Finn Riggins, Pontiak and Red Hands Black Feet @ the Linen Building (4/20/12)

Here was a no-brainer.  Possibly my two favorite local bands playing on one bill?  Of course I'm gonna go check that out!

You couldn't have asked for a better day to go see a live show (or do anything else that involved getting out of the house)--clear skies, weather warm enough to make you break a sweat but not enough to get oppressive.  I spent a few hours before the show walking around downtown, taking pictures, people-watching and rereading part of Michael Azerrad's superb 80's indie-rock study Our Band Could Be Your Life (seemed appropriate).  Finn Riggins say it best in one of their songs: "Thank God it's Springtime."

First up for the night was Red Hands Black Feet.  Their performance didn't reach the Valhalla-storming level of intensity that their Treefort set did, but that's just as well: if they tried for that every time out, they'd probably give themselves heart attacks.  Anyway, the mellow, casual feel of their set this night both established the party-like tone of the show as a whole and gave them a chance to display their ever-growing assurance and rapport.  Jake Myers and Eric Larson added some nice little flourishes to their guitar lines and stretched out occasionally into some Thurston Moore/ Lee Ranaldo noise.  Joseph Myers' basslines sounded more impermeable than ever.  Jessica Nicole Johnson tempered the primal force of her drumming with an impressive grace and finesse.

Next up was Pontiak, an alt-rock power trio from Virginia.  I must confess to a small chuckle as I watched them go through their soundcheck.  These guys looked so much like each other, it was downright trippy: they had the same slim build, the same pale complexion, the same thin brown hair with the same bald spot and beards with varying lengths but the same polite scruffiness (they are all brothers, actually).  Once they started to play, though, any cheap cracks about Southern inbreeding were washed right out of my mind.

Listening to Pontiak's music was like wandering around in a classic-rock radio DJ's subconscious: hard-driving drone flowed into Black Sabbath sludge flowed into funk flowed into Zeppelin-esque stomp and on and on.  It was hard at times to tell where one song ended and the next began, which was probably the point.  Amazingly, Pontiak's shifts in tempo, groove and riffage never felt forced, which was a testament to their skill as musicians.  As were their simple, solid melodies and elegantly rough guitar solos.

This was Pontiak's first show in Boise, they announced at the start.  They certainly made a good first impression.  Hopefully, they'll come around these parts again.

Headliner Finn Riggins closed out the show with a playful, sometimes flat-out goofy set that included an early song I don't think I've heard before (good stuff--sounded just like the Minutemen) and a jokey birthday tribute to a friend in the audience (punchline: "Stephanie came out of a vagina.").  Their playing was relaxed but not sloppy: drummer Cameron Bouiss stayed firmly on point, Eric Gilbert sang and tinkled his synths in evident good spirits and Lisa Simpson tossed off her usual killer riffs, vocals and distortion-drenched vamps.  It was almost like they were just hanging out and jamming in your living room, only without the cops breaking down your door because of the noise complaints.

So, there you have it: one darn good discovery and two great local bands doing their thing.  Not a bad way to start the weekend.

(Sidenote: Manning the Linen Building's soundboard this night was Clint Vickery, the leader of the utterly charming local indie-pop band Spondee.  They're playing at the Flying M coffee-garage out in Nampa on 4/28.  Go see 'em if you can: as far as I know, this'll be their first gig in at least two years.  Cover's only $5, show starts at 8 pm.)

You can find info about all of these groups on Facebook.

Treefort Music Fest, Day 4 (3/25/12)

A brief observation:

As I review my notes and my previous posts on all the musicians and bands I saw at Treefort, I realize that I didn't see any of the big-time headliners.  I saw four of the names featured more prominently on the posters--Janka Nabay on Thursday, K Flay and Talkdemonic on Friday, Tennis on Sunday--but no Built to Spill, no Why?, no Blitzen Trapper, no Of Montreal.

Does this bother me?  No, not really.

