Photo credit: Maegan Krause
For a jam band whose highly spirited take on bluegrass can draw a near-capacity crowd to the Turner Hall Ballroom, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades’ jamming was both compact and selective Saturday night. Banjoist Russell Pedersen and acoustic guitar-playing band leader Adam Greuel’s virtuosity were largely relegated to rhythmic and harmonic roles in the 27 songs the Stevens Point string band played; fiddler Collin Mettelka and the quintet’s two Milwaukee natives, upright bassist Samuel Odin and harmonica/accordion player Davey Lynch, received the bulk of solo time. The members’ participation was more evenly distributed in the instigation and interaction involved in the occasional spells of what sounded like improvisation amid the flow of sprightly, often bluegrass-inflected tunes.
The technicalities of who did what pale to the overall assault of good vibrations the group proffered to their audience, though. In most of his few times addressing the crowd between songs, Greuel beamed with both borderline sentimental Wisconsin pride and appreciation for the copacetic throng before him and his band mates. His kind countenance and words of commendation were matched by smiles on the faces of most everyone else on stage, with Mettelka being the most stoic of the lot and Lynch obscured much of the time by his primary instrument of choice.
As the smell of marijuana wafted through the air, H&HG abetted the smoking and beverage indulgences of their listeners with a set in which covers and originals mingled in roughly equal measure. Odin took lead vocals for a couple of the most surprising of the former with a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and Talking Heads “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”—the latter, with Lynch’s infusion of squeezebox, found the surprising place where David Byrne & Co.’s intellectual funkiness intersects with zydeco, reggae and the group’s folksy roots.
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They had as much fun with some of their own material, too, especially in context of the Christmas season. “Whiskey” was fit into a medley with a semi-recognizable “We Three Kings,” while their “Wisconsin Water” was similarly mashed up with an encouraging selection from John Denver and The Muppets’ holiday album, “It’s In Every One Of Us.” Lynch at last got in a bit of lead singing and a songwriting credit as well in the night’s final number, “Gator Tracks," closing the night with a newfangled iteration of the a capella tradition attendant to the instrumental heritage the band carries forth.
A set long as H&HG’s alone would have been a generous concert-going bargain, but they brought a couple of opening acts who added another 18 numbers. Dead Man Winter, a side project for a couple members of ’grassy jam band Trampled By Turtles, were the only ones to use electric instruments this evening. Their amalgam of Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Band and Radiohead—the third by virtue of some devastatingly witty, self-loathing lyrics and use of feedback—merits another Milwaukee appearance in a heavier setting. Nova Scotia’s Old Man Luedecke takes the Grandpa Jones tack of giving himself a stage name denoting an elder status he hadn’t achieved at the time he took it. His banjo and guitar strumming accompanies a sometimes quaint, uniformly engaging style of songwriting that incorporates personal insight, especially effective when he sings of being a husband and daddy, and more random observations. In the familial nature that must make a ride in their van a blast, the headliners brought Luedecke and members of Dead Man Winter on stage to share in their own music making as well.
