Ommegang Brewery played host to jam heavyweights Twiddle and String Cheese Incident on Friday, July 8. Despite the rain, the crowd enjoyed fresh beers and the ideal setting for live music in Central New York.
Twiddle began their set with a 20 minute long “Gatsby the Great,” as fans packed the front of the stage. Ryan Dempsey was heavy on keys early in the jam and Mihali seemed to tease a Flecktones tune before seguing into “Jamflowman,” with “Layla” worked in towards the end. “Zazu’s Flight” followed, dedicated to Dylan, which moved into “Frankenfoote,” wrapping up a tight four song set of older Twiddle tunes.
As rainy as setbreak was, the crowd was treated to music referencing summertime and rain for the full 75 minute setbreak, making the extended break even more enjoyable, in addition to Ommegang’s beer selections.
SCI opened their set with “So Far From Home” > “Wheel Hoss,” raising the crowd out of the soaking rain that came through during setbreak and made brief appearances throughout their first set. The Michael Kang led “These Waves” is ideal island music with a jam that got extremely funky when Kyle Hollingsworth stepped up while Keith Moseley followed with “Until the Music’s Over,” both spacey and uplifting. Behind the band were impressive lights that matched up well with the band, a near perfect array and a highlight through the rain.
Of all the bands who cover the tune, String Cheese performs “This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody)” better than any other. The outro jam and crowd singing familiar lyrics were a huge highlight to the show. Seguing into “Hi Ho No Show,” a deep jam ensued after and led us into setbreak as a chill descended upon the crowd.
Set two was oddly mellower than set one, starting with “Climb” and beyond “Can’t Stop Now’, the set never seemed to reach the energy of set one. The newish “Falling Through the Cracks,” and jam ballad “Give me the Love” were relaxing and “Sirens” > “Miss Brown’s Teahouse” attempted to bring the energy back up, which peaked with “Land’s End” > “Colliding.” The encore of Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” > “How Mountain Girls Can Love” closed out the show with the same combo of mellowness and high energy that was found intertwined throughout the show, and wrapped up String Cheese’s first ever show in Cooperstown shortly before midnight.
Setlist(s) courtesy of phish.net
Sunday, 07/03/2016
For a solid two hours, Etheridge presented a dynamic set (with no break) complete with both delicate moments and high-energy songs. Although the show was a solo act, her two hour set wasn’t just a singer with a guitar. Using loop effects and some percussion she backed herself up with more than just a guitar. At one time, she played a game of guitar roulette – looping a few background percussion and rhythm lines as she contemplated which of her ten guitars to pick next to play a bit of the lead part.
The venue sits on Onondaga Lake, once the most polluted lake in the country. After decades of remediation it is just now re-emerging as a viable natural resource for the city. The opening of the amphitheater is just one of the signs of the lake’s renaissance.
With enough imagination, every song seemed to have a connection to his Syracuse roots: past, present and future. Lyrics like “A statement from his former life,” “I’m going to be a genius anyway,” “He buried all his memories of home” and “Gonna give you one last chance to see, gonna shrug demands off of me” spoke directly to his mentality. Other songs like the beautifully rendered “Winterqueen,” just referenced the city known for it’s brutal winters. The bust-out of “Destiny Unbound,” played on this night with a punchy exuberance, could be in reference to Destiny USA, the mall that sat just a couple of miles down the lake shore. Or maybe, and perhaps more likely, there was no rhyme or reason to the song selection at all. We should just ask the Axis, he knows everything.
Diving back into their Chilling Thrilling material, a late-set “Martian Monster” featured some instrument-swapping by the band. Anastasio played on Fishman’s Marimba Lumina, bassist Mike Gordon picked up the guitar and McConnell grabbed the bass, in what became a rhythmic and jaunty jam. The members have pulled this stunt a few times over the summer tour already, making it perhaps the least surprising element of this full-of-surprises show, though still quintessentially quirky and exciting. Determined to get Fishman his big drum solo moment, the band did push through “Frankenstein” to close the second set, even without the signature keytar lead, with more excited exhortations from Anastasio about the drummer’s high school and hometown.
Though the concert was the Fifth of July — not the Fourth — Schon’s tight fretwork and re-defining of the term “rock anthem” could be appreciated at anytime. Nearly 50 years into his musical career, he had not lost much in strum speed, not any in his tonal quality.