Fuck a Mountain

Godspeed You Black Emperor, Bonnie Prince Billy
The Wherehouse - Winston-Salem, NC

It made sense to me that God Speed You Black Emperor and Bonnie Prince Billy (AKA Will Oldham, AKA one of the Palace Brothers) were playing shows together. Perhaps a singer/songwriter with a twisted mind and twisted lyrics and an eight piece anarchist Canadian orchestra don’t seem like two bands that would go well together but it worked. It really worked well.

Neither band is made for the faint of heart. Fans of slick, comfortable (physically and mentally), carefully arranged concerts would be unhappy at this show. Their similarities made them perfect tour-fellows and their differences made the show a balanced study in musical contrasts.

The differences in style from one man’s cracked whisper to eight people’s lush instrumentals made the show like the favorite mix tape your friend made you. Start softly and simply, focus on lyrics and meaning and feeling. Start with a rough edge, unproduced and raw and move into a swirling ocean of orchestrated multi-layered sound.

It made sense to me that these two groups, with grass roots sound, feel, and focus would play a venue like The Wherehouse in Winston-Salem, NC. The Wherehouse is exactly that. It’s a warehouse, and ex-slaughterhouse actually. It is not a cheekily named club, but is an honest to god from what I can gather more or less abandoned warehouse with dicey plumbing, and holes in the floor (and what fun we had staring through the holes, and better yet, watching others, transfixed by the possibility of finding something no one else can see, bending over to peek!). The stage was roughly the size of my bed.

I like to be surrounded by sound. I like to feel like I’m seeing a band and not watching small people far away on a giant TV screen with 10,000 of my closest friends and for me, The Wherehouse is the perfect size to see a show. From the door I could have pegged Will Oldham himself in the head with a beer bottle, had I been so inclined. And I throw like a girl, too.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy is a strange man. He has one of those faces, his whole head really, that would make a portrait rendered by a straight sketch artist look like a boardwalk cartoonist’s caricature. He leaned back in his chair like an old man on a porch somewhere in the Appalachians, one ankle crossed over his knee, guitar which he sometimes played and sometimes just rested his arms on sitting on his lap, and softly began to sing.

He and the band made a lovely cacophony of random sounds and soothing noise that Bonnie Billy’s warbling and broken voice floated and soared over like a busted kite. He pretty much just sat and sang, sometimes closing his eyes, sometimes opening them and tilting his head back, looking preoccupied, lost, maybe even mentally deficient. Once he went so far as to lift his cowboy boot clad foot in the air but mostly he just sang.

Each song in their set ended with two or three of the musicians stopping and looking over at Bonnie Billy, who would shrug and stop playing. Are we done with that one? he would ask. Oh, okay. What should we play next? They’d discuss it briefly and start again.

The set ended with a couple of rockers, which honestly made me wish they had played faster songs the rest of the time. But it was okay because he was only the opening band.

About fifteen minutes passed between sets and the mystery of how nine musicians, including a set drummer, a percussionist (with tympanis!) two guitarists, a keyboard and other random things player, a bassist, a violinist and a cellist, could fit on a stage the size of a double bed was solved. The string section sat more or less on the floor. A far cry from cold distant area and stadium shows, indeed, and I was excited to be awash in the sounds.

While Bonnie Prince Billy and GSYBE! may have toured together on the strength of their similarities, their differences are what make the pairing work so well. While Bonnie Billy and the boys played simple strong songs without benefit of a set list or, it seems, much discussion over how long the songs should be, GSYBE! took the stage, dedicated the show to the spirits of the animals killed when the Wherehouse was an abattoir, and played two hours worth of seamless, nonstop, brilliantly arranged complex soaring music. With no discussion, no conductor, and only the barest hint of difficulty (and only during one little part) these nine beer and Captain Morgan drinking knit hat wearing heavy smoking Canadians crammed on a tiny stage and blew my brain out of my head.

As I mentioned, the Wherehouse is a big warehouse, a truly low-rent concert going experience. It was less an actual venue and more of a practice space. The show was billed as BYOB, which I took to be more of a liquor license thing, but which actually could have been better communicated as Bring Your Own Beverage as it was more of a “We are provided a sheltered space for a band to play that you might like to see and that’s it” kind of thing.

I love being that close to a band that I see. I love seeing live music in a space small enough for the sound to completely wash over me. And this space was perfect for that kind of sonic transcendences. And GSYBE! is a perfect band to see in a little warehouse that used to be a slaughterhouse that doesn’t have any concessions. And I was happy.

For awhile at least. My enjoyment of the music never faltered but after awhile my discomfort at standing for hours on a hard wood floor began to undermine my ability to loose myself to the music. I shifted and squirmed, and sat until my butt fell asleep and got up and shifted some more and honestly, by the time their phenomenal two hour set was over, I was glad. Tired, chilly, thirsty, and wheezy from the smoke, I enjoyed the music but was ready for the relative comfort of a warm car.

I wonder how the experience would have been different if God Speed had played in a symphony orchestra type venue. On one hand, I would have loved to sit semi-reclined in a comfortable chair with a clear view of the band and the creepy projector images they showed behind them while they played. I would have liked and pleasant lighting and access to liquids. But I wonder if how much that would have taken away from the show? How much of that feeling of swimming through the music would have been lost in a larger, more tastefully lit venue? How much of the crowd vibe would God Speed have missed if they weren’t quite literally sitting among them? And can a band of Canadian anarchists play in a better venue without compromising their values?

When I sat, I had a direct line of sight to the violinist and cellist. I watched as the cellist, lit cigarette in her mouth, walloped the hell out of her cello like some sort of string section Ira Kaplan. It was strange to see the violinist set her instrument on her lap during a section of the music where she didn’t play so she could drink her beer and light a cigarette. That’s certainly not something I would see if they played in an actual concert hall with concessions and comfy chairs. But how much did that affect the overall atmosphere, and the music?

I don’t know, really. Maybe I’m getting old and just like my fun a little cushier these days. Maybe, despite my protestations to the contrary, I’m selling out a little bit myself. Yes, I would like to see GSYBE and Bonnie Prince Billy in more comfortable surroundings. But I’d see them again at The Wherehouse, even knowing then what I know now.

Jennifer