As awesome as it would've been to have seen Built to Spill rock out for the hometown crowd, I don't think that they or any of those other groups were the true point of the festival.  Not in themselves, anyway.  I think that these groups would agree with me (or Doug Martsch would, at the very least) that the real stars are the bands and musicians you may not have heard of before.  The big names get the public's attention, but the unknowns and the up-and-comers make festivals like these worthwhile.  After all, why shell out $80 of your hard-earned money for four or five bands when you can see ten or twenty, some of whom may well become headliners soon enough?

(Sidenote: I tallied up how many groups/musicians I saw during the four days of Treefort.  Grand total: 33.  And I could've seen more.  Whew...)

Okay, enough editorializing.  On with the show!

3:00 pm

I make my way downtown, fresh from some much-needed rest.  I get here too late to see Atomic Mama play the main stage.  That's too bad: they've become one of my favorite local bands since they became a trio (what a difference a drummer makes).  Oh well; I'm sure I'll get to see them again some other time.

The skies are pretty cloudy today.  I've brought my big coat with me in case it rains.  I won't mind much if it does--rain's part and parcel with Springtime here in Boise.  I get an iced coffee, walk around for a bit and look at the budding leaves on the trees.  This town's gonna be absolutely gorgeous very soon.


3:30 pm, Main Stage: Wild Ones

My final day of Treefort starts off nicely with Wild Ones, a six-person group from Portland, OR.  They describe themselves as synth-pop, which sounds much better than the possible description I write in my notebook: folk-disco.  Lead singer Danielle Sullivan and harmony singer Lauren Jacobsen's charming, high-pitched, childlike vocals would sound right at home over some mellow, mildly swinging acoustic guitar.  Instead, they sit atop cheerfully robotic keyboards and synths, chicken-scratch electric guitar and turbo-charged drums.  The group's unlikely yet immensely satisfying combination of cute and funky enlivens their songs of innocence turning into experience.  This is the soundtrack of a lively, observant girl who'll grow up to find that right guy and become a pop star.  Or an engineer.  Or an astronaut.  Or anything else she may want.

5:00 pm, Linen Building: Lost Lander

After Wild Ones finish, I walk around for a bit and ponder my show-going options.  I settle on Lost Lander over at the Linen Building.  The audience isn't too big for this show.  That's too bad--you don't come across pop perfection every day.

It seems so easy when you hear it, but people who try for it almost always fudge the recipe somehow.  They go for emotional and wind up mawkish or mushy-minded.  They fuss over tunes and arrangements but neglect their lyrics.  They fuss over lyrics (and/or tunes and arrangements) but neglect their sense of shared human experience.  From what I see and hear, Lost Lander manages to get it just right.

The band's four members come onstage dressed completely in white.  I cock my head for a moment and wonder if this is a Devo-type thing.  After a few songs, I realize that it's much more of a Beatles-type thing.  Their music proves to be as clean, sharp and well-assembled as their outfits.  Lead vocalist/guitarist Matt Sheehy sings indelible melodies and simple, evocative, well-wrought lyrics in a clear, strong voice that sounds ten years older than he looks.  The rest of the band pitches in with celestial harmonies and keyboard work, melodiously fluid bass and rock-solid, take-all-comers drumming.  Ultimate message: while we may have to travel through the belly of the beast, "We have such a wonderful world."  When it comes to dream-pop, I'll take this over Youth Lagoon any day.

6:00 pm, Red Room: Dark Swallows

As wonderful as Lost Lander is, the tortured Byronic hero in me starts craving something a bit darker after they finish.  I check my schedule and decide on Dark Swallows over at the Red Room.

You could think of this local four-person group as something of a sister band to Le Fleur: Ivy Meissner plays and sings lead in both.  However, Dark Swallows, while just as hypnotic, is more straightforwardly tuneful than LF.  Their steady-rocking rhythm section and rousing guitar riffs make them more immediately accessible, and while Meissner and her bandmates may be rather limited vocalists, they don't hinder their songs' melodic appeal.  A good change of pace.

