“Alison, I love you!”
If there’s one phrase to describe Chattanooga’s response to Alison Krauss and Union Station last night, it was the perfectly timed intrusion of an over-enthusiastic fan between songs during their headlining performance. But Krauss and company were merely the capstone of what was one of the most enjoyable days of music I’ve ever experienced at Riverbend.
It started off with a surprisingly magnetic performance by Rick Bowers and the Majors on the Bud Light Stage. Although I was unfamiliar with Bowers, his swampy/Southern rock music packed a serious punch. The show ended with a cute, if ill-founded decision, to invite a handful of children on stage with him, which then resulted in a chaotic mess that cat wranglers would raise their eyebrows over. Despite the tumult at the close, Bowers and company put on a killer show. It’s not often you get to hear a pedal steel or accordion on the scene, so this local group fits a niche I previously thought was vacant.
Rather than heading directly for the Two Taverns Variety Show at Unum, I stuck around to hear the first of two performances by That 1 Guy (aka Mike Silverman), who took over after Bowers left. Since I was already well-aware of what to expect from his performance of electronic funkiness through his homebrewed Magic Pipe custom instrument, I spent most of my time watching the crowd. Clearly, it’s one thing to be told what a Magic Pipe is (which is hard enough as it is – see my earlier blog for my attempt), but to actually see it in motion is something else entirely. Silverman tackles the eight-foot monstrosity with an almost acrobatic zeal like he’s trying to arm wrestle a squid while tap dancing on hot coals. It’s fantastic stuff to watch.
Initially, I think the small clusters of onlookers were there mostly out of curiosity over what precisely was sitting on stage. As soon as Silverman put his bow to the Magic Harp’s single string, they pressed a little closer. The coup d’état, however, was when he started thrashing his instrument like it had offended him, pumping out sounds nobody expected to hear, myself included. At that point, the wrestling match/hot coal dance commenced, and the camera phones came out in droves. I love watching people’s expectations being demolished like that.