{"id":47166,"date":"2016-06-29T13:30:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T18:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=47166"},"modified":"2016-06-30T09:52:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T14:52:32","slug":"concert-review-jd-mcpherson-liberty-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2016\/06\/29\/concert-review-jd-mcpherson-liberty-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Concert Review: JD McPherson @ Liberty Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s something about JD McPherson\u2019s music that is elusive. Yes, its aesthetics are laden with\u00a0throwback influences, faithful replications, and generic conformity, but there\u2019s a sense of raging\u00a0urgency\u2014a distinctly contemporary urgency\u2014that refuses such easy classification.<\/p>\n<p>McPherson, along\u00a0with a kinetic four piece band, brought this elusive sound to Liberty Hall on Thursday, June 23 as part of\u00a0Lawrence\u2019s Free State Festival. Playing to a small crowd of only about 150, McPherson\u2019s band tumbled\u00a0and roared through 80 minutes of bristling rock &#8216;n\u2019 roll, &#8217;50s rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and trashy\u00a0garage-soul.<\/p>\n<p>The group\u2019s influences are easy to pinpoint\u2014Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins et\u00a0al.\u2014but the group also recalls Freddie King, Bo Diddley, Link Wray, and the soul music produced at\u00a0FAME Recording Studios in the mid-1960s. These influences give the group just enough variation and\u00a0oddity to sustain interest for an entire concert-length performance. Songs like \u201cNorth Side Gal,\u201d were\u00a0perfectly realized in the live setting and also exemplary demonstrations of the refreshing appeal of such\u00a0out-of- time music.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_47167\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-47167\" style=\"width: 255px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-47167 \" src=\"http:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JD-McPherson.png\" alt=\"JD McPherson\" width=\"255\" height=\"255\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JD-McPherson.png 300w, https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JD-McPherson-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JD-McPherson-125x125.png 125w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 255px) 100vw, 255px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-47167\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo courtesy of songkick.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>McPherson\u2019s growl is gutsy, and his guitar playing is frenetic and unruly,\u00a0squalling and deliriously\u00a0imperfect. His music is also impossibly infectious, bouncy, and made for toe tapping and whiskey\u00a0drinking. While songs like \u201cFire Bug,\u201d \u201cPrecious,\u201d and \u201cLet the Good Times Roll\u201d found their inspiration in &#8217;50s rock &#8216;n\u2019 roll and Bo Diddley, other songs, like \u201cBridgebuilder,\u201d recalled the blue-eyed soul of Dan\u00a0Penn, or even latter-period Nick Lowe, whose \u201cRome Wasn\u2019t Built in a Day\u201d was gracefully rendered by\u00a0McPherson near the middle of his set. He was also willing to stretch his songs out and let them breathe,\u00a0giving his raucous band the spotlight whenever the songs needed a bit more punch and kick.<\/p>\n<p>The rhythm\u00a0section of bassist Jimmy Sutton and drummer Jason Smay were consistently outstanding. Sutton\u2019s\u00a0thumping upright bass was always perfectly matched to Smay\u2019s bass drum, giving songs like the\u00a0scorching \u201cMother of Lies,\u201d a heavy, unwavering anchor. Smay\u2019s drumming is clearly rooted in jazz, and\u00a0his swinging ride cymbal and double-stroke rolls were executed with blistering precision and an expert\u00a0sense of timing and feel. Smay also demonstrated a light touch, most notably during McPherson\u2019s\u00a0faithful take on Jimmy Hughes\u2019 classic 1964 hit \u201cSteal Away,\u201d the first song of a two-song encore.<\/p>\n<p>It was\u00a0perhaps a perfect distillation of what makes McPherson\u2019s music so elusive. It is at once honorific and\u00a0respectful, faithful in intent and execution, but also just a little bit cockeyed, a little bit chaotic and\u00a0disorderly. It is within these two extremes\u2014between the deferential and the discourteous\u2014that gives\u00a0McPherson\u2019s music a distinctive charm\u2014a charm glowing with retro influence but never succumbing to\u00a0its demands of style and substance.<\/p>\n<p>This is a good place for McPherson to reside, and one hopes he will\u00a0continue to approach this music with the same gleeful abandon displayed Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>Featured image courtesy of streetstyled.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s something about JD McPherson\u2019s music that is elusive. Yes, its aesthetics are laden with\u00a0throwback influences, faithful replications, and generic conformity, but there\u2019s a sense of raging\u00a0urgency\u2014a distinctly contemporary urgency\u2014that refuses such easy classification. McPherson, along\u00a0with a kinetic four piece band, brought this elusive sound to Liberty Hall on Thursday, June 23 as part of\u00a0Lawrence\u2019s Free State Festival. Playing to a small crowd of only about 150, McPherson\u2019s band tumbled\u00a0and roared through 80 minutes of bristling rock &#8216;n\u2019 roll, &#8217;50s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":47168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4,3268],"tags":[4870,5086,2086,5082,5085,3799],"class_list":["post-47166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-on-kjhk","category-music","category-music-articles","tag-4870","tag-americana","tag-concert-review","tag-freestate-festival","tag-jd-mcpherson","tag-liberty-hall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JD-McPherson.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}