7:08 pm, Main Stage: Tennis

After Dark Swallows, I decide to take a chance on both the weather and the music and head over to the main stage again.  I get there in time to catch most of the set by Tennis, a four-person indie-pop-rock group from Denver, CO.

Tennis' bright, trebly Fender guitar, dreamy keyboards and nimble rhythm section evoke a variety of 60's music: Motown, girl groups, British Invasion pop, a little Beach Boys.  It's like manna from Heaven to a guy like me who grew up adoring the Supremes and the Temptations.  It helps, of course, that they mix some protein in with their sugar.  The band rocks plenty, they've got a firm grip on the old three-minute popsong formula and singer Alaina Moore sounds sweet and fluttery up top but packs some heat and muscle down below.  She could be Christina Aguilera if she wanted to (or at least make a go of it).  Bless her heart (and brains) for choosing Dusty Springfield instead.  And for singing tough-minded lyrics that Aretha Franklin would approve of.

I get sprinkled with a few raindrops during the set.  I check the skies and figure it's gonna get worse before it gets better.  When Tennis wraps up, I applaud warmly, go back to my car and swap my light jacket for my coat.  I decide against braving the weather for Of Montreal and head to the Linen Building.

8:00 pm, Linen Building: Sauna

Midway through their set, Sauna thank the audience (which probably doesn't even number fifteen people) for coming to see them rather than Of Montreal.  In my case, the thanks aren't necessary--this band and I have clearly been listening to the same albums.

This two-guy, two-gal group from Denver sounds like the pop band the Ramones always said they wanted to be.  They play well-schooled, surf-seasoned, irresistible 2-to-3-minute songs with titles like "Glitter Party" and "Beachball."  Bassist Ethan and drummer Sammi do a fine job with the sturdy punk rhythms, lead singer/synth-player Molly suggests a friendlier Debbie Harry and CJ sounds like a guitar hero in the making.  As much fun as Dude York was last night (probably more, thanks to touches like the Kate-and-Cindy-esque banter on their 3 1/2-minute epic "Croctopus").

After Sauna finishes up, I step out for a bit to get some air.  The streets are slick with rain.  I hope the folks who checked out Of Montreal found it was worth it.

9:00 pm, Linen Building: The Shivas

Next up after Sauna is another group with very audible and laudable influences: four-person surf/garage/psychedelic-rock band the Shivas.  This Portland-based group sounds as if it could've time-travelled here straight from the 60's (lead singer/guitarist Jared Wait-Molyneux accentuates that feeling even more with his neat red sweater and mop-top haircut ).  Drummer Kristin Leonard lays down an unstoppable mid-tempo 4/4 beat, Wait-Molyneux and Rob Mannering's twangy guitar drone delights the ears of this Velvet Underground and Dick Dale fan, and Eric Shanafelt's lightning-fingered work on the bass might get a nod from John Entwistle himself.  Very groovy.

10:00 pm, Linen Building: Koko & the Sweetmeats

Geez--have all the bands tonight been raiding my CD collection or something?  After the Shivas come arty, punky garage/blues/R&B trio Koko and the Sweetmeats.  Josh Gross cited Black Sabbath in his description of this Seattle group in the Boise Weekly, and while I can hear them, I'd add the Velvet Underground as well.  Laura van der Spek beats her drums like Maureen Tucker amped up on caffeine and Motown singles while her husband Garrett belts out the tunes in his high, piercing voice and slashes out riffs and licks on his gloriously loud, raw guitar.  The cherry on top is Andrew Houle, whose gutbucket sax both adds some bottom to the group's sound and takes the lead on many of the songs.

11:00 pm

I leave the Linen Building after Koko and the Sweetmeats finish their set, go down to the Pie Hole for a couple slices of pizza and check my schedule.  At 11: Blasted Canyons back at the Linen Building or Salt Lake City rock band Max Pain and the Groovies at the Crux.  At 11:30: The Brett Netson Band at the Red Room.  As intrigued as I am by the name Max Pain and the Groovies, I settle on the BNB--they and Microbabies will be the last two shows of the entire festival, and I want to be there at the very end.

