Like a moth to a flame, I was back at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, CA on Friday, March 29, 2019 for Jon Brion‘s monthly show, billed to include a “Very Special Guest.” A few days prior, wanting to listen to some music while I was doing online research, I asked the Amazon Echo Dot to play music by Sondre Lerche. I had no idea what his music would sound like, but had been seeing his name come across my social media feeds because he had been performing occasionally at Largo. His music blended jazz and folk styles with infectious rhythms and his dynamic voice brought style and spirit to the compositions. After listening for about an hour, I thought I should try to catch him at Largo some time. Imagine my surprise when he was announced as the opening guest at Jon Brion’s show that Friday night.
Lerche hails from Norway, spent 12 years in New York and recently moved to Los Angeles. He was introduced by house manager Michael as an “ambassador for international relations,” so when he got on stage, Sondre remarked to the audience, “I’m just gonna connect my guitar and we’ll get started on the peace process.” He added that he was going to play some new music for us and had his notes on a stool next to him as evidence of the newness. In a couple songs, he even had to stop briefly to consult with them to get the correct lyrics.
The first song he played he described as “very long and very sad” and I concur with his assessment. With lines such as, “How could I let you go?” and “Drowning our sorrows in another desperate embrace,” one can hear the tale of the despondent narrator unfold. After finishing the song, Sondre noted with a smile, “That’s how we get this party started! Six minutes of that; it’s Friday night somewhere.”
He name checked the next song (thank you!) that he played, “I Love You Because It’s True,” describing it as the first song he wrote when he moved to L.A. This one had some compelling chord changes and the life-guiding line, “The way our parents used to live…let’s do the opposite of everything they used to do.”
Pleasure is Sondre Lerche’s most recent album.
“Many words” was how he introduced the next song, also noting that there is swearing, so that, “Now my albums come with a parental warning — explicit lyrics — which makes me feel cooler.” He proceeded to get tongue tied on this one and had to consult his notes, commenting to the audience that it didn’t matter to us what the words were (assuming most of us were not familiar with his music), but it mattered to him. Nice to hear that he holds himself accountable to certain quality standards. Best lyric that I caught from this song, “Why are we not enough to save the world?” He finished off the solo portion of his set with a the song “Sentimentalist” from his album Please. Discover Sondre’s albums on iTunes, and if you are in the L.A. area and would like to see him live, he is doing his own show at Largo on Friday, May 10, 2019.
Sondre called for Jon and welcomed him to the stage, they traded some musical banter back and forth as Jon fired up the MicroKorg and tinkers with it, making suggestions on some sounds that could be added to Sondre’s tunes. The pair then performed a straightforward version of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” with Sondre singing and Jon accompanying on the piano in the key of D (definitely not C# — which by the way, sounds really awful when you play some chords in D and then play one in C#, which Jon did right before they began the song).
When the song was over, Sondre turned to Jon and asked, “I was wondering if you know any Norwegian folk songs.” Jon responded that he knew, “Just the one.” The key of A was decided on with Sondre joking, “Our forefathers favored the key of A.” In a fit of mutual international friendliness, the pair launched into the A-ha hit “Take On Me” with Sondre energetically nailing the vocals. Jon clearly enjoyed digging his fingers into the keys to extract the familiar rousing, bouncing notes that drive the tune and the audience provided background vocals on the chorus. It was such a fun end to Sondre’s set. Definitely play this clip to see what I mean!
As Sondre exited the stage while receiving enthusiastic applause, Jon began playing a quieter, more pensive version of the song, making a congruous transition into his own set. In a show with no pre-planned set list, here is what the set list turned out to be:
- Jon asked for requests and there was quite a lot of shouting from the crowd. If what he chose to play was something that was requested, I didn’t hear it and it wasn’t one I am familiar with. It was very chord heavy with some jaunty fills and Jon stomping along in rhythm.
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- Jon said, “After publicly denigrating C#, I will now play a song in C#.” More requests were voiced from the audience with someone shouting out “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze. Some guy retorted “Oh come on now” to that request, and maybe that triggered Jon to actually choose that one, because he went on to play the bass riff of the song on the piano. Discovering the audience didn’t really know the lyrics to sing, he mentioned it was kind of like singing The Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” in which people struggle with the verses. Thus, he created a mash-up of the two songs with the audience joining in singing the words “black coffee in bed” repeatedly to that bass line rhythm, though that isn’t done in the actual song, and then tacking on a bit of the “na na na na na na na” section from “Hey Jude.” Totally enjoyable as an audience member to watch and (minimally) participate in the process of deconstructing music and reassembling it into something a little different using the original building blocks. Even this small amount of group collaboration felt fulfilling for me as a person who is often negotiating life alone.
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- Jon then performed his unreleased slow, achingly beautiful, yet heavy song “Trial and Error.” This is one of those songs of Jon’s in which I glean some new realization out of every time I listen to it. This time it was recognizing no matter how much I plan things in advance, the outcome is at best trial and error; so much of what I do feels impacted by circumstances completely out of my control. Further, I’m constantly casting out my fishing line and coming up empty, though I still hold hope that I will catch a big one. Dang it, Jon Brion, this stuff doesn’t run through my mind at concerts by The Struts. I’ve used a lyric from this song for the title of the post.
