Rule the World or the Small Town: Kacey Musgraves, Tears for Fears (Bonnaroo Installment #4)

Kacey Mugraves: Honeysuckle Sweet; Tears For Fears Still Rule the World

            Neon green and pink cactus dot the stage, a sweeping Western panorama changes colors behind a band in electric light-strewn Manuel suits. It is the surreal cowboy realm of a West that is equal parts cotton candy cute and truth telling with a covered dish and ambrosia salad in the Tupperware container realm.
            Kacey Musgraves became the alternative’s sweetheart with the sexually libertarian “Follow Your Arrow,” but with Pageant Material, due June 23, she stands to broaden her horizons as a hard reality commentator in a small town world. While CMA Music Fest raged 60 miles west, Musgraves took the stage a universe away in a teeny square dancing skirt buoyed by a cloud of tulle. Ebony-hair tumbling like an old school country queen, she flounced around the stage, acoustic guitar strapped to her and cowgirl boots cut to the ankle, leaving her free to strut.

            In a set that included a plucky version of “Mama’s Broken Heart,” a Musgraves’ song Miranda Lambert took to #1, covers of TLC’s “No Scrubs,” Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and a set-closing romp through Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” the Mineola, Texan showed music is universal first. But it was with her own material, she demonstrated an atmospheric brand of classic country is where her heart is.

            Whether the luxurious new “High Time,” that evokes Merle Haggard, the Dixie Chicks-snap “Step Off” or the early Mary Chapin Carpenter-suggesting “Merry Go Round,” Musgraves manages to blur commentary with hooks that match pop music. Never trivializing her small town tropes, she offers a realm where acceptance matters – whether it’s “Family Is Family” or “Arrow” – and dreams deferred – “Blowin’ Smoke” – are tempered with the sweetness of life – “It Is What It Is.”

            Don’t think Musgraves is all Moon Pie and RC Cola sweetness, though. Introducing her finger-picked rules for life in a small-minded small-town “Bisquits” with the straight up, “They just pulled this one off the F&*%ing radio... whatever that means. Maybe they don’t like bisquits.”

            What followed set the tone for a girl who knows how to be sweet, but not take any mess. As a post-modern feminist a la Loretta Lynn, Musgraves seems determined to work the outside in. Hopefully, she’s gonna get there.

 

            That notion of manifest destiny, honesty and what it means sifted through the pop song tableau can seem fraught at best, pretentious at worst. Musgraves demonstrates it can be cozy work, skewering stereotypes and talking down teeny minds. But there are also larger notions to mine.

            Across the field, past the stalls selling organic hamburgers, roasted corn and Amish donuts, beyond the magic mushroom that rains down water on overheated Bonnaroovians and the terminator tin man pig Hamaggedon, people are cramming into another tent, waiting for late ‘80s sensation Tears for Fears to take the stage.

            The Romantics blare through “What I Like About You,” that thin lacerating guitar sound suddenly sounding more bristling than it ever did on the radio. Is it nostalgia, or something more that draws them? So many are teenagers, barely 20-somethings, shiny faces turned to the stage.

            And they hit the stage hard. Drums cracking like cannon shots and the bass skipping behind, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” rolls across the crowd in a wave of recognition. There is a collective spasm of cheers, arms aloft as the song about the dominator impulse – stretched across as pop a frame as exists, the truth is given more than a spoonful of honey.

            Curt Smith’s voice has held up: still equal parts butterscotch and brightness, he melts into the words, lifts them up. It is the perfect contrast to Roland Orzabel’s more burnished sheen, a dark wood polished to richness with the strength of the wood implied. And when they sing together – in sync’d harmony or trading lines – there is a dimension added that is grace amidst the stark truths and concepts explored in the songs.

            Somewhere between the Beatles’ psychedelia and the New Romantics plush pop, Tears for Fears offered the confection of the moment. That it has worn so well speaks to the depth of what was beneath the songs, both lyrically and musically.

            “Secret World,” which quotes Wings’ “Uncle Albert,” gave way to the undulating “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” Though a full-tilt rock/alternative band that found pop success, the amount of rhythm & blues under those ubiquitous hits becomes apparent on a bare stage with only the instruments to color the night. Smith is a bass player who works from melody, but is also someone capable of finding the pocket and burrowing in.

            A cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” near set’s end illuminated what kind of influence the pair had on the larger musical conversation. They evoked the original’s intention; in turn, the similarity between it and their songs emerged.