Like on every other night of Treefort, the Red Room is jam-packed when I get down there.  I manage to squeeze my way in and stake a spot near the back of main room.

11:30 pm, Red Room: The Brett Netson Band

"What the heck does this remind me of?" I ask myself after a couple of brooding, distortion-drenched dirge-jams.  The Melvins?  Nah, not quite sludgy enough.  Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused?"  A little closer, but still not right.  Then, all of a sudden, it hits me: Zuma-era Neil Young and Crazy Horse.  This is only appropriate, I suppose, since Brett Netson's other band, Built to Spill, has been known to cover "Cortez the Killer" on occasion.

Though his brief anti-corporate rant and his cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" give me an idea, the spacey reverb on Netson's mic makes it hard for me to figure out exactly what he's growling about up there.  Then again, Netson's words don't seem to be the main point of this music.  He leaves most of the real talking to his guitar.  Netson's straight-ahead drummer, bassist and rhythm guitarist set up a platform upon which his grungy lead guitar can yowl, cry, vamp and contort.  Since I'm a huge Neil Young fan, I can go with it.  For the length of his set, Netson's soloing maintains interest and pleasure--he never starts to feel long-winded or low on ideas.  It helps too that his band's got some solid, simple, meaty riffs to chew on.

I guess it's fitting, in a way, to close out Treefort with a good jam band: it may help convey the idea that this can go on forever.  Who knows?  Maybe, in some spiritual sense, it can.

The Brett Netson Band finishes their set to massive applause.  We're all about to discover the nice little surprise that Eric Gilbert has up his sleeve for the very last show of the first Treefort Music Fest.

12:50 am, Red Room: Microbabies

The tip-off comes when one member of the Boise guitar-bass-drums trio Microbabies quips, "Microbabies--100 mistakes guaranteed!  Practice is for bands that make money!"  That's when I know for certain that their tuneless, plodding dirges and bone-headed, temper-tantrum blitzkriegs on the eardrums are jokes.

After about five minutes of Microbabies' seemingly method-free madness, people start clearing out of the Red Room in droves.  A stalwart few remain for the rest of the set to mosh, heckle and throw crap on the stage.  The band heckles the audience back, grinds out the noise and seems at times to just make up "songs" on the spot.  For my part, I sit back on one of the Red Room's leather couches, watch the whole spectacle and have a good laugh.  It's as hilarious as "L.A. Blues" (the last track on the Stooges' album Fun House).

1:30 am

The rest is silence (well, not quite: the bartenders put their music back on the PA system).  I finish my beer and head out.  I walk over to the Neurolux just to see if some of my friends are still hanging out.  The bartenders and doormen look exhausted, ready to go home.  I find my friend Malorie standing by the bar.  She's beaming, still buzzing from the energy of the festival.

"This can't end now!" she tells me, still grinning.

I feel the same way.  These past four days have been everything I'd hoped they would be and more.  I have no idea what effect this'll have on Boise.  I know one thing, though: I'll remember this for a long time.

You can find more info about most of these bands on Facebook and their various websites.

Treefort Music Fest, Day 3 (3/24/12)

3:00 pm: Back in action.  I'm operating on about three hours of sleep.  Feel a little fuzzy, which may be from sleep deprivation or from lingering effects of the booze I drank last night (or both).  No matter.  I'll sleep when I'm dead or when Treefort is over, whichever comes first.

First thing I do when I get downtown is swing by the Flying M for an iced coffee.  I miss the chance to see In the Shadow of the Mountain doing this, but, as I'll tell people later, I need coffee more than I need prog-rock right now.  I down the coffee in about five minutes and motorvate over to the Main Stage.

