Kaleo in Winnipeg
Written July 2018
It was late on the evening of June 28th that I walked through the front doors of the beautiful Centennial Concert Hall. I ambled a lap about the place before happening upon the doorway that stood between myself and my seat. I scaled a flight of winding steps and crept out into the music of Dan Mangan. I couldn’t make heads or tails of where my seat could be so I took refuge in the first available seat in an empty row at the back of the orchestra section for the only song I’d hear Dan Mangan play.
Featuring Mangan alone onstage with an acoustic guitar, the song “Basket” is about his grandfather and the failure of his memories that came with the failure of his health. Perhaps it was the idea of singing for one who will never hear those words, so precious to the singer, that brought me to the edge of tears. I thought of my own grandfather and the conversations I’ve spoken aloud to no one when he comes to mind on long and lonely nights. I tore my eyes from the stage, looked down the vacant row next to me and hoped to see him, somehow sitting there, sipping a beer. It’s not worth mentioning what I would have given to see him in any of those seats rather than the empty darkness that instead was.
Once the next song had just begun an older looking couple towered over me with flashlights, reading their tickets and cautiously eyeballing the chair I sat in. Before they attempted making sense of the confusion I stood up and walked back down the winding steps to the lobby.
I wandered around the building for the remainder of the set before I tiptoed back into the performance area and found my seat while the house lights were on. I forgot my glasses at home so I figured I may as well cross my already blurred vision. A quick run for drinks had me back in my seat while Afternoon Delight played over the house speakers in synchronicity with the stage lights. The crowd gave their best collective impression of Champ Kind from Anchorman as they whooped along after “sky rockets in flight...”, all other parts of the song a jumbled half mumble that was never known well enough to have been forgotten.
Soon after the song came the band. The crowd erupted once singer JJ Julius Son came out and gave a quick bow. Guitarist Rubin Pollock stood to stage left with a rectangular bodied black and white Rickenbacker, though without my glasses it could have been anything. He would later play on a sunburst style Les Paul from the now bankrupt Gibson company and later a Fender Telecaster. The singer came out with a Telecaster, perhaps the same one.
The night started with “Broken Bones,” a song about a chain gang inmate who promises “the Devil’s gonna make me a free man.” A bluesy tale played with a grainy tinge, “Broken Bones” tells of the inmates miseries and the duty he has to the Devil, and himself, to snuff out some indistinct character the listener never comes to know anything more about.
One of the biggest responses from the crowd came with the start of “Automobile,” a playful tune about whipping down an empty stretch of desert highway with a few bottles of rum in the backseat, Mexico bound. At one point in the story the singer buys his way out of trouble with the federales by parting with a few dollars and a bit of rum. A small price paid for high speed freedom.
“This is one we particularly enjoy playing” Son said in the latter half of the set, “because it’s the only we one sing in our native tongue.”
The map of Iceland that hung high behind the band began to glow and one lonely guitar began picking the opening notes of “Vor í vaglaskógi”. Sang entirely in Icelandic, it was the only song that had only a handful of audience members singing along. Hearing only the singer’s voice, unimpeded by the screaming crowd, is the only appropriate way for a song of such melancholic dramatism to be properly heard.
Through the entire song stood one man with a lighter held high. For a moment his lighter was accompanied by someone directly behind him, and again on the top balcony. As those lights wavered, then flickered, then vanished, that one standing light held on throughout the song. That one flame held until the words had all been sung, the band fell away, and the lonesome guitar drifted slowly into silence.
The performance was the sort to never be forgotten. The raw power of the singer and the instruments backing him sounded just as they did on the album. The runtime was about an hour, which is fairly standard. I had hoped Kaleo would be among those shows that felt endless. Perhaps they can only play for so long due to the rip in Son’s voice. One can’t imagine he can do that too deep into the night without risking the quality of performance in whatever city they’re due to play next.
The general murmur amongst fans as we filed out was one of unspent energy. I suspect this came in part due to two songs from their only available album, A/B, not making the set list. Adding to the feeling was the factor of high expectations for a show that had been sold out for months -with few if any tickets going up for resale. Perhaps these expectations were high they were impossible to meet.
Kaleo’s performance was short but powerful, electric even. JJ Julius Son has a voice made for the blues. He sings with the sorrow of an old soul, a pain borne from another life not seen through his own eyes.