The Marc Ribot Trio dropped into a packed Cafe Oto with Henry Grimes on acoustic bass as the NY history man of 60s free jazz, and on drums the muscular Chad Taylor from Chicago. Just visible in the corner on his chair was a middle aged workman in a dirty T shirt, his body folded over his guitar. Marc played 2 seamless symphonic sets, with nary a word, just a few applause breaks, especially for the septuagenarian Henry. The music was free jazz but encompassed show tunes, cartoon breaks, marching songs, pop riffs, angular funk and metal shredding runs. It was a capsule history of 20th century American popular music, of which more later…

Marc Ribot plays a Gibson ES-125TDC circa 1962. This is a semi acoustic thin bodied dual pickup electric guitar (famously played by George Thorogood) which he used for every guitar style known to man. He accomplished this with a unique but simple setup of one pedal and one guitar mic, allowing full usage of the electro-acoustic qualities of the guitar. For the the riffing and the metal runs the guitar mic was pushed aside, but for most of the set the guitar mic was just a few inches from his guitar allowing a unique blend of sounds, and then suddenly a lever was flicked and we were back in the prairie with a steely acoustic country guitar whispering to us. Most remarkably he leant over his guitar, his chin appearing to rest on the body, the guitar mic a fraction away as screeds of notes poured out in concentrated flurries – completely hunched over but his arms flying up and down the guitar. At one point you could hear his gritted breath through the guitar mic, no doubt intentionally.

During the first set we went a from classic click-clack drumbeat into what sounded to me like Gabor Szabo’sThe Beat Goes On, well it was funky and Latin anyway! Marc’s cover versions often have a very remote relationship to the original and in no time the music had metamorphosed into angular 80s Bill Frisell style jazz funk, finishing with a chomping Stevie Ray Vaughan blues flourish. A lyrical show tune began the second set echoing the smooth classic jazz of Wes Montgomery and we sped through a catalogue of American styles rapidly coming apart at the seams, at one point sustained riffing drawing applause. As the music splintered, only lightened by bass and drum solos, we heard snatches of the American songbook being deconstructed, reaching its lyrical apogee with a version of Bob Dylan’s Lay Down Your Weary Tune. Yes he sang a song both appropriate and somehow elegiac, Marc’s tremulous voice following not the vocal but the guitar line:

Lay down your weary tune, lay down

Lay down the song you strum

And rest yourself  ’neath the strength of strings

No voice can hope to hum

It felt like a Requiem for America…

Update 14 May 2019
Marc played a solo acoustic gig at Cafe Oto
Magnificent and quieter tonight –

But better photos:

Everyone loved it
Thank You
∞