            Embracing songs from their debut The Hurting, it was a full spectrum set. One where the playing bolstered them, rendering songs known by heart – “Mad World,” “Pale Shelter,” “Memories Fade,” “Closest Thing To Heaven” – became stronger now than when they were the moment. It is that ability for songs to be played without nostalgia that vitality is forged.

            Sidestage, ‘80s teensation Corey Feldman put cigarette-after-cigarette to his lips, power-smoking in time to the beat. A harbinger of the insanity of the late ‘80s go-go-MTB fueled world of excess, there was a vampiric quality to what was in his presence, yet somehow, it also suggested how powerful those moments were.

            With a Kilimanjaro beat, the set built into the catharsis of “Shout.” Underscored by the lyric’s primal scream therapy-informed lyric, it is a song about letting go, jettisoning what plagues you and finding a place to create a better way of being.  Beat throbbing, the churn in the audience as the crowd lurched as one towards the stage and then back in time conjured a rave’s hypnotic state without the Molly – and saw thousands erupt into smiles of pure rapture.

            Sure, some of it was remembering who we were when “Shout” was on the radio, but there was also the combustion of moments shared, musicians in the zone, a song so perfectly expressing the thrill of blowing up the bad, the impact of what’s being sung is all there is. Smiling from ear-to-ear, Orzabel and Smith – looking decidedly dashing in basic jeans, a dark button up on the former, a black t on the latter – matched the crowd’s euphoria at what was conjured.

            Backstage after the set, Smith sat on a couch, catching up with an old friend he’s not seen in years. Showing pictures of his girls, talking about how they reflect the parents, Guster’s Ryan Miller approaches, still damp from his own set. Introducing himself, he thanks Smith for the music, for what the songs mean – and the pair exchange a moment of true creative recognizing the power and impact of what music can imbue.

            It is a quick moment, unseen by most. But in the night, in the spirit of the festival unfolding all around, it seems so right. Here is a progressive band of merry pranksters and a force of such profound pop reality, both sharing a canvas that moves people, offers insight, instills the will to... and the emotional clarity to understand.

            Though in some ways, they’re polemic, in the end, they offer the same releases and reliefs to anyone who listens. It is an amazing transference of the currency that binds us together.

            Curt Smith smiles as he hears this, nods his head. It is not what he came looking for, but he recognizes the common ground and the role that inspiration plays without having to go any deeper than the exchange.

Elle King Stands Down; Dawes' Gilded Afternoon (Bonnaroo Installment #3)

Elle King: Plus Size Girl in a Too Thin World; Dawes: Third Time's A Dream

            Elle King is onstage, oversized guitar slung across her copious trunk, peroxided beyond human tolerance hair pulled back. She’s wearing a red leotard with little straps over the sheerest red stockings imaginable – and beyond the skinny belt circling her waist, the outfit barely contains her.

            It’s not that King eschews today’s supermodel scrawniness – and she does, the tarty blond is a seriously endowed woman – but her personality is even bigger than the body that contains it. Leaning into the mic, she’s fearless as she tears her songs to bits, a bit of old school Brit punk/nu soul undertow to what she sings.

            And there’s more to the young woman pouring sweat like it’s happy hour than the irrepressibly naughty girl anthem “Ex’s and Oh’s,” which body slams from one boy to another with not jot one of remorse. Unrepentant, unapologetic, she storms the stage, stomping, whirling, yowling and always putting it to the crowd with a ferocity that suggests romantic grist turns to powder in her ample grasp.

            A touch ska, a bit rockabilly, a bit of old school country and a whole lot of blues, King’s cocktail is more love on the rocks than anything. And don’t look to the girl fathered by comedian Rob Schneider, but raised by her mother London King to be the victim, either.

            “I Told You I Was Mean” flexes the get-out-of-my-bed brio most men would never dream, providing a table turn that’s as euphoric as it is blunt. That blunt force is equal parts feminist and F you, and it’s thrilling to see her whirl through a set with aggressive punk energy that is all thrust-thrust-BANG.

            Punctuated by trombone, the beats banging like a woodpecker in heat, this is uncompromising stuff. On “Good To Be A Man,” there is that moment of (almost) equanimity. Laughing she tosses off the admonition, “People gave me a hard time about time with that song, like ‘You hate men.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I slept with half of y’all.’”

            That brash reasoning, the tomato red stage outfit, the unwillingness to yield to expectation – all held together with more spirit – speaks more to busting down cultural expectations and body image issues than any mountain of words. See her, feel her, be here – or whatever you dream.

            True Love says follow your path – even when scorned, laugh while you do it, but mostly enjoy the ride. Seeing King onstage, she walks it like she talks it.

