Categories
LIVE REVIEWS

Live Review: Admiral Radley, Escalon, CA, July 24, 2010

The initial tour of duty of Admiral Radley came to a fitting conclusion in a steaming barn just outside Escalon, Calif. last night. Nothing could have been more appropriate. Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch (both formerly of revered Modesto, Calif., indie-rockers Grandaddy), along with Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray (who once toiled similar fields with Fresno-based combo Earlimart), played most of their debut album I Heart California (Ship) to about 65 adoring Central Valley friends and former lovers at the Tea Farm, a working spread owned by Willie C. Taylor. And, yes, as Lytle repeatedly fielded all inquiries weeks before the show, they really intended to play in a barn.

“It’s a genuine, pigeon-shit-stained, cracks-in-the-wall-so-the-sun-comes-streaming-through kind of barn,” Lytle had warned the night before at the penultimate Admiral Radley gig at San Francisco’s Bottom Of The Hill. The bucolic final venue, 10 miles north of Modesto, is one that Burtch, Admiral Radley’s drummer and the human metronome for the Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit (also on the bill last night with Taylor as one of its vocalists), scouted out for the last date of a short West Coast jaunt. The tour also included stops in Golden State heartland towns like Merced, Visalia and Fresno, all places where the thermometer remains in triple digits for most of the summer.

Clad in a straw hat and a well-traveled pair of overalls with no shirt, Taylor, the Tea Farm’s gregarious owner, hasn’t hosted this sort of shindig in more than a year, since he put on shows by local folk/pop bands Come Softly Around Us and Larry & His Flask. “We had some problems with people parking all over the place the last time we tried it,” he says. The $15 admission fee tonight also includes “dinner by Mary Joseph,” a farmhouse buffet that consists of BBQ tri-tip, Italian macaroni, tortillas and grilled corn on the cob. Drinks are BYOB. And they’ve solved the former parking problems by having a young lady usher vehicles into a nearby walnut orchard in an orderly fashion. The heat, well over 100 when you alight from the air-conditioned comfort of your car, hits you like a blast furnace as you stroll up the main driveway toward the barn.

The revelers, here early for Radley’s 7 p.m. starting time, could be refugees from the Charlie Manson family if they’d taken up organic gardening instead of mass murder. It’s a family affair with toddlers wandering freely about the grounds. One moppet is sucking on a plum while talking to her mom in a Betty Boop-like squeal from the top deck of a bunk bed. Another cue-ball-headed kid is wearing muffler-like ear protection. Horns from a longhorn steer are nailed above the one-foot tall stage, and a gaggle of tiny white Christmas-tree lights could be mistaken for a table of devotional candles at stage center. A small disco ball spins lazily overhead, and smoke from the barbecue blows in the barn window.

The profound heat has Murray pressing a cold bottle of water to her flushed cheeks. Espinoza asks a friend in the crowd to toss him a bottle of Aqua Fina, which clanks off an overhead beam and bounces to the floor like a missed field goal that’s hit the crossbar. Eschewing the usual plaid flannel long-sleeve, Lytle is decked out in a faded blue T-shirt with his Levi’s rolled-up, Huck Finn-like around the cuffs, and a pair of flip-flops. As always, he’s tinkering with the underbelly of his keyboard which has “AD RAD” written on duct tape affixed to its front. “Has anybody seen our drummer?” asks Espinoza. Ignoring the no-smoking sign overhead and two strategically located fire extinguishers, Burtch lights yet another smoke before striding onstage.

Somebody slaps on Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonk Blues,” then the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun,” before Willie Taylor steps up to the mic. “If you want to talk all night,” warns Taylor, “go somewhere else. We’re here for a rock ‘n’ roll show.”

With its descending eight-note trademark riff, “Ghosts Of Syllables” sounds like the eerie incidental music to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and immediately introduces you to the voice of Espinoza, a slightly more polished, Elliott Smith-like instrument that’s a perfect blend with Lytle’s own wispy pipes. The two have split the band’s songwriting duties down the middle, which probably alleviates 50 percent of the pressure from Lytle’s shoulders.

