3/25/10
Solana Beach, CA
At one point early in the night, Devendra Banhart announced that he and the Grogs would only be playing Carlos Santana collaborations with Rob Thomas in acapella-spoken word form. While that would have been an entertaining feat in itself, Banhart and company thankfully opted to melt faces for the better part of two hours.
Call it freak folk. Call it experimental. Call it psychedelic ball-trippery. Whatever your preferred nomenclature, Devendra Banhart has created something truly his own. The epic, extended canvas of “Seahorse” showed him at his freewheeling finest. With so many peaks and valleys over the course of just one track, it is impossible to pigeonhole Banhart. What Will We Be tracks figured prominently in the set list. “Angelika” and “Foolin” took on lives of their own through Banhart and the Grogs’ improvisation. The laid back “Baby,” which easily boasts one of the five best music videos ever set inside of an intergalactic asshole, was an early favorite as the crowd filed in.
The acoustic version of “Little Yellow Spider” was a welcome addition as was his beautiful crooning on “A Sight To Behold.” The band’s infectious energy snowballed through the set and just when it reached its apex, the humble Banhart asked the crowd if any of them had recently written a song which they had never performed in front of an audience. The first hand in the air meeting the criteria was invited on stage for an impromptu performance on Devendra’s electric guitar. The audience member, who hails from Kera and the Lesbians, picked up the ball of energy and ran with it to the delight of the sold out crowd. This was a special moment that one rarely gets to see at a live show. Kudos to Devendra for the generosity and genuine desire to promote up and coming musicians.
Belly Up Tavern’s sound man needs a bit of a shout out here. The venue continues to deliver the best sound in the greater San Diego area year after year. The bedlam unleashed by four guitarists and a drummer on some tracks was a beast that many bars would have failed to tame. Whether mellow or psychedelic, Banhart’s compositions remained pristine throughout the evening and only suffered when a few winos (i.e. the slurring thirty-something who kept insisting she looks like Charlize Theron) attempted to drown out Banhart’s stripped-down three song solo. This prompted a hilarious speech in which Banhart asked the entire bar to “shut the fuck up for 25 seconds” so he could play a song he had just created a day earlier. It started off with the brilliant line “My heart’s already broken but I wanna get laid again” and carried the raw, truncated charm of his early work.
It would be criminal to overlook the contribution of the Grogs to the evening. Each member of Banhart’s backing band took a turn on lead vocals over the course of a versatile and enthralling set. They breezed through loose jams like “16th & Valencia Roxy Music” and “Long Haired Child” as they rode the crest of a beautiful wave with fans in tow. “Carmensita” and a “Chinese Children” teaser that segued into a playful, uptempo rendition of “I Feel Just Like A Child” brought the festivities to a temporary close before the encore’s contained chaos of “Rats” officially punctuated the evening. As the band left the stage, a sea of Pabst-swilling Belly Up patrons wandered into the Solana Beach night with smiles and ringing ear drums, but the kind of ringing that summons a warm nostalgia the day after a truly incredible musical moment.
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