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- Next was another song at the piano that I did not recognize at all. Jon paced his way through a lot of chords, nearly a new chord for every beat, in this piece reminiscent of a concerto that a Romantic composer such as Edvard Grieg or Sergei Rachmaninoff might have written. Whatever, it made for a compelling piece book-ended by two emotionally-tinged Jon Brion songs. At one point during the song, the microphone on the piano drooped downward to face the keyboard and Jon slowly pushed it away with the top of his head as he continued playing. This made me start thinking about Jon’s multi-tasking abilities. What can he do while playing an instrument? We know he can drink a Guinness, but could he eat a whole meal while playing piano? Could he play checkers or chess with someone while also playing a song on the piano? We know he can play guitar and harmonica or piano and harmonica at the same time. What is his record number of instruments he can reasonably play in one song at one time (without using looping or recording on multiple tracks)? The one-man band possesses truly legendary abilities, that in our old age we shall be telling embellished tales about, “I once saw Jon Brion mix up 10 different songs, while drinking a Guinness and playing a second piano behind his back, and alternately singing into the microphone on his MicroKorg and playing harmonica, while stomping the rhythm with his left foot and pedaling with his right, then spinning discs, while conducting Maria Calais, and yelling, “Sing motherfuckers” at the audience, while kicking his piano bench over, and owning the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis after one too many soda pops.”
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- The next song was the ever lovely, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind “Theme.” He played a faithful rendition of it and I sat back and soaked it in. As the song washed over me, I felt as if I was an empty vase of loneliness and yearning, waiting to be adorned with an uplifting bouquet of colorful flowers that never appear.
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- Still at the piano, he fiddled with changing the piano to tack and then switched it back to the classic sound as he began his song “I Was Happy With You.” He played this one rather passionately and there is a brief clip from that night below. As he sang the lyrics, I thought his voice was sounding a little bit scratchy or maybe worn out or maybe he’s getting a cold; it was embellished like a fuzz tone for guitar and sounded like he was pushing through it. After the song he drank from his Guinness and held it in his mouth, then began humming into his glass next to the microphone. It produced a sort of vaudeville megaphone effect and he played a teaser line of “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon.”
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- After playing a tumultuous rush of sound, he softened into something sublime and uncluttered, and suddenly we are transported to a New York speakeasy with clinking glasses and hushed chatter (or maybe just the old Largo). He played the song sans vocal first and then began singing “I could cry salty tears, where have I been all these years?” — his progression backward in time revealed the Gerschwins’ “How Long Has This Been Going On?”
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- Transitioning out of that mood by playing multiple descending glissandos, which Jon called a “Guinness Waterfall,” requests were once again summoned from the crowd. Someone yelled “Very Emotional Chopsticks!” and that was what we received. This time Jon mashed up “Moonlight Sonata” with “Chopsticks,” and in a subtle game of stumping me, I think there was another song added toward the end that I couldn’t name. I must brush up on my instrumental music titles.
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- Switching over to a Gibson Les Paul guitar and sitting in a chair center stage, Jon spent a whole lot of time fiddling with knobs on his pedal board. He accepted a request for “How Soon Is Now” and accurately created the guitar effect. Too bad the audience didn’t really know the lyrics of the verses, though we came through for the refrain. A few more adjustments to the effects and Jon stood up to perform the next song and also flicked his thumb pick into the audience.
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- “Got the Blues (Can’t Be Satisfied)” Straight up blues song (though I can’t condone the murder in the verse toward the end!), played almost on automatic, like Jon is a machine with the dial set to blues and this is the flawless output; he can be content with his performance despite the gear giving him issues. The song laments the limits of finding true satisfaction, particularly in another person. Some people may feel blocked progress because they are striving so hard for perfection and struggle to obtain it. But perfection is a false idol; true living and learning lies in making mistakes, thumbing your nose at imperfections, and carrying on regardless. When he finished playing the song it looked like he might do one more on the guitar, but after more fiddling with the pedal board, Jon proclaimed, “Things are just being mean,” and unplugged and returned the guitar to the rack.
- This song that closed the show requires a back story. At Jon’s January show, he played a set afterward in The Little Room. A funny thing happened when he asked for requests. A guy yelled out “Maple Leaf Rag” and after a quiet pause, I uttered a dejected sounding, drawn out “nooooo.” My ex used to play that song on piano and when it was called out I physically shuddered and thought, I don’t know if I can handle that right now, and the no was released almost as a sigh. Well the request and response cracked up Jon and he replayed the scenario on stage, including a couple bars of the song on the piano, then stopped playing, bent his head down, and mimicked my “nooooo.” I said, “I’m sorry,” and he responded, “Don’t be sorry!” That made me laugh. In just a brief moment, he turned a song that had a sad, conflicted memory attachment, to one that now has a funny memory attachment, especially after I told the Jon Brion story to my older son. Now when one of us doesn’t want something, we will occasionally use that exact same dejected “nooooo” to reject it, which leaves us both laughing. So it took my breath away when (especially after the notebook thing), Jon played “Maple Leaf Rag” for the last song of the night. He began it true to its origins, precise, on tempo, and by the end he was playing it extra fast and aggressively. You know when people say of a great guitar solo, “He killed it?” Well Jon killed that song, metaphorically and seemingly literally, like he was hammering the nails into the coffin labelled “Maple Leaf Rag.” Or so as I wrote as the final words on the song in my notebook, “It’s dead.”
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The night ended a little early at 11:40pm (Jon typically plays until midnight), and despite many cheers from the audience, there was no encore and the lights and exit music were swiftly turned on. And so we leave Largo behind until next time. But if you follow the link below, you’ll find the Jon Brion section on iTunes and you can browse until your heart is content to find any of his music that might be missing from your collection.