3:30 pm, Main Stage: Tartufi

First up for me today is Tartufi, a moody, dreamy three-person art-rock band from San Francisco.  If you put a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what the hell lead singer/guitarist Lynne Angel is wailing about in most of these songs.  That doesn't matter much: as with Sigur Ros or pre-Document R.E.M., the mood is the message.  Thankfully, Tartufi's music is plenty articulate.  Angel's androgynous, filtered singing voice adds just one more sound effect to this band's arsenal of melodic bass, kinetic drumming, jack-of-all-sounds guitar, clever loops and New Age-y samples, polyrhythms and textures.  While all three band members clearly have chops, they emphasize melody and groove over self-aggrandizing virtuosity.  Go with their flow and you may be surprised by how much you enjoy it.

After Tartufi's set, I wander over to the food trucks to the left of the stage and find local musician Jac Sound performing beneath a big tent.  It's nice to see this guy getting a piece of the Treefort action--he's got witty lyrics, a pleasant, breathy high tenor, a sure sense of rhythm and impressive multitasking skills (plays guitar with his hands, kick drum with one foot, hi-hat with the other).  He gigs pretty regularly around Boise.  Anybody around here who hasn't checked him out should do so.  He often doesn't charge anything, but he welcomes and deserves donations.

4:40 pm, Main Stage: Snake Rattle Rattle Snake

While listening to Jac Sound, I half-consider taking off and checking out some of the sets coming up at the other venues.  Blessed be inertia: since I stay, I see what may well prove to be my favorite (non-local) band of the festival.

With their eerie atmosphere, minor-key melodies and New Wave disco beats, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake would raise the heartbeat of any fan of Joy Division/New Order or Bauhaus (think "In the Flat Field," "Kick In the Eye" or "She's In Parties").  James Yardley's rumbling bass and Andrew Warner's angular, funky drumming provide the perfect vehicle for Doug Spencer and Wilson Helmericks' chiming, shimmering guitar/synth lines and for Hayley Helmericks' cryptic, menacing lyrics and sexy low moan.  More than almost any other group that's played Treefort so far, they pull me in and don't let go for their entire 40-minute set.  They may draw from the same post-punk sources as quite a few other bands do, but I don't know if any that I've heard do it as well.

(Sidenote: I learned later that this band played a gig at the Visual Arts Collective last October.  Hopefully, we'll get to see them around these parts again sometime soon.)

6:00 pm, Linen Building: Red Hands Black Feet

After Snake Rattle Rattle Snake finish and I buy their CD, I head over to the Linen Building to make sure that I'll get to see Red Hands Black Feet tonight.  I've seen this four-person instrumental rock band more often than any other local group.  That's partly because I'm friendly with all of its members and happy to support them.  Much more importantly than that, though, this is simply one of the greatest bands in town.

I've tried for a while to figure out how to describe RHBF's music.  The best little blurb I've come up with is "Television (the CBGB band) meets Hans Zimmer," and that's really not good enough.  Eric Larson and Jake Myers' guitars blend and play off each other as if they're telepathically linked, Joseph Myers' elegantly simple basslines add warmth and body to the band's sound and Jessica Nicole Johnson's elemental drumming grounds and powers the whole enterprise.  Together, they create music with startling dramatic power.  Riffs and grooves form out of the ether, build, gather steam, shoot into the stratosphere, explode and come cascading back down to Earth.  The band handles shifts in tempo, dynamic range and tone with such skill and rapport that their compositions seem to live and breathe.

Never in all the times that I've seen RHBF has their music felt as alive as it does tonight.  They tear into their songs like seasoned pros--they know all the sweet spots, and they hit them just right.  The band's confidence seems to radiate out into the crowd.  The audience members closest to the stage grow more and more ecstatic as the set progresses: they scream, head-bang, crowd-surf.  By the climax of the band's last song, "Sink the Bismarck," it's as if the Hindenburg has crashed into the building.  The audience applauds wildly.  Drenched in sweat, each member of RHBF looks slightly dazed, almost as if they can't believe what just happened.  This isn't just the best RHBF performance I've seen or one of the best Treefort performances I've seen: it's one of the best concert-going experiences I've had ever.

7:00 pm, Neurolux: Le Fleur

I'm a little dazed myself from this epic performance, but I press on after RHBF's set and head over to Neurolux to catch the local rock band Le Fleur.

