Skip to main content

Railroad Earth 1.17.14


The Fillmore Auditorium
Denver, CO

Words & Photos By Brad Yeakel (Opti Mystic Outlooks)


The weathered barn was at the end of a windy road. It's drafty, abandoned, dusty contents reflected long forgotten hoedowns, and barn parties. The smell of hay and wood were sensory compliments to the broken, battered, and rotten remnants of pitchforks and shovels, banjos and fiddles. As the years passed, the instruments were ultimately buried in a field behind the barn. Then one spring, the sun and rain brought sprouts from the ground, and up grew the most organic band in all the land.

That was how I like to imagine Railroad Earth was formed.

Truthfully, Friday night I thought they really sounded like a farm. Each player was a different flavor from the garden, and took turns seasoning the songs. From time to time, there was a pretty tasty soup cooking. On the other hand, there were some downfalls to being so terrestrial. For starters, from an entertainment perspective, I never felt like any bounds were pushed. Everything had the feel of a bunch of friends going through the motions rather than a band that was trying to "turn on our own heads." Unfortunately, there were points where I would have been similarly entertained by listening to some background music and watching the produce aisle at King Soopers.

That was a little harsh. It's not that I don't appreciate Railroad Earth. I have seen them raise the energy through the roof, but those moments seemed to be few and far between. It was a shame that the energy wasn't sustainable, because Tim Carbone's fiddle playing and Todd Sheaffer's songwriting were truly remarkable. Carbone also seemed to be the most down to earth musician I have ever met. His whole purpose seems to be to spread goodness and joy. If it weren't for Tim, I doubt I'd have seen this band more than once. The community that supports RRE was friendly, jovial, and really fun to be around. They were a noticeably more polite, refined jam-band crowd... Not the typical spunions I have regularly encountered at some of my favorite haunts. In that regard, the show was far more pleasant to enjoy than some. It reminded me of a String Cheese Incident crowd before the electronica influence.

Perhaps I've been spoiled. I have seen hundreds of shows, many of them featuring virtuosos, poets, and artists of staggering talent and ambitious showmanship. Not every band was intended to blow the doors open, knock you backwards, and melt your brain. Some bands were meant to provide a mellow mood. When it comes to songs of substance to ease your mind and soothe your soul, RRE hit the mark.

I stayed through the encore, "The Promised Land," which seemed to be the perfect ending to the night. The lyrics, "we will all be together for ever and ever when we make it to the promised land," said more about the RRE experience than I could hope to convey... It put into words the idea that I had been thinking about... That this band was as much about the community that grew around it as it was about the music. There was a real feeling of family, and hope that if we all stuck together, we would be able to see a brighter day. That's the beauty of Railroad Earth and why they have been successful. At the end of the day, all they really do is try to put some feel-good music in the air, and brighten your day a little bit. There's nothing wrong with that.

Brad's Photo Gallery

www.railroadearth.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Livetronica Sampler 3.22.11

Words by Greg Molitor ( ReMIND Photography ) Ozric Tentacles This British group has proven innovative throughout the years offering a space-rock meets psytrance sound that remains alive to this day. Though never having a major record label, Ozric Tentacles has produced 28 albums of diverse psychedelia throughout its career. The band met at the Stonehenge Free Festival in 1983 and truly fathered livetronica music with its use of sequencers and synthesizers. Simply put, there would be no livetronica without Ozric Tentacles. www.ozrics.com Octopus Nebula Colorado’s Octopus Nebula has certainly hit its stride as of late with its constant touring and increased festival interest. The group expands on the deep sounds of highly regarded acts such as STS9 and Shpongle but also carves a path of its own with its fresh takes on synthesizer tones and sampling in the live setting. Octopus Nebula Live at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom on March 26, 2010. <--- Direct Archive Link www.octopus

Buckethead: Gimmick or Guitar God?

Words & Photos By Nicholas Stock ( phatphlogblog.blogspot.com ) At what point does the gimmick overshadow the performance? The obvious answer is Buckethead. The man is an amazing guitarist but something is not right in this world. The idea a performer who dons a KFC chicken bucket on his head for a concert has always intrigued me, and some of his side projects such as Colonel Claypool’s Bernie Bucket of Brains have been huge successes. However his performance last weekend in Fort Collins simply left me perplexed. From his robotic dancing, to his nunchuck display, to the fact the he performed with an iPod rather than a band all added to my confusion. Going into the show I was ready to be blown away, despite rumblings of disgruntled fans from the previous night’s show at The Gothic. Buckethead had had some sound issues and some missed cues in Denver but I was still trying to be positive for the show in Fort Collins. It did go off without a hitch technically but that was the least

The Origin of MusicMarauders

Words By J-man "What should I name this fucking thing?" I asked myself in the midst of a joint in my Upstate, NY apartment. "It's got to be something with just 'Music'in the title. Nothing more specific than that, as we'll be covering a wide variety of genres." One more drag on the joint yielded the memory of driving down Woodward Ave. in Detroit, listening to Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders. "MusicMarauders! That's it... It completely encompasses what we do in the sense the we are 'maraudering' or 'pillaging' for music," I thought as I stared out of the window at about three and a half feet of fresh Upstate snow. First things first, the domain had to be registered. "Do I have ten dollars in my account?" I thought to myself from a position of just scraping by. Pulling out my shiny, rarely used debit card, I put it to the test and was able to secure MusicMarauders.com. "What's next?" I