Garth & Maud Hudson and the Best, Hamilton Place Studio Theatre, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, November 19, 2005

Garth Hudson is the old man of the mountains. Long the keyboard genius of The Band, he would sit surrounded by the keyboards his long hair and beard flying wooly and wild. Once in a while he might stand for a sax solo, and blow into his tiny soprano sax a kind of Ornette Coleman through Gato Barbieri shriek that somehow fit perfectly into the blend of country and rock that was the Band's specialty. His age is given in different sources as somewhere between 62 and 70 years. His beard is white now, and he resembles a jovial Santa Claus, all dressed in black, with a wide brimmed Zorroesque hat. And when I heard that he would be appearing in Hamilton to promote his (and his wife Maud's) new CD I ordered tickets immediately.

Has Garth, like other members of The Band, done too many drugs? According to his biography, he did not partake. Is he suffering from early onset senility? Not likely, as he is still master of the keyboard when he starts to play. Maybe the years on the road have taken their toll, but whatever the reason this was the most disorganized show I've ever seen. The promoter's 'laissez faire' attitude certainly didn't help!

At 9 p.m., when we arrived, the promoter hadn't arrived yet. No musicians were there. The ticket taker warned us that nobody at the venue had any information about opening acts. "But the bar is open!" he proclaimed. At 9:30 they opened the door to the theatre and we got a table in the centre.

At 9:45 a girl and a guy carrying guitars walked out to the front of the stage and she said, "Hi! I'm Rae Mumbleffftt, and we're gonna do a couple original songs before Garth comes out...This is my new best friend...David Baxter."

David Baxter's name I know, of Hey Stella fame. He was great, playing intricate guitar parts on his exotic arch-top guitar in and around Rae's not very well written, incredibly depressing songs. They stayed too long. Then they left. Nobody introduced them, and their only interplay with the audience was when she asked the promoter, (who had arrived by now, and plunked himself down at the front of the stage) how many more songs she should do.

The stage hands came out and set up Garth's stuff. Drums, bass, guitar, music stands all 'round, Garth's command centre (organ, grand piano, yamaha keyboard, on top of the piano 2 syths, on top of the organ a soprano sax, and a couple of other things) next to that an alto, and tenor sax, then a harp.

A girl sat at the harp and quietly started playing "She Moved Through the Fair." I thought it was a sound check. Then she played Bowie's "Space Oddity." Excellently I might add, and the sixty or seventy people in the audience thought so too. They did the handclaps at the appropriate times! She played "She's Leaving Home" and "Across the Universe" and "since nobody's telling me to get off" she played Buddy Holly's "Everyday." She was great. But no one introduced her. (We discovered later that she was Erin Hill, a member of Garth's band.)

She walked off, and then the lights came up, but no stage crew did anything for about, oh, 20 minutes. Then Garth, all dressed in black, with a big black hat pulled down to his eyes, his white hair and beard puffed out all around his face, ambled, stumbled on stage, with a huge accordion strapped to his chest. He flopped into the office chair in the middle of the keyboard configuration, leaned, almost falling off the chair, into the microphone and said, in a deep but indistinct voice, "Hi! It's good to be back in my third home. This is a song I'm gonna dedicate to Mary, called 'Everything Under the Sun,' well...tonight it's 'Song for Mary.'"

Then he leaned back, his long legs splayed out, and began to open the accordion up, throughout the 7 or so minutes of this song he played each and every keyboard moving himself around with his legs, reaching over top of the accordion, sometimes playing 2 keyboards at once, sometimes 3, by starting a note on the synth which then was held til it disappeared while he played left hand on organ right hand on grand, or some other configuration. Stride piano, church organ, hip unknown synth sounds, weird but musically exciting, even magical (if a bit jumbled.)

After this, the band appeared. And Garth mumbled something about "Levon and the Hawks, at the Friars Tavern in 1957." Then played some early rock'n'roll. Loosey goosey but fun. After this a girl pushed Garth's wife Maud out to centre stage in her wheelchair. She suffers from the residual effects of a couple of car accidents. Maud was clothed in multiple layers of coats and scarves, she wore gloves and sunglasses, and read her lyrics from an Apple laptop, while an electric fan blew on her from the floor. She sang with authority in a pleasant and strong voice which was perhaps too precise in enunciation to carry the bluesy feel she was aiming at. But she's a heck of a singer anyway. Finally, a focus. Garth introduced the band members: Erin Hill on harp, Steve Elson on sax, Mark Dzuiba on guitar, Marty Ballou on bass and Ernie Colon on drums. Fine musicians each and every one.

The problem with the band is, that no one takes command. Oh, the sax player might have been called the musical director, but he wasn't really. Garth was. But he wasn't. The musicians looked to him for leadership, and you could see their admiration for him in their eyes, but many times during the evening they appeared lost, as they studied their charts and wondered where the heck Garth was taking them. His hand signals were random and obscure. Sometimes he was simply trying to shake the pins and needles out of his hand. Other times he was pointing with shaking hand for someone to take a solo. He might have been the most talented member of The Band, but he was not the leader. And he is essentially a backup musician even now, capable of adding ever-so-sweet fills and glaze to someone else's structure.

The well-known songs of The Band that were covered that night sounded nothing like the originals. Maud's voice is simply no match for Rick Danko's, or Richard Manuel's, or Levon Helm's. And the harmonies simply weren't even attempted. Manuel's lost song "Words and Numbers" (recently discovered in Garth's archives and issued finally on the new box set The Band: a Musical History) was a highlight. Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell" was done as a dramatic reading rather than a song, with Maud delivering the verses as poetry, and then singing the last line, "like Blind Willie McTell!" Garth played piano behind the reading. From blues, to gospel, with stops all along the musical pathway, there was nothing they didn't try.

It's clear that Garth and Maud are still very much in love. It's also clear that the musicians on-stage also love their bosses. In fact, apart from the one or two people who got up and walked out early on, everybody had a great time. It was chaotic. Spontaneous. Frustratingly loose. Amazingly musical, and virtuosic. But who could disagree with the comment overheard in the foyer later, "Did you ever hear anything quite like that?" No-sirree-bob! Never did.

The night ended at 2 a. m.!

I waited around for an autograph, which I got, although it took him a LONG time to sign. He was wearing a Burrito Deluxe black leather jacket, and looked cool with a baseball cap on his head. But Garth is slow, studied, thoughtful, friendly, happy to be there, glad you liked the show, willing to chat even though there's a lineup of fans eager to have the Old Man of the Mountain sign their CD insert, or their copy of the box set, or the photo of Garth kicking a soccer ball from The Band LP.
Maud is charming and funny, warm and witty, gracious, a delightful human being.

Garth Hudson is still the keyboard player of choice for dozens of recording artists. Burrito Deluxe, Dixie Hummingbirds, Norah Jones, Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Johnny Society, Clay Dubose and Neko Case. He has a way of sweetening everybody's music in a way that respects the originator and still sounds just like himself. LIVE, in a small club, with Maud Hudson on vocals, and The Best--all in all a STRANGE but wonderful night of exotic music.

[David Kidney ]