Rockin' bosses

I last saw Matt Ward play at the now-defunct Covered Wagon, a live music haunt South of Market, in December 2001. (You kids know it as Annie's Social Club today.) Wedged in on a bill with Centro-Matic and Jon Auer, Ward took the stage with a baseball hat pulled down over his eyes, played to a couple dozen indifferent souls and left 45 minutes later. I remember him as a fingerpicking solo guitarist with a breathy voice. Very good.

I remember noting a few years ago that M. Ward was now selling out venues like The Fillmore, and wondering how the heck it got to be that way. I liked him, sure. He was right up my alley. But was there some sort of post-alt-country/new-blues revival thing going on that I'd missed completely? (Maybe "the new tribalism," as some chick put it to me at a Vetiver show once?) Not really -- it's just that Ward came into his own with records like The Transfiguration of Vincent and Transistor Radio, drawing in an audience who probably couldn't care less about his Louis Armstrong-isms or Mississippi John Hurt references, but just digs his gravel-whisper vocals and poetic tales.

Fast forward to last night. I hear that as recently as last year, Ward took the Fillmore stage alone, but this time he brought a four-piece band featuring some people from Norfolk & Western. Taking the stage one at a time, the band eased into Ward's atmospheric, not-really-danceable cover of Bowie's "Let's Dance," with vibraphone textures hanging in the air like the pot smoke that puffed through the stage lighting. Nice start.

It wasn't long before the vibes player switched to drums, making this a two-drummer affair for most of the evening. Along with a bass player and second guitarist, the band actually managed to make a pretty serious racket on the strummier, more aggressive material like "To Go Home," and cooled out for the smaller songs. The twin-drummer thing was a little odd -- especially considering that the two played exactly the same parts for extended stretches if not whole songs -- but on the whole it provided a unique, unexpected effect. (Note: the guy with the truck wheel wasn't there.)

Ward's a student of music history; he can throw a little piece of McCartney's "Every Night" into his own "Undertaker," or cover Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" as a duo with one of the great punk-rock bass players of all time, and have it all make perfect sense. There's simply a lot of history in his music, although it never seems slavishly derivative. He's metabolized a century of recordings, but never really seems like a retro act -- he's way too talented and creative for that.

Only as the night ended did Ward truly revert to the solo-fingerpicking style I'd remembered from the CW. He did a couple of solo numbers ("I'll Be Yr Bird," here, I think), then did the duo with Watt, and finally brought the rest of the band back out for "Vincent O'Brien" before bidding us goodnight.

Readers of this space already know of my affection for Mike Watt and his music -- a trait I share with Ward. Ward invited Watt's brand-new band to open three California dates, making for what seemed like strange bedfellows on the surface but was actually a very appropriate pairing. Watt seemed healthier than the last few times I've seen him, and impossibly energetic for a 48-year-old. (Maybe it's all that paddling!) The three men stood close together, mid-stage, and grappled rhythmically and harmonically with Watt's new compositions -- some skronky, some that grooved harder. Guitarist Tom Watson played it rather like Nels Cline without the eggbeater, while Raul Morales makes you wonder how they keep making quick-wristed, octopus-armed drummers in Pedro. Covers of "Three Girl Rhumba" and "The Red And The Black" (the latter featuring Watt shouting out the chords to Ward) provided familiar material, while the penultimate extravaganza of "Fun House" (featuring Ward's entire band plus actual Stooge Steve MacKay!) brought the house down. Still, I think our favorite one was the new song probably entitled "Rockin' Boss," especially given that the man himself was present.

All this, and a sharp poster too. Can you beat that for a Friday night? (The only rough patch was the brief warmup at the awful Harry's Bar, a nightmarish place after a certain hour. I bet it's a little more tolerable if you actually drink there, but all I had was coffee.)

FMFM: Sonic Nurse and Murray Street, in anticipation for Sunday night's event at the same venue