Mike Gordon Concert Review

Friday, September 25th, 2009
Park West, Chicago, IL

We got to the Park West and from the outside ya wouldn’t think it was gonna be so nice inside. The venue was really awesome. The main floor was wide open with plenty of room to move around and the balcony was small but had lots of places to hang out and sit if ya felt like it. We were here to see Mike Gordon, bass player for Phish, and his band, a 5 piece with Scott Murawski on guitar who is known for being the guitar player in the band Max Creek and also for playing in BK3, a trio led by Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman. Craig Myers on percussion known for his work in Rubblebucket Orchestra, an afro beat style band from the east coast.  Tom Cleary (a private and UVM piano teacher also the recent music director for the Threepenny Opera) on keyboards and Brooklyn drummer Todd Isler who is also a teacher and author who has been an active part of the jazz and world music scene for over 20 years.

I hadn’t seen Mike Gordon’s solo work as of yet so I wasn’t familiar with his songs and didn’t know what to expect so we took a seat in the balcony for the first set.  Started out fairly mellow with Another Door which is from the latest CD, The Green Sparrow followed by Walls of Time, a song by Peter Rowan, Spiral and Can’t Stand Still .  They then picked it up from there with Time and The Field .  I really like the next 2 songs Morphing Again another from The Green Sparrow and Soulfood Man and they ended the first set with Dig Further Down .

While hangin out, one of my friends swore he saw Ivan Neville of Dumpstaphunk hangin out at one of the bars and when we went back, he wasn’t there so of course we told him he was full of it but he was sure he saw him. So after giving our friend a few jabs we decided since the end of the first set was pretty rockin we would do the rest of the show on the floor as close to the stage as we could get. The band came out and opened with Sugar Shack which is the song Mike Gordon wrote for the new Phish CD Joy which turned out to be the beginning of a great set. They then played What Things Seem and then out of nowhere came, you guessed it, Ivan Neville, to rock it out on the keyboards for Sound and Hey Now Baby.  Then they played 15 Step, a Radiohead cover,  The River Niger, Radar Blip and then ended the set with Traveled To Far another song from the new CD, The Green Sparrow. 

Of course we hung out for the encore which started awesomely with Rhymes, an Al Green cover, and then ended the show with She Said She Said a great Beatles cover….I have to say for my first Mike Gordon show I wasn’t disappointed and would definitely pay the meager $30 bucks for the ticket to go see him and his band again.

Thanks for the review Jerry !!