the everybodyfields : Living Room, NYC 4/29/08

(photos throughout by Matt Toback)

One of the benefits of being in a (slightly traveled) touring band is that eventually you will meet and share some shows with a band you simply fall in love with…

In 2005, our little band was placed on a bill with the everybodyfields at the Stone Church in Newmarket, NH. I seem to remember that our (now) pal Jon Nolan made the show possible, so much praise is deserved for the foresight in connecting our upstate NY freakshow with this group from Johnson City, TN.

Since that night, we’ve shared over a dozen nights of music with the everbodyfields and enough quality time “off stage” to consider them good friends. It’s been inspiring to witness their evolution from bluegrass-inspired trio to a fuller, wilder, more agressive roots-machine. Their most recent album Nothing is Okay is the album I’ve always believed they could make, with fully realized drum and string arrangements that weren’t featured on their previous recordings. (Note: both “halfway there: electricity and the south” and “plague of dreams” are worthy of praise and purchase, I simply prefer the sound and direction of “Nothing is Okay”.)

Upon their visits to the northeast, I make it a point to see a show or two. In late April, my options were a pair of NYC shows and a stop at the Iron Horse (w/Sometymes Why no less!). While I would have preferred to see the ‘fields at perhaps my favorite music venue in the US, alas there was a Future of Music presentation in Albany that I couldn’t miss on the same night. (When the future comes to Albany, you simply cannot miss it, right?). So, it was off to one of my other favorite venues which happens to be located in NYC to see my pals from the south!

The Living Room is located on Stanton in the lower east side of Manhattan. It shares the same locale as other NYC mainstay clubs Piano’s and Arlene’s Grocery, but differs in that it focuses mostly on quieter fare and instead of a $10 cover (and a “WHO ARE YOU HERE TO SEE?” poll at the door), most shows at the Living Room are free (tip bucket passed) with a one drink minimum. Of the three or four times I’ve been there, the schedule runs on time and there’s usually a lot of turnover between the 45 minute sets, suggesting that fans in the know get there to see who they are there to see and there’s not much cross-pollinating between bands on the same night going on. As a concertgoer, I prefer this in most cases to multi-band bills (unless they are well-crafted and executed) since there’s no confusion as to who is going to be doing what when. I would think in a busy such as NYC you’d kind of have to run your ship like this in order to have any chance of competing with the zillions of shows and events going on on any given night.

On Tuesday, June 29th at 9PM, my friends and I decended upon Stanton and swooped up front to nab front and center seating for this sublime everybodyfields experience. We were treated to a night of no less than three new (amazing!) songs - “Strange Wave“, a new Sam Quinn led lament kicked off the evening and sped right into one of my favorites from “Nothing is Okay” - “Be Miner“. Their standard “two songs and pass the guitar to the other songwriter” bit continued as Jill Andrews took the reins to drive the band through “Can’t Have It” from “plague of dreams” and a gorgeous as-yet-untitled new song. Throughout the set both pedal-steel player Tom Pryor and pianist/guitarist Josh Oliver played excellent, noteworthy solos and fills. These guys have seen the longest running tenure in the band backing up Sam & Jill since their original dobro player David Richey and it feels like the band is gelling on a powerful new level.

My favorite moment of the night was a new Jill song entitled “A Way Out“. Fan Martin R. captured a slew of songs from the Living Room show and has been gracious enough to share them on Vimeo. Here’s “A Way Out”! (please ignore my gigantic dome in the way of Jill’s sightline)…

The Everybodyfields - A Way Out from Martin R. on Vimeo.

There are more videos where that came from! (Note: these are High Definition recordings so they may play a bit choppily if you try and play them while they are loading. Best bet would be to click “play” and then immediately “pause” it while the gray bar grows bigger across the status bar until it has reached the far right side.)Another excellent development is the fan-run Live everybodyfields Archive. There are some excellent live recordings of the band throughout its existence (including some stuff from 2004! wild..) in FLAC format.

Check out at least two of the everybodyfields’ albums by clicking on this link to eMusic to take advantage of their free 25 mp3s offer!