This six-person band's drones, dirges and mournful melodies may not be for everybody--one man's hypnotic could be another man's excruciating.  Me, I find them hypnotic, and they seem to get better each time I see them.  Lead singer Ivy Meissner wails through a storm of synth noises and weeping, howling guitar while the bass and drums march solemnly, urgently onward.  Occasionally, all of these disparate elements coalesce into demented post-punk rockers (which, as an added bonus, can be pretty damn funny if you catch the lyrics).

8:00 pm, Red Room: Vagerfly

After Le Fleur's set, I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma: do I brave what I imagine will be a massive crowd to see Built to Spill or do I go check out goofy two-woman punk band Vagerfly at the Red Room?  After pondering my two options for a bit, I finally say, "Fuck it--Doug Martsch may be a great musician, but he didn't doodle in my notebook."

Sara Mclean, the drummer for Vagerfly, drew this while we were chatting at the Red Room Thursday night (sorry I spelled your name wrong, Sara).

The line I'll give people after the show is, "If Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson decided to form a riot grrl band, you'd get something like Vagerfly."  It sounds too pat, but that's honestly what this group sounds like.  They write uproariously irreverent anthems to shaking your genitals in somebody's face and love songs with titles like "Burnt Panties."  Musically, though, this band is no joke: while Michelle Fast shoves the lyrics and irresistable tunes down your earholes with her big voice and pounds out solid, elementary riffs on her keyboard, Sara Mclean's bouncy drumming calls to mind Janet Weiss more than Meg White.  I find this a fair trade for Built to Spill.  Apparently, Josh Gross of the Boise Weekly and Eric Gilbert feel the same way (the latter pops in through the back door midway through the set, and the girls give him a big shout-out).

9:00 pm

I plan to stay around the Red Room after Vagerfly finish their set to catch Lemolo, but my stomach is telling me that Clif bars will not suffice right now.  One massive burrito with guacamole from Costa Vida later, I return.

10:00 pm, Red Room: Dude York

"Live from Dude York, it's Saturday night!" the lead singer announces at the start.  The Seattle-based, surf-tinged, punk rock power trio's set follows the same cheeky tone.  Strong tunes and riffs; charmingly ragged playing and singing; excellent lead guitar; lyrics about collecting comics, Carl Sagan, "Fuck City" and Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  Pure fun.

11:00 pm, Red Room: And And And

I never thought I'd live to say/write that the best thing about a rock band is its trumpet player.  And And And, a five-piece outfit from Portland, OR, mix some folk/country flavor into their up-tempo punk tunes.  Their playing's a little tighter than Dude York's (darn good drummer), but Nathan Baumgartner's whiny vocals are more pitch-challenged.  That's where the trumpet comes in: it brings out the charm of this band's melodies more than the singing does.  All in all, still good fun.  Hey, you've gotta like a band that comes up with a song title like "I Want More Alcohol (It Makes Me Sadder)."

Local garage band Teens are up after And And And.  I think that I've seen these guys once before and thought that they were pretty good, but I feel like branching out.  When I step outside and see this...

...I figure that I won't be getting back in here tonight.  Oh well.

12:20, The Crux: A Seasonal Disguise

I make it down to the Crux in time to catch the second half of the set by A Seasonal Disguise, a seven-person, arty, ersatz folk-rock band based in Boise.  Some of their more cutesy affectations--especially the quavery, intentionally (I think) off-key singing--make me want to gag at first.  In the end, though, I'm won over by the pretty lullaby melodies, the pretty harmonies, the steadfast drumming and leader Z.V. House's lie-giving, scorching electric guitar.  Major plus: they close out their set (and the third day of Treefort) with an ambling cover of the Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere," which they preface by inviting members of the audience to come on stage and help sing the intro.  Now that's nice.

You can find info about all these bands on Facebook.

Treefort Music Fest, Day 1 (3/22/12)

I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues

--Bruce Springsteen, "Radio Nowhere"

(Note: for those of you who don't know about Treefort or the music scene here in Boise, you can read about both here.  Also, apologies in advance for the extremely variable quality of the photos.)

