While I enjoy the music of all these artists, I think the main reason I have not developed a devoted love for jam bands is that I haven’t had enough chances to see them where they REALLY shine: in the live music setting. So of course, having never been to a Phish show, when I heard that jazz bassist and recent PSU graduate Brett McConnell was playing in a Phish tribute band, I had to check it out.
I arrived at the Goodfoot Lounge around 9 PM, just as the doors were opening. Upon entering the cave-like atmosphere of the Goodfoot’s downstairs, I took in the venue for the first time. Surrealistic paintings and depictions of the jazz age decorate the walls of the huge room, complete with ample seating and an impressive stage set-up including a psychedelic light/fog machine rig and a more-than-adequate PA system. When I first arrived, I could count the people there on two hands. This rapidly changed within the first hour, however, as the room flooded with around a hundred long-haired, bearded, and/or dreadlocked Phish-heads ready to shake what their mamas gave them to several hours’ worth of jams.
Like Phish, Lawn Boy has a four-man instrumentation of guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums, with multiple members contributing backing vocals. The members of Lawn Boy are already established Portland musicians: lead singer/guitarist Rob Sipsky played in the now-disbanded Mars Retrieval Unit; drummer Nick Werth plays vibes in the prominent Portland band Yeah Great Fine; bassist Brett McConnell leads his own jazz group, the Brett McConnell Lovetet, in addition to numerous other gigs including an upcoming funk tribute to Guns N’ Roses; and keyboardist Chris Phillips founded the increasingly ubiquitous Philly’s Phunkestra.
As the ensemble began its set, the crowd was instantly entranced by the power of the groove. McConnell laid it down with his funky, locomotive bass lines while Werth impeccably provided a rhythmic backbone, flourished with syncopation and polyrhythms in all the right places. Sipsky delivered Phish’s absurdist lyrics and sing-along hooks with crowd-pleasing charisma as devoted Phish fans belted it out right along with him. As the grooves built and the solos ensued, the crowd was moving wildly, drunk on (among other things) the music. One tall, broad, shaggy-haired audience member in shorts and a t-shirt joined the band on stage early in the set and danced solitarily front and center, acting as conductor to the large dance ensemble until he was finally joined by several of them—lessening the gap, both literally and figuratively, between audience and performer in true hippie jam band style.
Sipsky handled most of the soloing duties, but Phillips and McConnell played some noteworthy (no pun intended) solos and, true to the Phish way, the whole band utilized an improvisational approach for the duration of the set. When Lawn Boy played the one song of their set with which I was familiar—the brilliantly epic and nonsense-lyrics littered Junta cut “You Enjoy Myself”—it sounded much different from the studio track, to the extent that I barely realized they were playing it. In the case of the solos themselves, the musicians balanced a tonal approach of soaring melodic passages and blues licks with more rhythmic and riff-based playing, providing for an enjoyably diverse listen throughout.
I wish there was more I could say about the set, but as I am not familiar with much of Phish’s music it’s hard for me to evaluate the authenticity of this particular tribute. Judging, however, from the reaction of the crowd and the opinions of the one or two Phish fans with whom I spoke, I can assume that this was an adequate representation of what a Phish concert is like. Lawn Boy plan to continue gigging for the foreseeable future, trying to cover as many Phish songs as possible: they provide a request list at their shows (I myself requested the funky Junta track “David Bowie”), hoping to play a completely new set at each gig until they run out of songs. If you’re curious at all about jam bands in general, and/or if you can’t afford/don’t want to wait for the next Phish stint in Portland, check out Lawn Boy the next chance you get.
