[ATTENDED: October 29, 2022] Meg Baird
I saw Chris Forsyth a few years ago and have been wanting to see him again. Having Meg Baird co-headline was a bonus. As Chris said:
On this tour, Meg & I will each be doing a set with a great band (Douglas McCombs, Ryan Jewell, and Charlie Saufley, and if they don’t appear throughout your music library, how did you even get this email?). Although it’s very much a co-bill / co-headline thing, we’ve decided that Meg will play first and I will play second, mainly for volume/dynamic considerations.
Meg’s name sounded familiar to me and I realized that I have an album that she made with harpist Mary Lattimore. But it also turns out that she is the drummer for the band Heron Oblivion whom I saw back in 2018. Turns out that Charlie Saufley is also in Heron Oblivion.
For this set, Meg sat at a keyboard, although mostly she played acoustic guitar. Saufley played lead and Douglas McCombs played bass. I was also pretty excited to find out that Ryan Jewell was on the drum kit. He is one of my favorite drummers to watch.
Meg sat right in front of me and I was enthralled by her voice (which can soar to incredible heights). For Ashes she “oohed” rather than singing words and it was angelic. She sounds like she could be singing with a Fairport Convention or another sixties British folk rock band.
I enjoyed watching Saufley play lead–he is a very mobile guitar player and was quite energetic during some fairly mellow songs. McCombs (who is in Tortoise, I had no idea) stood at the back–an anchor who played occasional riffs and pieces that enhanced the song. And of course, Jewell was on the drums. Since no one was in front of him, it was easy to see how purposeful and thoughtful he is about how he plays. He deliberately taps a cymbal just so, he plays a squeal by scratching the bottom of his drum stick along a cymbal, he loosens the snares to deaden the drum. He occasionally uses a maraca as a drum stick or grabs a string of cymbals and puts them in his mouth to shake along with the music. It’s really entertaining.
Midway through the set, Meg said she was going to play a song from her previous band Espers–she said she had gotten the blessing of another band member. The song wasn’t radically different, but it felt a bit more full somehow. I really liked it and decided I needed to check out this band that I didn’t know.
For the last song, she called Chris Forsyth up on stage. He and Saufley jammed leads back and forth stretching out “Will You Follow Me Home” to about ten minutes. Meg play a mini Mellotron (which I wished was a little louder) and sang the verses. The she more or less sat back and watched the guitarists rock out.
It was a really wonderful set and I now know I’ll be following Baird’s career more closely.
- Ashes, Ashes
- Mosquito Hawks
- Back to You
- Stars Hill Song
- 12 Saints
- Mansfield and Cyclops (Espers song)
- unknown
- Eyes and …?
- Will You Follow Me Home
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