#andy cush

Drew Gardner - Wave Field / Universal Light - Universal Light

What are those Elkhorn boys up to these days? I'm sure there's something awesome in the works — but in the meantime, Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard have some other irons in the fire.

First up, is Gardner's latest solo LP Wave Field, which sees him returning to the sweet full-band jams of Flowers in Space from a few years back. Indeed, the same ace rhythm section of bassist Andy Cush and drummer Ryan Jewell returns here, along with the inspired addition of Cush's fellow Garcia People, guitarist Tom Malach. The five instrumental tracks here are free-flowing and groove-heavy, all four players getting plenty of space to lock in and zone out. There's a slinky, Ege Bamyasi-esque feel that rises to the top at several moments ... always a good thing! And the relentless motorik pulse that Jewell supplies on "Space Ray" has to be heard to be believed.

Meanwhile, Elkhorn 12-stringer Sheppard is one-third of the new Universal Light group, joining Pelt / Black Twig Picker fiddler Mike Gangloff and cellist / harmonium-ist / vocalist Kaily Schenker for an extremely satisfying LP of mystic mountain acoustic drone. The four pieces on their self-titled debut unspool at a patient, meditative pace, various strings resonating and keening into the open air. This stuff feels as old as the hills, but somehow also as fresh as an Appalachian spring breeze. It all culminates in the traditional “The Squirrel is a Pretty Thing,” the trio finding a wondrous one-ness over the course of 12 deep minutes.

Garcia Peoples

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Despite their name, Garcia Peoples continue to be the type of jam band that's morel loose and ramshackle, less jaw-droppingly pristine and perfectly in sync than those who can switch tempos on a dime like they've basically planned it. That's a good thing. The same sextet that, for my money, provided the closest experience to a live show during the COVID stream era, on Friday night at Judson & Moore, workshopped new material as if in conversation with each other and the audience. For the most part, they played new songs that are not even yet recorded and were a stellar continuation of what you've always liked about Garcia Peoples: Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki's hazy licks, Pat Gubler's subtly shining synths, Cesar Arakaki's rolling drums, Andy Cush's bluesy bass. The band continued to extract light out of even the darkest timbres; at times, the lead guitars sang. Though Garcia Peoples played Nightcap at Wits End's "Fire of the Now" and Natural Facts highlight "High Noon Violence", it was the epic, Cush-led "Hummingbird"--an unreleased track that's become a staple of their live sets the past couple years--that was the set's emotional climax, the song I'm most looking forward to hearing fleshed out in the studio. Sure, there are moments where the band launches into a refrain that makes even people talking at the bar stop in their tracks, but I was more charmed by the moment they took their chance at a never-before-played song and killed it, even if they slightly fumbled the ending. After all, this is a band that just last year opened for the likes of Pavement, not Widespread Panic.

P.G. Six

Opening for Garcia Peoples was, well, Gubler, but under his moniker P.G. Six. Last September, he released the first P.G. Six album in 12 years, Murmurs & Whispers (Drag City), an album of harp compositions that eventually expanded into a pastoral multi-instrumental palate. That said, Gubler's opening set was harp-only, and the instrument's sprinkled starkness in combination with his folk baritone served to emphasize moving tales that, in his words, got "progressively more depressing." Jokes aside, his latest batch of mournful tunes perfectly accompanied his version of Anne Briggs' "Go Your Way", first recorded for P.G. Six's 2001 debut album Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites. And though his dirges were far apart in mood from the buoyant jubilations he was a part of during Garcia Peoples' set, Gubler's P.G. Six performance set up the night as one to celebrate terrific instrumental craft with enough rawness to let the players' personalities shine through.

Photo by Lily Shea

BY JORDAN MAINZER

As the COVID-19 pandemic’s made it all but impossible to safely attend a live show, livestreams have proven to be the next best thing, though admittedly not the real thing. And New Jersey band Garcia Peoples are the type of band you want to witness live, whether to take in a heady, yet freewheeling jam or appreciate the players’ instrumental dynamism. As such, Thursday night’s Garcia Peoples live stream from Sony Hall in NYC was the least polished online event I’ve witnessed so far, and thankfully, the closest I’ve felt from a stream to witnessing an actual concert. It made me realize what I missed the most about seeing live music in person wasn’t necessarily hearing new arrangements of old favorites as much as the inherent unpredictability of performance.

To get it out of the way, here’s what happened: Garcia Peoples taped two sets that you could purchase in advance. When it came time to log on, many of the unique codes associated with previously purchased tickets were not working, causing some folks to have to buy tickets again. Glitch in the ShowClix platform? Possibly. Annoying at the moment? Definitely. But then the music started, the band ripping through their 14-minute “Suite” from 2018′s Cosmic Cash, the swirling guitars conversing as much as the vocalists themselves. A fiddling, psychedelic intro to “Gliding Through” revealed a band eager to show off their new hooks, Andy Cush’s limber bass buoying buzzy guitar solos, moody jamming, and licks in sequence with Macrodose’s trippy light show. A surprise addition from the previously published setlist was the baroque pop-meets-explosive riff-fest of “Altered Place” in between “Gliding Through” and the flute-laden, “Dig A Pony”-esque “Heart & Soul”. That was set one, filled with lots of bluesy riffing in between tracks, starts and stops, false starts--things you witness at, well, a real live show.

