by a mother whose son is shipped to Iraq: “I understand now your sacrifice/You gave us yours, now I gave them mine/Lord keep him safe, he’s my only child/Please bring him back home/This is my son.” Goooosebumps and tears arise as she quotes the Lord back to him. Rick Destefano, the host of Five Corners, the regional music Sunday night show on KTAO, said, “Man, Cherryholmes was fabulous, the surprise of the festival for me.”
Jakob Dylan was next, certainly bringing some family ties of his own, and seemed to impress people as slowly becoming his own man. He has that Dylan-esque face, softened by his mother Sarah’s genes. I think America is collectively holding their breath to see how this guy, now 41, is going to emerge from under his dad’s avalanche of songs and chameleon changes of style. Jakob was generous to his band, especially Kelly Hogan singing strong, clear harmonies. Hogan fronts her own band when not touring with Jakob.
Jakob will gain new fans when he varies his tempos and explores his sense of humor and other emotions besides regret.
Robert Mirabal proved once again that he’s the sexiest man on Taos stages: that hair thing, those dance moves honed at powwows, those great eyes, and this time, foot-long fringe on the jeans. His drum-playing and writing are unique, he bridges Taos worlds, and we’re always lucky to see him perform.
Saturday ended with the fifth appearance here by Michael Franti and Spearhead, who always touch a Taos nerve. Franti, now 44, came out of the San Francisco Bay Area punk, reggae, and rock scenes and has fused them into a positive-thinking vibe. He says on his website, “When we’ve been out on tour, people have really loved the combination of mixing reggae with loud rock guitars. … And I really wanted to make [a new] album that made people feel they could … get up in the morning and drive their kids to school or clean their bathroom or do simple things to stay engaged.”
At six-foot-six with two-foot dreads flying, Franti is a formidable Pied Piper, skipping around the stage like Kobe Bryant among high-schoolers, punctuating his long jams with cries of “Taos, how you feelin’?” and “Put your hands up high and make some noise!” Some Festival veterans say they’ve seen Michael enough, but I—and the record crowd of 4,000+ there on June 26—danced continually for over an hour, and I put my hands up and yelled every time he asked.
Sunday’s rain pattern wasn’t too nice to Kim and the Caballeros and the National Institute of Flamenco. As one person told me, “Seeing nine-year-old girls in long dresses having to dance in the rain was poignant.” But both acts were part of the diversity Dawn and Danny always program.
Todd Snyder impressed many with his humorous/insightful songwriting and lyrics. “We knew him and his band—The Great American Taxi—from Boulder,” said our Boulder friends. “Especially liked the mandolin/organ blend. Kept us on our feet for the whole set!”
Darren Cordova y Calor played music from their mariachi and ballad repertoire, including “Inolvidable Amor” (Unforgettable Love), from their latest album. Joining Mayor Darren in the group are daughter Dynette on vocals and sons Darren Lee as director of Mariachi Calor, and accordianist and son Ryan on trumpet. You can’t beat having the town mayor front a traditional Mexicano family band to show the central place of the arts and familia in this town.
Another band that showed great power, originality and polished musicianship was Pat Green and his Texas country rock. Green is a cool-looking guy from Waco, Lubbock and now Austin who has evolved from frat-house parties to singer-songwriter/bandleader with 16 CDs out (!). Most people outside of Texas don’t know him, as his website notes, but he’s a songwriting talent who is rising on the country scene. Pat seemed nonplussed that he wasn’t getting much love and electricity back from the audience, and maybe it’s that cautious-about-Texas thing so well-known here. But his band was extremely talented, well-arranged and dynamic: one guitarist played from the right side of the stage in the high register, the other stayed left in a lower range. The drummer was a monster.
Finally, Los Lonely Boys capped off the Solar Fest Sunday night with a blazing performance of their tight and soaring vocal harmonies, their hits, and jams of unexpected oldies they grew up with in San Angelo, Texas. There was a different crowd for these closing headliners than Saturday’s, more local Hispano folks and more country-rock types, and the Vargas brothers hit ’em right where they lived and kept on elevating their show throughout the night. They started with an acoustic set, which was no quiet interlude because guitarist Henry played the strings really hard and JoJo plucked percussive bass lines. Then they brought on third brother Ringo, the husky drummer with blue headband, and they rocked the park, ese! JoJo was coming off a month of quiet to restore his vocal cords, and he took the top part in harmonies with Henry beautifully. Great musical DNA. And Ringo took a third vocal part on about six or seven occasions. He’s coming out as a vocalist, the brothers say on their website.
What seemed most delicious to Taoseños was the way these “Texicans” blended long jams with classic rock and blues tunes their dad’s band played when they were kids. They did Spencer Davis/Stevie Winwood’s “I’m a Man” and the Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” The diverse crowd kept pressing toward the bandstand, howling for more. The Lonelys threw in more Spanish lyrics toward the end of their set, like the song “Señorita,” that delighted locals. The Lonely hearts are in the blues, though, and Henry’s Stevie Ray Vaughn and Carlos Santana-inspired guitar style has really become his own fire. He’s a heartthrob wearing shades and 18-inch-long brown hair. Ringo is a fine drummer who controls the tempos and false-ending bits, and JoJo is a rock-solid bassist. Their last encore was their 2005 Grammy-winner, “How Far is Heaven.”
Handsome, funny and torrid brothers—what a great festival ending!
|
