Live Review: Deer Tick at Union Pool [12.07.07]

Deer Tick is a classic country-western combination of finger picked electric guitar, stand up bass and brushed snare drums. You are headed into Hank Williams, Willie Nelson country. It's that vintage country western, but not exactly. It has the same feeling, the authenticity, not exactly sound. Does it fit into something like alt-country? I've never liked that categorization or any of the bands associated with it. It's too generalized, and overused.

You definitely wouldn't think of this type of music coming out of Rhode Island, and I have wonder how this would be received in a place like Nashville or Austin. I think it would be hard for audiences in those places to separate the band from the place. What right do they have, coming here? And they would only be saying that because they would be better than any local band. Is it successful here on the East Coast because it's a something of a novelty? No... there's probably a million bar bands that play electric country and cover the Beatles. It's more than that for sure. Is it kind of a new sound, like Dylan's electric folk combination at Newport?

Lead singer, John McCauley wants to make it very clear that he is NOT influenced by Bob Dylan, he does owns John Wesley Harding, but, "seriously didn't listen to Bob Dylan until like a year ago." The comparison isn't a mistake, this is more than just the gravely, strained, nasal vocals, it's completely Dylan, in his early electric period, a really really good Dylan, maybe without the burden of realizing it.

Of course they are influenced by the blues also, covering "Bring Me My Shotgun" by Lighting Hopkins. It was good enough, but I wanted to them to get back to their brand of playing and singing about guns, loneliness, getting drunk, and gold. The typical country sad themes. That could be another problem for this 21 year songwriter. We could easily scoff and say, how can he possibly know what the hell he's singing about? Except that they are just plain talented.

John wins the crowd over, talking in between songs about how Kurt Cobain would flip them the bird and say "I've got your freebird right here," how they played the night before with the Mountain Goats and some kid came up to him with a note for John Darnielle. At first he was just going to throw it away, but then he had to read it...it said "Hey John I think you're great. if you want to hang out with me and my bros in our dorm room and drink 40's here's my number." He stuck it under his door and later asked him if he got his note 'about the 40's.' He didn't think they'd play with them anytime again soon. None of it is hokey, he's not trying too hard, he just thinks you'll like it as much as he does.

To end the night they covered "Sleep Walk", the 50's slide guitar instrumental which transitioned suddenly into an epic double time "La Bamba". Union pool lost their collective mind. Chris Ryan wasn't even struggling to keep up the insanely intricate bass lines that I didn't even know existed in the song. Seeing this it live, I could even appreciate what this fusion must have been like for those audiences of early rock and roll, it still has something to be appreciated done by a band that is fusing something themselves, and honestly loving the song. I've heard it covered a million places, from all kinds of bands, enough to be really sick of it...but I hadn't heard it like this.

John and Dennis traded instruments and stretched out a big finish for minutes, crashing cymbals, and guitar scale solos. But they still weren't finished and John, taking the stage, sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" acapella, not at all ironically, again just appreciating this popular songwriting, with all the appeal of Tony Bennet, a country Elvis or early Dylan, it's all there. I'm going to stop trying to figure it out.

[Bad Photos by Jason]