Magnolia Electric Co. Tour Diary Vol. 2: Between Denver and Salt Lake City

This is the second in a series of guest posts from Jason Groth of Magnolia Electric Co., as the band makes its way west with Ladyhawk. His first bit of correspondence, from Omaha, can be read here.

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You think they're kidding about getting drunk faster in Denver, but they're not. Sure, it makes scientific sense, but when part of your payment every night is in free alcohol you tend to get used to the two beers before the show and the beer or two on stage. In that sense, Denver is a racket for clubs—they really don't have to give you as much of their fool's gold as, say, New York to make you switch to much less expensive water before you play. This is probably as much a boon for bands as mile-high club owners since bands like the Replacements and the Jesus Lizard are two of the few bands (besides the hair metal gods) who really built a reputation on consistently pulling off light-headed shows. Not to mention that we're not getting any younger, and our tolerance isn't getting any lower, so Denver feels sort of like a fountain of youth in that respect.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Omaha, at the Sokol Underground, was our first show of twelve with Ladyhawk. The Sokol Underground is owned by a Shriner-like group that rents its Shriner-like basement that just happens to have a (and I'm using sound engineer terminology here) balls-to-the-wall P.A. system. No Blood Orphan from Omaha opened—check them out if you're out that way. We played tentatively, probably due to the fact that we were riding on three hours of practice after not having seen each other for almost four months. Highlights of the evening included Big Horn Mountain Barbecue, which, as a standard dessert, features deep fried Snickers bars a la mode. The Ladyhawk boys are from Vancouver and lamented the intimidating barbecue scene of their Southern, less progressive and far less kind neighbors here in the state. The Poutine scene up there is a little intimidating too, mostly due to the fact that you know you're in for a much worse world of pain than after a plate of delicious and potentially deadly pig (or a deep fried Snickers). Those guys can sing and John Tesh's oldies show was on in the restaurant—three-part harmonies were in the air for only two-part harmony songs like "The Sounds of Silence." Oh, and their show was mind-bending. The big basement looked like their natural environment and the amps were loud and dirty. Duffy Driediger, the lead singer, has such a booming voice that he hovers around the microphone like a harpy, stabbing his vocals at the audience with the kind of dynamics that professional singers wish they could learn in school but really comes from some sort of intangible soul.



Touring out West can be a hassle, really. The drives are long, gas stations are infrequent (we ran into a near-gasless situation that landed us at a $3.14/gallon place somewhere in Nebraska on the way to Denver), and, all-in-all, one can feel pretty alone in such a big place. It's astoundingly beautiful, and you see things on gas station signs that you wouldn't necessarily see in Indiana or Illinois (at least on major highways), and the sky really does go on forever. Seeing a storm in the distance in Colorado makes one feel far more insignificant than, say, seeing the same thing in Bloomington, IN where the tree-line makes such wonders improbable. All of this adds up to a confounding mix of wonder and fear. The bars are the same across the world though, folks—dank, with the vinegar smell of old beer and vomit that makes you realize why those big bands like playing in amphitheaters. The Larimer Lounge in Denver is a fantastic rock venue and we love playing it. But, like most great rock venues, you are advised to go down the street if you want a clean bathroom, and it might not be a good idea to eat anything inside. Great people, great sound, great club—it makes up for the stench of the men's room. Mixing the great, big, beautiful, and scary outdoors with the standard disgusting and sticky indoors of a rock club is frustrating. Thankfully there are bands to tour with like Ladyhawk.



I can describe Ladyhawk's two shows on this tour so far just the same as I describe the West—great, big, beautiful, and scary. They are intimidating to play after because they put everything into every song and every set. They're one of the best bands I've seen live in a long time—and they've only gotten better since we played with them the first time a year ago. They cleaned house in Denver, and their fantastic show inspired a good show from us, too. Don't get me wrong, though—there's plenty of old beer and vomit in these guys. This is the second Canadian band we've toured with this year, the second Canadian band from Vancouver, even (the first being Destroyer). Both bands are full of sweethearts—earnest guys who are great musicians and completely likeable offstage, which makes their amazing shows even more amazing. I can only hope that our shows are half as inspiring to them as theirs our to us.

"My Old Jacknife" (file removed at label's request) from their new record on JagJaguwar, is not only a highlight of the album but also a fantastic live experience. It starts with a riff that could have been pieced together from unused takes from the Neil Young Zuma sessions. The music and the melody is like the sinking sun when driving through Wyoming—impossibly big and beautiful, but also very familiar. We see a sunset almost every day, but this is the kind of sunset that keeps Kodak and the Wyoming tourist industry in business. Yet the old beer and vomit live in the lyrics themselves. Like GBV's "My Valuable Hunting Knife," "My Old Jacknife" is an ode to the inanimate object that is with you even when no one else is. Ladyhawk gets a little more violent though, and where Pollard's narrator is lamenting being misunderstood in a quiet way, Driediger's is creating this barrier between himself and the rest of the world actively, slashing tires, bragging about being an unknown, but admitting that "No one cares about me," which is probably the reason for the violence in the first place. Angels and demons both bless and curse the actions of the knife and the narrator doesn't know what to do with it all except sing the praises and curses of everyone that is threatened, whether they know it or not, by his old jacknife (by the way, that's how they spell it. I'm being consistent). The contrast of the joyous music and the conflicted narrator is pure rock and roll beauty. And the guitar solo is like the jacknife itself, cutting through the major chords with dirt and danger, creating its own beauty the whole time. What a great band. We're very lucky to be on tour with them.

One more thing – we're on our way to Salt Lake City and just stopped in Buford, Wyoming, population 2, elevation 8,000, and according to one bumper sticker "the highest place between San Francisco and New York." Maybe I should have had a drink.

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Check back Sunday for Volume 3.