This story begins in 1987. D.C. has long had a thriving hard-core punk scene and many, many years ago, in a time historians now call "1987," a band called Fugazi emerged from that intense scene. Fugazi were always a little different than the other bands of their time and place, though, combining their punk rock with funk and reggae beats, irregular stop-start song structures, and heavy riffs inspired by popular rock bands such as Led Zeppelin and Queen, bands that the punk community of the time largely despised.
Fugazi soon attained cult status as a thoughtful but razor-sharp and hard-hitting band. Intellectuals who could kick your ass. However, like many of us, the fortunate ones at least, the boys in Fugazi got older. They put on some weight, their hair turned grey or they lost it altogether, and then some 25 years later, Fugazi's rhythm section started a new band called The Messthetics.
Obviously, The Messthetics are a result of the Fugazi boys search for other means of artistic expression, that relentless, inquisitive spirit that led them to mix reggae beats into their punk rock all those years ago. The music of The Messthetics evokes the jazz-rock fusion of the 70s while simultaneously sacrificing none of their former punk-rock intensity.
That search for artistic expression eventually led The Messthetics to play at this year's Big Ears festival. We missed their set due to schedule conflicts (their set overlapped with Carla Bley's and was right before This Is Not This Heat), but we did see them perform with Atlanta outsider artist Lonnie Hollie.
Lonnie Holley (for those of you keeping track at home, yes, we're now up to 2019) has always played with a diverse set of backing musicians, always improvising and creating something new and spontaneous out of whomever he's performing with. We've seen him play with avant harpist Mary Lattimore (who was also at Big Ears this year and whom we saw play with Harold Budd, but that's for a later post), with Brandon Cox of the band Deerhunter, and with Atlanta punk guitarist Lee Bains III, just to name a few. Early on a Friday afternoon (1:00 p.m.), we went back up to The Mill & Mine, where we saw all of Thursday night's performances, and experienced Lonnie's improvisations with The Messthetics.
They "played nice" together and they played nicely together, too. The Messthetics were quiet enough for Lonnie to be heard and they gave him ample space, and Lonnie, in turn, sang and played along to the rhythms that they produced. It was a very nice set.
But wait! There's more! We also saw Lonnie perform the next day (Saturday) at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral. There, in the lovely setting of the lovely church, he played with long-time collaborators Dave Nelson and Marlon Patton, who are excellent interpreters of and collaborators in Lonnie Holley's music.
It was frankly the best Lonnie Holley performance we've seen yet. He always strives for a state of, if not quite euphoria, then redemption, or better yet, transcendence. He reached that state early in the St. John's set and managed to bring most of the audience up there along with him. A woman seated beside us at the church was literally in tears by the end of the performance - empathic tears of joy, not tears of sadness. "Is he always like that?," she asked us afterwards and we were pleased to tell her "Yes" as the tears started to mist our own eyes.
It's hard to put into words exactly how Lonnie enters into this state and what it is that produces it in his audience - at least, we're not skilled enough with words to explain it. So instead, we'll let you hear Lonnie Holley for yourself and let his music do the talking.
Big Ears also had a "walking tour" of Knoxville guided by Lonnie Holley - which is odd since he's from Alabama and now makes his home in Atlanta. As far as we can tell, he doesn't know Knoxville any better than we do. We didn't take the tour (more schedule conflicts) but we understand it was actually more of a spontaneous outdoor performance by Lonnie, singing and riffing and interacting with whatever it was that he and his tour-group came across during a walk through the town.
It must have been nice.
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