The Jazz Mandolin Project and Rob Wasserman's Space Island

September 3, 2000

Phoenix Plaza Ampitheatre

Pontiac, MI

Got to see a cool double bill for free out at the Arts, Beats and Eats Festival in Pontiac this weekend. The festival is a big 3 day affair that takes up all of downtown Pontiac with food, arts & crafts and music.

The show I was interested in was the Jazz Mandolin Project and Rob Wasserman's Space Island. This billing is part of a national tour billed as "Buzztopia 2000". The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is also playing on that tour, but for some reason they dropped out of the Michigan show at the last minute.

I headed down to Pontiac at top speed in order to catch the whole show. The great thing about the Phoenix Plaza is it is literally on top of a parking garage so there is no problem parking. I walked up one flight of stairs and there I was. I arrived right at four when the schedule said the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was supposed to go on, but I was dismayed to find that the schedule had changed and that the Jazz Mandolin Project wouldn't go on for another hour. So I grabbed a burger and chilled out for awhile waiting for the show.

The Jazz Mandolin Project took the stage and jumped right in to jamming. They are a 3 piece outfit from Vermont and because of their close ties with Phish, there were quite a few Phishheads there to see them. I had haerd their first album once but that was all and I had never seen them live. The main focus of the JMP is Jamie Masefield who plays Mandolin. He also had a bass player and a drummer with them and all were excellent. I was impressed right away by how varied and large of a sound a 3 piece acoustic band could make. Masefield obviously owes a debt to mandolin pioneer, David Grisman, but Masefield's music is much less traditional and more funky. On some numbers he played an amplified slide mandolin which sounded unlike anything I had heard before. Overall, the band had an almost telepathic sense of jamming that was really fun to watch from my railside vantage point. After about an hour they left stage and I was a convert to their sound.

After awhile Rob Wasserman and his new band, Space Island took the stage. He had a DJ/scratcher, a keyboardist and a drummer/percussionist with him, but they all switched around their instruments too. Wasserman is one of my favorite musicians and I have had the luck of seeing him in several diffrent configurations. Mostly I have seen him play either in a duo with Bob Weir or in the band he started with Weir, Ratdog. I am always impressed by the the tone and experimental nature of his playing. He almost always plays an upright bass and he coaxes some of the weirdest and most sublime noises from it. This tour is to supoort his new album which features a very percussive based sound and includs lots of looping, scrating and sampling.

The show turned out to be a real success in my book. The band was tight and obviously having a good time. During some songs either the DJ or the keyboard player would pick up a second bass and join Wasserman. On one tune they actually had 3 basses going at once. The songs were densely layered, but all anchored by Wasserman's distinctive bass which he plucked and played with a bow during the course of the show. During one tune, the extremely white, mild mannered Wasserman actually did a little rap called "Hilbilly Hip-Hop" and it actually came off pretty well. Wasserman was obviously doing the whole thing tongue in cheek it turned out to be a cool song.

The highlight for me was when the rest of the band left the stage and Wasserman played solo. He started out with a very melodic, ballad-like improvisation and then melded that into a Jimi Hendrix-esque version of "The Star Spangled Banner". Later in the show Wasserman and the whole band would jam on "Purple Haze" for awhile. The show ended with a cool rave-up of the Stones' "Satisfaction" which Wasserman often quotes in his performances. Overall, I was really impressed with whole band and their heavy yet melodic sound. It was great to see Rob in this new context escpecially for free and outdoors. I am hoping this band stays together and comes back to town soon