Traffic School or Iron & Wine?

This is the conundrum I was presented with when I contemplated how to spend my Sunday evening. If you recall, a few weeks ago on the way back from Vegas to see Oasis I was issued a traffic ticket for speeding. Said traffic ticket needs to be taken care of with online traffic school before October 19th. As is my typical fashion, I planned on doing it all weekend but put it off till Sunday night. That is, until a friend called to say he had a couple tickets to the Iron & Wine show he wasn't going to be able to use, and would I be interested? It took me all of a few moments to contemplate: Traffic School or Iron & Wine? Those of you that know me know that traffic school had no chance. And so it came to pass I went to see Calexico and Iron & Wine tonight, and put off traffic school another day.

Earlier in the week I had contemplated getting tickets for the Iron & Wine show because I was going through a bit of live-music withdrawal. It had been ten (*gasp*) days since the BRMC show, and I was dying for another music fix. But the pragmatic side of me won out, and I decided to skip the show. Afterall, I'm not a massive fan, nor very familiar with his music, though I was sure it would be a good show. Never one to happily capitalize on the misfortunes of others, I would be lying if I said I wasn't happy I didn't buy a ticket and that my friends who did were now unable to go. As they say, one man's misfortune is another man's fortune. Do they actually say that? No, I don't think that they do. Anyhow...

Oh, and before I give you a show review, let me just tell you something I realized tonight- I have no concept of what music is popular in Phoenix/America right now. I didn't think Iron & Wine was very well-known, and thus assumed the show would be pretty empty, especially on a Sunday night- wrong. The place was packed, probably around 700 people! This isn't the first time I've grossly under/over-estimated the turnout for a show. Kings of Leon come to mind: a friend and I gave our two extra (free!) tickets to the ticket-taker at the door because we couldn't find anyone to give them to, and there ended up only being around 100 people at the show. And Wilco, I waited until a week before the show to buy my ticket because I was certain there wouldn't be many people there, and the show had already sold out. Clearly my finger is nowhere near the pulse of the music listeners here. I know what I like, and I figure everyone else should like them too.

So, tonight at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, Calexico was the opener for Iron & Wine. I was somewhat familiar with the band, but had never seen them, nor do I own any of their music. They're a semi-local band, from Tucson, and have a couple core members and lots of guest musicians. They were incredible, and I wouldn't hesitate to see them again. Their music straddles so many genres, going from an indie rock sound to a highly Mexican influenced sound complete with trumpets to an alt-country sound with lap steel guitar. Their collective of musicians were amazing and the resulting sound was so unexpected and beautiful. Which is probably why Iron & Wine recruited them to be his opener and his backing band. They played the initial set of 8 or 9 songs from 8:45 until around 9:30. Iron & Wine then came out around 9:45 and played the first couple songs on acoustic guitar with a female back-up singer. For the rest of the set, the guys from Calexico were the backing band, with as many as 12 people on the stage at once. The resulting sound was deep and layered and gorgeous. There were two or three percussionists, a harmonica, a lap steel guitar, a bass, two or three guitarists, two trumpets, a xylophone, and those are just the instruments I can remember.

My main issue with Iron & Wine, and the reason I never really gave the cd's I have much play time, is that the songs tend to all sound the same after a while. An acoustic guitar and him singing. You can only take so much before you want a little variety. Because of this sparseness, I wasn't sure what to expect tonight. But performing alongside the members of Calexico was such a wonderful surprise. The result of their collaboration is an indie jam band. With so many musicians and such a variety of instruments, the songs often extended into long instrumental jams punctuated every now and then with singing from Iron & Wine. Jams aren't usually my style because I find them to be self-gratifying and boring, but I was never bored tonight. It may have been the lap steel or the trumpets or the harmonica but I was always captivated and excited about the music. The hour and a half passed quickly, and I was sorry when it was over, as I always am. Luckily for you, Iron & Wine and Calexico have recorded an EP together that was just released, so you can hear their collaboration too. Enjoy!

to do #237: see Calexico and Iron & Wine