James Wallace And The Naked Light
Saturday, April 2 at Balliceaux
Last week was very tiring. By Saturday night, I was so beat that I crashed out on my couch after a disappointing VCU basketball game. I meant to just close my eyes for a few minutes, but the next thing I knew, it was nearly 11 PM, and I had to rush over to Balliceaux so I’d be in time for this show. Balliceaux is an interesting place to see a band; the front room has high ceilings and severe art deco furniture, which combine with the colors of the walls and ceiling to suggest a room that is always vaguely cold. I have never spent more than 30 seconds at a time in this part of the building–it feels somewhat forbidding. However, the back area, where the bands play, has lower ceilings and is dominated by warm reds and wood-grain brown tints. It gives off a completely different, much more inviting vibe than the front half of the building, and I’m certainly glad of that.
James Wallace And The Naked Light
Saturday, April 2 at Balliceaux
Last week was very tiring. By Saturday night, I was so beat that I crashed out on my couch after a disappointing VCU basketball game. I meant to just close my eyes for a few minutes, but the next thing I knew, it was nearly 11 PM, and I had to rush over to Balliceaux so I’d be in time for this show. Balliceaux is an interesting place to see a band; the front room has high ceilings and severe art deco furniture, which combine with the colors of the walls and ceiling to suggest a room that is always vaguely cold. I have never spent more than 30 seconds at a time in this part of the building–it feels somewhat forbidding. However, the back area, where the bands play, has lower ceilings and is dominated by warm reds and wood-grain brown tints. It gives off a completely different, much more inviting vibe than the front half of the building, and I’m certainly glad of that.
I walked into that back room as James Wallace And The Naked Light were starting their set, so it’s good that I woke up from my unplanned nap when I did. The Naked Light was a six-piece ensemble for this show; two drummers, an upright bass player, and two horn players joined James, who played a vintage hollow-body electric guitar through an even more vintage-looking amp. After the show, I asked him about the amp, and he explained that it was an old Silvertone (a brand of guitar equipment made by Sears in the 50s and 60s) that he’d found discarded in an alley after the recent flood in Nashville, where he lives. After he and a friend put a heroic amount of work into restoring it, he’d gotten it back into working order, and it certainly seemed like a worthy job, as the amp had a unique sound that fit very well with the songs he and his band played that night.
In fact, The Naked Light brought a lot of interesting elements to the songs performed at Balliceaux over the course of the evening. Wallace has a knack for pleasant melodies that is clearly demonstrated on his most recent release, More Strange News From Another Star. Focusing for the majority of their set on songs from this album, he and The Naked Light made these songs even more interesting by engaging in complex and fascinating arrangements of these tunes. Of particular note were the rhythmic arrangements of the dual drummers. Pinson Chanselle, of Fight The Big Bull, and Scott Clark, who leads a jazz quartet as well as performing in Glows In The Dark, Ilad, and yet more local ensembles, avoided the easy path of playing similar rhythms to create the effect of one drummer playing twice as loud. Instead, they played off of each other as often as possible, at one point repeatedly trading roles midsong–one would lock down the song’s basic rhythm, while the other would engage in explosive rapid-fire fills and accents. By playing against rather than with each other in this manner, they got the most out of the dual-drum lineup, and added a great deal of texture to Wallace’s music.
The live environment provided a lot more room for the band to expand the dynamic range of Wallace’s songs, too. While any recording must equalize the volume between quiet and loud portions of musical compositions in order to sound good, live music is not bound by these restrictions, and sometimes the difference between quiet sections of songs, during which Wallace often sang and played guitar without accompaniment from the other musicians, and the louder sections that would invariably follow after a moment or two, was quite dramatic. This enhanced the impact of the louder sections, and inspired many members of the crowd to get up and dance. Despite VCU’s defeat earlier that evening, the atmosphere during The Naked Light’s set was quite festive, and it was obvious that everyone was enjoying themselves.
The most upbeat moment of the set was, fittingly enough, during the final song. The song was a cover of an old gospel tune from the 50s, “Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb,” originally performed by The Pilgrim Travelers and more recently performed by the Blind Boys Of Alabama. This was one of several gospel tunes Wallace and his group had interspersed through their set, and they rocked all of them out. In particular, they gave “Atom Bomb” a rollicking energy not generally heard in other versions available online, and urged the crowd to sing along with the choruses. We were all eager to oblige, and the set ended with a large portion of the audience gathered around the stage dancing and singing at the tops of our voices. It was still early when this song ended–not even midnight–and the crowd yelled for more, but James and his group begged off. “We’ve played every song we know,” James declared. “We have to stop.” It was a bit strange to see a show that was this short; I don’t think I was even at Balliceaux for much longer than an hour. However, it was also nice–there’s no danger of growing bored or tired at a show that blows by that quickly. And it left plenty of time for socializing and catching up with old friends, which can sometimes be the best part of going out. It was a great night for everyone at Balliceaux, and James Wallace And The Naked Light were the biggest part of what made it that way.
