Various & Sundry

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:23:07 -0500

Last night I made the trek to Petaluma's Mystic Theatre to witness Various & Sundry, a west coast tour featuring a number of my favorite artists, and one I didn't know.

The lineup:

Glen Phillips, once of Toad the Wet Sprocket and master of solid solo records;
Luke Bulla, a fiddler I did not know;
Sean and Sara Watkins of the soon-to-be-on-hiatus Nickel Creek;
Grant-Lee Phillips, once of Grant Lee Buffalo and likewise master of solid solo records.

Jeani and I went to see Glen many years back in Chicago, and saw him with Nickel Creek a couple years later.

I can't possibly remember every single detail nor the entire song list. The show was a good 2 1/2 hours, though, and I got a front row seat - can't beat that.

Here are highlights and things I remember, in bulleted form:

Glen, the Watkins, and Luke played "Exit Music (for a Film)" - and it was absolutely fantastic. Sara and Luke did a whole verse on fiddle and violin... just lovely.
Glen did "All I Want" - awesome!
The Watkins performed "Somebody More Like You" from the last Nickel Creek release, and Sean captured the song's vitriol really well.
Grant is damned funny. (Well, all of 'em are, but Grant was especially.)
Luke took a picture of the crowd for his MySpace page (not there yet though!)
Grant did a moody version of "Mockingbirds"... great to hear some old stuff.
It was revealed that Grant wears a flannel thong whilst driving the minivan the musicians are touring around in.
Probably the funnest part (for me, anyway) was when Glen got on stage and started talking about a big bowl of peanut butter M&Ms they had backstage. He launched into this long pseudo-scientific explanation about why they were so good... they were frozen, and he said you could split the chocolate and peanut butter on either cheek of the inside of your mouth... "so sweet!" The others agreed. Then, before their final encore, Glen made reference to them again. "Man, they're good. Wait... I'm going to bring out the bowl." So sure enough, after removing his guitar and a round of applause, Glen Phillips emerged from backstage and handed me a bowl of cold peanut butter M&Ms. "Thanks, Glen!"
Somehow the Beatles came up, and Grant expressed his surprise at Paul McCartney's Starbucks-wide promotion. "That guy had his album played in every Starbucks everywhere... what was the name of it?" He took on a British accent and said, "Memory Almost Full?" Grant laughed and then said, "If it's almost full, delete some crap!"
Glen shared how he thought one of the closing numbers - "Hop High" - was called "Hop Eye", "Like someone who had all that green stuff in their eye."
Sara Watkins is generally kickass. Her vocals have gotten way stronger, even in the short time I've become familiar with Nickel Creek. She showed it last night on a great, great version of "Different Drum" with Grant and Sean.
Sean Watkins is a very, very good guitarist.

...And I think that's it for now. All in all, I really enjoyed it! These are five excellent musicians, doing what they love, and it was really inspirational. Live music is just great. As Grant put it, "Isn't it nice to be out here, watching some music instead of just being at home watching TV?" Sure enough.

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Various & Sundry