Lams and Griesgraber are back at Coffeetree Café

By Walter Tunis — Contributing Music Writer

Posted: 12:00am on Aug 19, 2011; Modified: 6:12am on Aug 19, 2011

  • Story Photos

  • THE WEEK THAT WAS

    Hot Tuna and Mountain Heart at WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour: Jorma Kaukonen wasn't about to be outdone. After the progressive bluegrass troupe Mountain Heart asserted its spiritual side at the weekly taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at the Kentucky Theatre with the '30s-era gospel quartet tune You Better Run, the guitarist/vocalist/frontman/co-founder of Hot Tuna decided to counter with something a little more, well, devilish. So he ended the evening with Julius Daniels' bloody double-barrel saga 99 Year Blues.

    "Gonna shoot everybody I don't like at all," Kaukonen sang in a bluesy hum just after Barry Abernathy and Josh Shilling led Mountain Heart through an equally heated warning from the heavens. "It's just a song," Kaukonen said, as if litigating the playful showdown between mighty blues and almighty gospel. Too bad both songs were served as encores, meaning they won't make it to the program's on-air broadcast.

    For its part, Hot Tuna stayed true to the course of the earthy acoustic blues that it has piloted for more than four decades. But for all of the casual, even rough-cut exchanges between Kaukonen and longtime bass mate Jack Casady, the star of the set proved to be mandolinist Barry Mitterhoff, whose brittle but elegant string solos were prominently featured on the Rev. Gary Davis' Children of Zion and Papa Charlie McCoy's merry Vicksburg Stomp (both from the new album Steady as She Goes) and the leisurely stroll of another Davis gem, Hesitation Blues, which has been a staple of the Hot Tuna repertoire since the band's inception in 1969.

    Mountain Heart displayed its own variations on musical tradition by letting Aaron Ramey's wily dobro runs, Shilling's crisp vocal lead and the superlative fiddle tone of the Jim Van Cleve drive One More for the Road.

    But the band's show-stopper was obvious: an extended string-music makeover of the Allman Brothers classic Whipping Post. From Jason Moore's re-creation of the immortal Berry Oakley intro on upright bass to Shilling's unorthodox use of keyboards (which included a Leon Russell-style breakdown near the song's end), this was an adventure that had its head and heart in a musical tradition that confidently sat several light-years away from bluegrass.

Bert Lams and Tom Griesgraber

7 p.m. Aug. 21 at Kentucky Coffeetree Café, 235 W. Broadway in Frankfort. (502) 875-3009. Kentuckycoffeetree.com.

Great opportunities seldom repeat themselves. But this weekend offers a second chance to hear two exemplary instrumentalists in one of the region's most inviting and intimate performance settings.

Local audiences might know Bert Lams as one-third of the acclaimed California Guitar Trio. A classically trained, Belgium-born player, he long ago mastered the fine art of genre-jumping. He showcased his classical prowess with a superlative solo album of Bach Preludes (Nascent), but Lams has stylistically leap-frogged with the CGT from classical to surf to accomplished original compositions to prog-rock covers.

Tom Griesgraber is versed on the versatile electric gizmo known as the Chapman stick, an instrument that creates everything from bass-like tones to orchestral ambience through taps on its strings. In a coincidental twist, Griesgraber's first Lexington performance was a show-opening set for a 2004 CGT concert at The Dame.

The duo's 2010 show at the Kentucky Coffeetree Café offered a wonderful evening of musical thrill-seeking in a prime and appealing listening environment. Expect no less when Lams and Griesgraber perform there again Sunday.

Still on the Skid

To the list of '80s and '90s arena-rock outfits that have performed this summer at Buster's Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St., add the name of New Jersey metal-tinged thud merchants Skid Row.

The band ruled MTV and pop charts decades ago with the hits 18 and Life, Youth Gone Wild and Monkey Business. Star frontman Sebastian Bach has long been gone from Skid Row, though. Singer Johnny Solinger has handled vocal chores since 1999. Guitarists Dave "The Snake" Sabo and Scotti Hill remain from the old days, as does founding bassist Rachel Bolan. Drummer Rob Hammersmith joined in 2010. Skid Row's most recent album is 2006's Revolutions Per Minute.

Skid Row will play Buster's on Saturday. (9 p.m. $20, $25. (859) 368-8871. Bustersbb.com.)

Still TOPs

A quick reminder: The classic horn-driven soul ensemble Tower of Power (of What Is Hip? and You're Still a Young Man fame) will play Buster's on Thursday with mainstay members Emilio Castillo, Doc Kupka, Rocco Presita and David Garibaldi still on board. An added bonus: TOP trumpet alumnus Lee Thornburg has rejoined for the band's current tour. (8:30 p.m. $28.50, $30.)

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