Tune in to this country’s everyday news cycle. The American dream — you know, the one where folks, regardless of race or place of birth, can achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative — is being put through the ringer. Life has always been hard, and it won’t get any easier, but it sure feels like there’s a dirty boot being pushed into Lady Liberty’s throat these days.
Music saves souls, sure, but it probably won’t save us from national policy makers and out-of-touch Beltway politicians who seem to have two things — re-election and their own bottom line — on top of their minds at all times. America. It’s the land of the free. Home of the brave, all that good stuff, right? We’ll, these days it doesn’t always feel like it, but at least we’ve got rock and roll, Shovels & Rope, and Matthew Logan Vasquez.
Last night, for about 600 folks at St. Petersburg’s State Theatre, Shovels & Rope (a duo comprised of husband and wife Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst) bought a new LP — last year’s Little Seeds — to life for an anxious crowd of folk music diehards ready to experience the pair’s now trademark approach to big, bold, badass bluegrass, country and blues. They broke out the power of breakthrough anthem “O’ Be Joyful” early on and let Satan have a say on “The Devil Is All Around” where Michael and Cary Ann harmonize on lines that say, “There must be some other way, I just don't know/Gotta get myself back up on that high road/But nobody knows that like you do.”
Read: Shakey Graves and Shovels & Rope at Crowbar — review
The sentiment, delivered on the crest of a swelling keyboard chord served as reminder that there’s always something to be said about doing your best to pull up your boots and put one foot in front of the other no matter who or what is standing in your way.
If that all stood to be a little too heavy for the tipsier roots music fans in the house, then Matthew Logan Vasquez was there to help them find a happy medium.
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The Delta Spirit frontman arrived in support of a forthcoming sophomore solo LP (Does What He Wants, due April 21 via Dine Alone Records), and he brought a pair of Texas homies (bassist Brendan Bond of Bond Twins, drummer Judson Johnson) who were ready to sling some spicy, Austin rock and roll for anyone willing to toast to the idea of a little good ol’ call and response crowd participation. Vasquez didn’t encourage repetition of phrases, but completion of them (ie: screaming” “Tequila!” after a tough to follow acapella version of The Champs’ incidental party anthem). Smirking underneath a pair of sunnies that never left his face, Vasquez, who recently became a father, leaned on the rowdier material from Does What He Wants as the band flexed its ability to pivot between roadhouse blues, power pop and even 80’s metal.
Lemmy got a couple of shout outs, and the boys dipped into Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” during a raging, nearly ten minute version of Delta Spirit’s rowdy crime story “Crippler King.” Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds” even got the treatment from Vasquez and crew who gave lots of love to a stage crew that helped them start on time despite arriving an hour late to load in (they blamed “crazy ass Florida weather”). There was a lot of goodwill to go around, actually, and the band expressed their love for our state before a performance of “Blue Eyes” by Dawes, Delta Spirit and Deer Tick supergroup Middle Brother.
“Those bands,” Vasquez said at one point, “we want you to know that we love your peninsula.”
You could almost see the highway dust shaking off of Vasquez & co. as they convulsed and bumped into each other during set closer “Everything I Do Is Out,” and watching that — the sight of a road-tested second generation Mexican-American absolutely enjoying the power of rock & roll with his gringo friends — makes your feel like the promise of America is alive and well after all.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 6, 2017.