[ATTENDED: July 18, 2018] Old Maybe
I had never heard of Old Maybe before this show, although I understand that they have been playing together for a while. (Their earliest demos are from 2014).
The band consists of Jazz Adam (guitar and vocals), Ricardo Balmaseda (bass and vocals) and Nina Ryser (drums).
The only person I knew in the band was Nina Ryser whom I had seen on this very stage when she played with Palberta a year or so ago.
But this band belongs to Jazz Adam on vocals and guitar. She invited anyone of color or non-cis to the front of the audience before the show began.
I didn’t know much about her, so I have learned that
in 2015 Adam began playing solo shows, performing most songs a capella, creating vocal layers with looping and effects pedals. Adam attributes her lack of stage fright to her background in theater and stand up comedy. “I am able to be myself onstage,” she says. “And I am aggressive.” [Quote from The Spark).
Adam has been pushing that belief in Philadelphia via All Mutable, a booking collective she started with Nicki Duval and Robin Meeker-Cummings. The mission of the collective is to “diversify lineups sonically and racially,” she says. “Our focus is to book lineups that represent and attract those who are under-represented in this music scene, including (but not limited to) POC, queer identified, trans identified, and those who identify as non-binary. We also hope to sonically diversify lineups, and represent genres that are not often recognized in this culturally homogenized city.”
So what does their music sound like? It sounds like improv. It sounds like maybe this group doesn’t exactly know what they are doing. It all sounds wrong. Until you realize that everything they are doing is on purpose and is very deliberate. And then you realize how amazingly unconventional they are.
Adam doesn’t play guitar traditionally–she makes noise–loud chords, piercing sounds–she is all over the fretboard. Sometimes she’s playing along to what she’s singing. Sometimes, she’s just singing notes while playing other notes.
She is perfectly matched by Ricardo Balmaseda. Balmadesa did sing lead on a couple of songs (and backup on a few more). But mostly he laid down a perfect (and perfectly weird low end). It often seemed like he and Adam were playing different songs–he would do some slap notes, he would do some lines that seemed independent of Adam’s sounds. And yet, when they were playing in sync, they were tight as can be.
His bass reminded me of the sound of Black Flag, when the bass would be holding down the whole show while the guitar went all over the place.
This was all grounded by Nina Ryser. When I saw her with Palberta, she also played guitar. And I had the sense that Ryser played drums like a guitar player. That’s not an insult (although some drummers might think it is). But what I meant was that, she didn’t play a standard snare/bass beat. She used everything–it was like she was playing lead guitar riffs with whatever she had at hand–drum rims, cow bells, wood blocks–all in perfect rhythm. This disjointed sense of playing fit perfectly with the disjointed sense of playing the other two exhibited too.
It was like all three were doing their own individual parts, but at the same time. And, the amazing thing was, once you realized what was happening, it worked really well.
They are clearly not for everyone, but they have a great independent spirit and sound.
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