5:00 pm: Neurolux

I'm sitting in a booth at the Neurolux, one of my favorite bars in town and THE hipster hangout in Boise since time immemorial.  I'm nursing a PBR, reading a bit from my well-worn copy of Leaves of Grass, listening to Democracy Now on the PA system and waiting for Treefort to kick off.

Eric Gilbert, the artistic director of Treefort and keyboard player for the local band Finn Riggins, has a busy day ahead of him (I imagine).  When I came in, he was talking with the mohawked gentleman behind the bar about festival logistics (how they plan to deal with crowds, what he's told the bands to expect, etc).  Now, he's going through soundcheck with the drummer and the bar's sound man.  The guitar player/ lead singer in FR shows up a little while later.

I'm excited.  This will be the first festival of its kind both for Boise (as far as I know) and for me.  I'm not entirely sure how it'll turn out--when I'd told some friends around town about Treefort, they'd told me that they hadn't heard anything about it.  No matter.  I've got a couple Clif bars in my jacket pocket; I don't want to waste precious show-watching time trying to get grub.

People are streaming in.  I finish my beer, gather up my stuff and move toward the stage.

6:00 pm, Neurolux: Finn Riggins

It's appropriate that Finn Riggins should be the band to launch Treefort: on top of the fact that their keyboardist organized this whole thing, they've been one of the best bands in town for quite a while.  They were one of the first bands I saw that made me realize that something really cool was happening in Boise.

www.finnriggins.com



As usual, they're great.  Drummer Cameron Bouiss lays down the beat--everything from laid-back skank to full-speed-ahead locomotion (their songs tend toward the latter, but not so's you can't dance to them).  Lisa Simpson's guitar jangles, riffs, shoots off perfect little solos and dips into Ron Asheton-esque distortion workouts as needed.  Her warm, strong voice is in good form tonight: she sings the songs flawlessly.  Eric Gilbert trades vocals with Simpson occasionally and provides hooks, colorings and textures with his carousel-like synthesizers.

After 40 minutes of FR's patented blend of New Wave, Garage Rock, Pop, Reggae, Disco, Fusion, Funk and I don't know what else, the gauntlet has been thrown down.  Treefort is under way.

7:00 pm, Pengilly's: Aaron Mark Brown

I head out from Neurolux and walk down to Pengilly's on the other end of downtown.  I get there just as Nampa-based indie-roots rocker Aaron Mark Brown and his band start their set.

www.aaronmarkbrown.com

I blame Randy Newman: every time I hear a rock-and-roller play anything that sounds even vaguely like Ragtime, I roll my eyes and think, "Oh great, they're trying to be ironic."  Nothing wrong with irony, but pulling the Ragtime card's usually a cheap gag, and it can get tiresome.  Brown isn't ironic.  Or rather, he isn't just ironic: he's also down-to-earth, goofy, slyly absurdist, defiant, pained, pissed off and loving.  He sings in a sweet, high, friendly voice that suits all of these moods perfectly, and his band ably handles material that evokes a variety of Southern and Southern-inspired artists (Harry Nilsson, Leon Russell, Lynyrd Skynyrd).

8:00 pm, Linen Building: Buffalo Death Beam

After Aaron Mark Brown, I head over to the Linen Building to check out Buffalo Death Beam, a seven-piece blues/country/folk-flavored rock outfit from Pullman, WA.  I mean, come on--how can I NOT see a band with a name like Buffalo Death Beam?

www.buffalodeathbeam.com

I imagine that Ray Lamontagne might sound like this group if he hired Dave Grohl to play drums and occasionally smack him out of his mushy navel-gazing.  They come off a bit arch (their first song starts as a celtic stomp and then shifts into a reggae groove), but that's overpowered by Chris Kiahtipes' drumming (believe me, the Dave Grohl reference is apt), Mike Marshall's rockin' mandolin, Caitlin Dooley's weepy fiddle and the crystalline beauty of their melodies and two/three/four-part country harmonies.