An audio sample of Sgt. Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police opening a cabin door in the Yukon during a blizzard actually does seem to cool off the room a little between songs. When Lytle’s not playing his palette of keyboard sounds, he’s adding a Steve Wynn/Lou Reed crunchy rhythm guitar to the mix, a nice antidote to Espinoza’s fuzzed-out fretboard antics.

Burtch barks out “Una, Dua, Treea, Foura” like an Italian Ramone brother for the title song of the new album, “I Heart California” (“I am California/Iced tea in my hair/Drugs fall out of diaper bags/As Midwesterners stare”). It’s a tune that simultaneously explains why Lytle still loves his birth state, as well as why he moved away several years ago to Montana. “I’ll be here when I die,” sings Lytle, re-affirming his intent to maintain his long-distance commuter status.

“This is a helluva fucking barn,” says Espinoza, mopping his brow and glancing at the gap-toothed back wall with one-inch spaces between boards. “I know there are a lotta kids around, but you guys are always dropping the F-bomb, right?” To which one parent in the crowd shouts out, “Fuck ’em.” Oblivious to the rank exchange, a cartoon of surfing mice rolls on behind the band.

“Sunburn Kids” seems a worthy successor to the list-song throne previously occupied by Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and R.E.M.’s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”: “We’ll be coming out tonight/Clothes all black and skin all white … We burn Germany and Reno … Scotland and Hawaii … Iceland and Toledo … Kansas and Jamaica … We’re sunburn kids and we burn every night and day.” Murray noodles just the right musical motif, from steel drums to ukulele, after each exotic locale. “The Thread,” a moonlit waltz, gives Murray a well-deserved vocal spotlight of her own behind the keyboard, and she takes full advantage.

“Red Curbs” could have sprung from any Grandaddy album with an interstellar backing track of garage-sale synths carrying Lytle’s patented vocal moan to unexplored galaxies. “Ending Of Me,” with its quivering keys and explosive lead guitar, is the perfect blend of the relative strengths of both Espinoza and Lytle. They jam it a little live, but never too long. “Chingas In The West” finds Espinoza apologizing for staying on the road too long.

“GNDN” is probably strung together with quotes from record-company rejection slips and bad reviews of some beloved rock hero. Maybe it’s even Lytle, himself. Some things are better left unknown. One thing’s for sure: It’s Lytle at his lyrical best, pulling rhymes out of his hat like some drug-addled Dr. Seuss: “The critics would say/The sounds you would make/Were so second-rate/And your instruments were fake/Well, of course they were fake/Like the flimsy displays/And the glitter and the latex/Paint on their faces/Scientists would say/It’s not like that in space/And some folks love to hate/But I thought you were great.”

The real, behind-the-scenes hero of this full-moon delight, of course, was the man behind the soundboard, Lytle’s old friend and engineering mentor from his days in Modesto, Lucky Lew. To get such a great sound from a working barn takes an extraordinary talent, and Lew delivered the goods tonight.

When asked why he had committed to a band situation after he promised himself he’d never do this again when Grandaddy folded a few years back, Lytle, as always, responded frankly. “The only time I ever felt bummed doing [Admiral Radley] was when I started thinking, ‘What am I doing? I’m an adult. Why am I getting into a van again to subject myself to this?’ But it helped a lot knowing this was just a one-off.” Here’s hoping Lytle realizes that Admiral Radley is a rare blend of individuals with everyone pulling their weight and that he continues doing this.

Before the band plays “I Left U Cuz I Luft You,” Lytle wraps things up with a heartfelt admission: “I wrote this song for one of the great loves of my life, the god damned Central Valley.” Lytle employs his Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” piano skills to maximum advantage while Espinoza gets down on the floor to dig into some serious bottleneck guitar work. After that there was nothing left to do. Like all good exotic dishes, the savory main course had become so succulent the meat was falling off the bones. All Lytle could do was turn to the happy throng and say thanks: “I couldn’t have thought of a better way to end this tour.”

—Jud Cost