            The trouble with Bonnaroo is the overlapping and the things you can’t see. Choices must be made, electrolytes taken to get close to enough of what you desire.

And then there is the staking one’s claim, knowing the What Stage are those acts the festival is banking on, the numbers drawn will be excruciating.

            Elle King’s set had spilled over into the donut tent and far back past the walk-by path. Pregnant with curiosity and hardcore lusters, she was on a small stage. For an act like Dawes, the bull’s eye for thinking if tortured romantics of the new millennium, it was about showing up early.

            Splayed on the grass, staring at the sky and the screens with a giant neon Bonnaroo over the stage, there was a moment to think about the diversity. It is only here that Kendrick Lamar and Kacey Musgraves make sense together, Earth Wind and Fire can balance with Brown Sabbath.

            On the screen, messages of fellowship flash: “Live by the Bonnaroo Code: Play as a Team,” “Hydrate & Reduce Waste Refill Those Water Botttles.” Intercut are reminders of who’s playing where and when. It is fellowship as much as music.

            Roadies in black move across the stage, checking cables and connections, stepping on pedals, adjusting monitor positions. They know the crowd drawing for a reason; they know, too, this is a big show for Taylor Goldsmith and company.

            “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.  Maya Angelou” flashes above.

            A moment of literary grounding in the hippie dippie ephemera. Lee Ann Womack takes her iPhone snaps a picture. No one knows the slight woman sitting on the grass sang at the Nobel Prize winner’s “Celebration of Joy Rising” memorial. They don’t have to, they just need to internalize the message.

            Womack shakes her head, laughs. She’s having the time of her life. So much music, everywhere she looks. But more importantly, people loving music the same way she does: completely, wholly, absolutely.

            Dawes in some ways is nothing special. A basic 5-piece band, unassuming. Goldsmith wears lean dark pants, an equally close fitting blue shirt with dots and classic amber hued sunglasses. Theu’re not dark enough to keep you from seeing his eyes, not distancing cool, but more tinted to allow him to take the crowd in.

            With the chiming melody washing over the crowd, Goldsmith intones “Things happen... that’s all they ever do” with a resolve that is neither whining nor defeated. If there is sacred ground the quintet plows, it is the rows of how we tangle, untangle, stagger, slump and sometimes succeed.

            Often seen as the progeny of the Jackson Browne Southern Cailfornia songwriter school, there is the similarity of topography navigated, details gleaned and the tug in Goldsmith’s voice. In particularly building places, the band evokes the Section – the storied LA session band that included guitarist Danny Kortchmar, drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist Leland Sklar – and storied same-era guitarist Waddy Wachtel.

            But the jangle is muted, the California canyon thing is faded like denim left out at the beach. They are not altar boys in a church of what was, but young people looking to empower their peers trying to stand instead of tear down the inertia of detraction because their entitlement check didn’t cash.

            Yes, Goldsmith sings lines like about a girl who’s got “a special kind of sadness/ A tragic set of charms/ That only only come from times spent in Los Angeles/ Makes me wanna take you in my arms...” But beyond the ache, there are melodies that swerve from Fleetwood Mac’s most radio-friendly to the Allman’s sweetness.

            On “Don’t Send Me Away,” the vocalist takes a guitar solo that suggests Springsteen at the height of Darkness on the Edge of Town, as burning and electric as the churn inside him. Still most of the solos go to his brother on a gold top Les Paul, held by a strap that reads BETTS – and often channeling the Southern rocker’s most molasses tones.
            “This is our third time at Bonnaroo, but our first on this stage,” Goldsmith said almost shyly. Then like a kid with a new puppy, he beamed, “And let me tell you, it’s a whole different experience.”

            The crowd cheered. They’ve been watching the band – who recorded All Your Favorite Bands at Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s historic Woodland Studios in East Nashville – evolve and develop.
            Earlier in the set, they played “Somewhere Along the Way,” like Joan Didion chronicling the places she’s been, the way she’s living and how she sees it, Dawes in their prime have crafted a travelogue for a sensitive pragmatist finding their way.  The melodic hooks are thick without being treacle, and as the song builds, a groove emerges deep enough to show you the bones of how they work.

            One day, many years from now, the young who believed will look back – and they will have audible postcards that won’t just be the sound of their wild, yearning youth. No, Dawes will have given them the pictures and the feelings, all wrapped up with a piano player who can rise and fall, a bass player who knows that melody is as important as the beat and a clean crisp drummer who finds the heart is its own metronome.