Then, we waited. The first set ended, and the second set...didn’t begin. We had watched less than half of what we paid for, and set #2 wasn’t loading. As we were told to wait patiently, some of the band members spent time on the streaming platform’s message board, conversing with fans about their live curation, reminiscing on past shows, and wholeheartedly apologizing for something that was not at all their fault. Eventually, the platform let us know that they weren’t gonna be able to resolve whatever technical difficulties were preventing the second set from being loaded, and we’d get it tomorrow in our inboxes. In the before times, this would have perhaps been the equivalent to a band’s amp blowing, but then they might not have been able to finish their set. Here, some fans cracked another beverage and re-watched the first set, looking for elements they missed the first time around or simply letting loose again. As for me, I went to sleep with something to look forward to. It was a non-ideal situation that all of a sudden felt like I had gotten two shows for the price of one.

I spent the next day regularly checking my inbox, looking forward to receiving a link, waiting to be surprised in a past year otherwise filled mostly with art on demand. When I got the link, like some fans the night prior, I re-watched the first set, paying special attention to the “Suite” so I could compare it to the suite from Nightcap at Wits’ End they’d play during the second set. This time around, the band was even more impressive: After the lilting, arpeggiated, yet chugging “Wasted Time”, Garcia Peoples didn’t stop through side 2 of Nightcap, from the expansive psychedelia of “One At A Time” to the bluesy sways of “A Reckoning”. Combined with the gentle breeze of Natural Facts highlight “Canvas” and Nightcap side 1 gems like the tempo-changing “Painting a Vision That Carries” and pulsating “Fire of the Now”, the whole experience, not just of set #2 but of the entire livestream, felt less like something mistake-riddled and more like something rewarding of patience. And if that doesn’t encompass the Garcia Peoples ethos, I don’t know what does.

Photo by Dominque Miniaci

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When we last previewed a Garcia Peoples show, I thought it was gonna be their year, coming off two great records and set to release another one. We all know what happened next, but the jam band hasn’t stopped releasing new material from their seemingly endless live archives. And last October, they dropped perhaps their best studio album yet, Nightcap at Wits’ End, recorded in Philadelphia with engineer extraordinaire Jeff Zeigler, which combines all of the band’s best elements and adds some more. Yes, there’s the familiarly gentle, lilting rock of the arpeggiated “Wasted Time”, verbose “Altered Place”, and carefully woven “Fire of the Now”. But the record’s best songs are on the heavier side, like opener “Gliding Through”, whose darkly toned guitars and keyboards add some oomph to the band’s idyllic choogle. “How you gonna see the light / When everything has gone awry? / Trust the dream that’s in your mind / I promise you we’ll be alright,” they sing, recognizing both the bad and the perspective necessary to overcome it. That same dichotomy exists even within an instrumental scale on songs like “Painting a Vision That Carries”, a 7-minute jam rife with circular guitar rhythms and vocal harmonies interrupted by blasts of hard-charging rock and soaring vocal performances, before returning to swaying sprinkles of electric picking. And, true to the band’s spirit, the entire second half of the album is a suite, each song segueing into the next, diving into everything from Creedence-meets-krautrock limber pacing to psychedelic, effected wah wah jams and British folk hymnals.

Tomorrow night at 8 PM CST, this great New Jersey band finally gets a chance to celebrate the release of Nightcap at Wits’ End with a show streamed from Sony Hall featuring visuals by Macrodose. (In another perk true to the band, the purchase of a livestream will come with a download of the recording of the show, provided by the band via Bandcamp.) As for the setlist, which was released ahead of time, it consists of mostly highlights from Nightcap with a few from previous releases. I won’t express any sort of disappointment about omissions, since their “Suite” and “Encore” could refer to something other than just a jam, though I am interested to hear how second-half Nightcap highlights like “One at a Time”, “Crown of Thought”, and “A Reckoning” sound out of context of the album’s sequencing.

Nightcap at Wits' End by Garcia Peoples

Setlist:

Suite Gliding Through Heart & Soul Wasted Time One At A Time Crown of Thought A Reckoning Canvas Painting a Vision That Carries Fire of the Now  

Uneasy Listening: My Year of Surrendering to the Strange, Soothing Power of the YouTube Algorithm

Written by: Andy Cush

Albums referenced:

Camberwell Now - The Ghost Trade (1986)

Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green (1986)

Haruomi Hosono - Watering a Flower (1984)