9:00 pm, Neurolux: Janka Nabay

After Buffalo Death Beam finish their set, I walk back to Neurolux to see Janka Nabay, a musician originally from Sierra Leone and now based in New York.  In a 2010 Village Voice article, Jesse Jarnow writes that Nabay "has traced an arc [in the past decade] from elbow-rubbing with African heads of state and rebel generals to working at a Pennsylvania fried-chicken joint to sweating it out in Brooklyn DIY venues with a new band."

He certainly sweats it out up on the Neurolux's stage.  Nabay sings his songs in a charmingly rough, conversational vocal style and almost never stops dancing and jumping and smiling out at his enraptured audience during his 40-minute set.  His bass player and drummer handle the African rhythms with ease and make it impossible for listeners to keep still; the atmospheric guitar, keyboards and samples call to my mind the serene, cool electric jazz of Miles Davis' In a Silent Way; and Nabay's female backup singer dances and sings joyfully along with the leader.  Between songs, Nabay gives a shout out to Sierra Leone ("It's not just blood diamonds.  It's not just civil war.  We've got music too.") and thanks the two local girls who had helped him find his way around town earlier (they're right in front of the stage).  Finally, he and his band end the set with a sweet, brotherly (and sisterly) sing-and-clap-along.  I do my best, but I've always been somewhat rhythmically challenged.  In any case, this is the best show I see all night.

10:00 pm, Linen Building: Pickwick

www.pickwickmusic.com

After Janka Nabay's awesome set, it's back to the Linen Building for what will be my second favorite show of the night: the Seattle-based, six-man, quietly twisted R&B group Pickwick.  Smooth yet sharp, their blue-eyed pop-soul sound strikes me as less Hall and Oates and more early Al Green.  Frontman Galen Disston isn't Al Green (nobody is), but he's entirely more soulful than any bespectacled white boy has the right to be.  Not only does he have perfect pitch, belting power and a falsetto that would make Mick Jagger and Bono envious, he's savvy enough to know when to deploy them and when to play it cool and stay out of the song's way.  Pickwick doesn't do straight genre homage, though: they write lyrics about prostitutes who murder their johns and guys who can channel the souls of their dead girlfriends, and they close their set tonight with a cover of the ultra-obscure Lou Reed song "The Ostrich" (not to mention take their name from the label that released it).

11:00 pm, Red Room: Dinosaur Feathers

After Pickwick wraps up, I head to the outskirts of downtown to the Red Room.  When I enter the main room, the flat-screen TV behind the bar is playing L.A. Confidential.  I look behind me and find that the other flat-screen TV on the rear wall is showing Neil Young rocking out on his electric guitar.  This is one reason why I love the Red Room.

Not long after I arrive, a four-man group from Brooklyn, NY called Dinosaur Feathers takes the stage.  Their punky pop-tunes (which detour occasionally into arty noise) get some pizazz from the lead singer's guitar, some elasticity from the bass, some muscle from the drums and some extra luster from the keyboard and the three-part harmonies.  Not bad at all.  May go see 'em again when they're back in town (their Facebook page says that they'll play the Neurolux on May 17).

12:00 am, Red Room: Mr. Gnome

Mr. Gnome, an art-rock duo from Cleveland, OH, close out my first day of Treefort.  The floor in front of the stage is jam-packed as drummer Sam Meister and singer/guitarist Nicole Barille blast out their oddball, humorous take on primal sludge metal.  From another band, such quirks as split-second tempo shifts and filtered, echoed vocals might suggest show-off virtuosity and self-involved pretension.  With this group, though, everything feels somehow light and playful.

www.mrgnome.com

With no more shows to see for the day, I stop by Mulligans for a drink.  My feet are on fire and my chest feels like it's going to implode.  I can't wait to do all this again tomorrow.

You can find more info about most of these bands and hear samples of their music on Facebook and on the webpages listed beneath their pictures.  For info on Janka Nabay, employ your search engine of choice and you'll find plenty.