Gig Review: All It Takes Is A Guitar, A Voice, Some Songs, Great Banter, Engaging Personality, And Heaps of Pure Talent, That’s All — Seeing Alain Johannes Live, Solo
I wrote gig reviews for Wellington’s newspaper for years, then they just stopped. So I stopped. But I’m keen to bring them back. I miss gig reviews. And many of you do too, or so I’m hearing…
Alain Johannes
Friday June 28
Boneface Tavern / aka Underworld, Wellington
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Alain Johannes a few times in Wellington over the years, though always as a sideman. One job leads to another, and through his connection with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) I’ve seen him on stage as part of that band, and also as the supporting player in Homme’s short-lived supergroup with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones (Them Crooked Vultures). And through another Homme-devised “supergroup (Desert Sessions) Johannes took a gig playing with PJ Harvey. He’s quite the player, and clearly not only gets the job done in a musical sense, he’s obviously a good guy — musicians will tell you that 80% of the job is ‘hanging out’, not being a cunt.
I’m pretty sure Alain Johannes is not a cunt.
And now the chance to see him on his own — playing songs from across the vast catalogues he’s had a hand in — here, solo, his only New Zealand date on his current tour, we are packed in close at the intimate venue formerly known as Boneface Tavern and currently in its rebranding phase as Underworld.
Johnannes has packed several little careers into one big musical journey, The Chilean-American guitarist, bassist, vocalist, and producer has collaborated with Mark Lanegan, Chris Cornell, Arctic Monkeys, and the names already mentioned above. He’s also contributed as a producer and player across several one-offs, has a handful of solo albums, and then there’s the band he was in for over a decade, Eleven, with former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons.
The show starts with Johannes wielding his cigar-box guitar, its versatility gives notes of banjo and mandolin, and the songs are driven by his dexterity as he moves through Not On This Earth and Eyes To The Sky, before concentrating more fully on the Spark album, his 2010 paean to his late wife and collaborator, Natasha Shneider. Though he didn’t dwell on the themes of sadness and loss in his banter, it was a mood across the set in so many of the song selections — and eventually referenced when he talked directly about Mark Lanegan and Chris Cornell towards the end of the set. And even in the Spark b-side, Fall to Grace, he shouted out to George Harrison for his musical inspiration, including sending him towards the discovery of Indian classical music. All around Johannes’ music the twin ideas then of inspiration and loss.
An often noisy crowd, very much a horrid reminder of the classic but now very dated-seeming “pub gig”, was obviously lapping up everything that Johannes threw their way, even if that meant talking over the songs they were less familiar with, or in the quieter moments of banter — manifesting most annoyingly in the “jukebox” ideal of thinking they’d paid the money to be there so could personally request songs, and the very running order.
Johannes was deft in batting this away though, pointing out that he’d likely play whatever the fuck he felt like, and that also this was no first rodeo, no lucky, hopeful first time out solo — there was a damn arc to his damn set, fools.
And so, eventually, the satiation of hearing Lanegan-associated gems, Making A Cross and The Hanging Tree. And if Johannes didn’t quite have the same vocal chops, and even if his voice was a little butchered by a succession of gigs, it had a lovely Elvis Costello-does-rock cragginess to it which helped in delivering the key messages of those songs.
But the revelation for me was just how good the tunes from his old band Eleven were — and still are. They have really held up. Mid-set, a run of Eleven songs, perhaps particularly Why from 1995’s Thunk, reminded me of the ‘earthiness’ of both of the Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains Unplugged sets, and the feeling that not everything from that mid-90s grunge era was about snottiness and attitude, there was songcraft in there also. At least at the best of times.
Johannes switched from his cigar-box to a regular 6-string acoustic, and then the tumescent chiming of the 12-string to send us all home.
The set-closing Disappearing One, from the 1999 debut solo album by Chris Cornell, a song written by Johannes, from a record which featured his playing and production talents across, was the perfect summation of the quiet, assured background role he has played across the last three decades of alt-rock.
But it was his own presentation of these songs — replete with some mighty find guitar playing and some huge conviction in the singing — which reminded all that he’s no mere sideman, just a jobbing musician finding a home for his songs and his playing out on his own or deep inside the catalogue of others.
Apart from some pesky fuckers talking way too much about absolutely nothing of value or interest, this was a spectacular wee gig. A small show, but so perfectly an absolute blinder.
And a great opening set from Seamus Johnson (Sea Mouse) whose Jack White-esque voice and nimble playing provided the correct curtain-raising for the evening.
