I know you were all at Robyn’s show last night for City Arts Fest, and Ima let you finish, but The Long Winters played the Showbox Market, backed by the School of Rock, and that shit was tight and grin-plastering.
Special guest Sean Nelson (a Long Winters founder-emeritus)–appearing on the occasion, he said, of letting go of long-held resentments–sang harmony and traded off-the-cuff badinage and barbs with John Roderick, the Winters’ prickly-bear lead singer and songwriter. (Sample: Roderick mentions, while tuning, that he’s visiting a Chinese city called Too Ning–Nelson shoots back: “That’s humor rights abuse!”)
The School of Rock, if you haven’t heard them before, is no pat-the-kids-on-the-head outfit–they can play. When someone in the audience yelled out that they were “Cute!” Roderick countered: “They’re badass! I’m cute!” Add in that they’d had time for just four rehearsals, and you wanted to sign them to a label right there and then.
The last song of the set, before Roderick and Nelson came out for an encore, was “The Commander Thinks Aloud.” I have come unaccountably late to The Long Winters. Every time I catch Roderick in concert now, I am kicking myself for not discovering them earlier. What a lyricist the man is, and with voice you’d never suspect could emerge from that bearded cavern-wide mouth. Well, why am I still talking? Here.
Pic #11 is the money shot.
I’ve always thought that Sean Nelson was absolutely essential to the Long Winters, if only for the between song banter. Otherwise, it’s just Roderick making open ended jokes to himself.