Photo by Blaine Schultz
Tired Eyes at Cactus Club
Sometimes a ceremony requires poisonous snakes, incense or colored sand. Friday at Cactus Club, Tired Eyes used a pair of old Gretsch guitars, volume and Neil Young deep cuts to set the mood. Who knows if this project continues beyond a few select shows? If you were there you won the lottery and saw Halley’s Comet on the same evening.
After Young scored a big hit in 1972 with the song “Heart of Gold” he grew disillusioned and headed away from the mainstream. The string of albums known as the Ditch Trilogy was emblematic of the dark, brooding, soulful music he conjured. It was these albums that informed Tired Eyes set.
Comprised of Rich Mattson (Ol’ Yeller/Northstars), Alan Sparhawk (Low/Black Eyed Snakes), Glen Mattson (Glenrustles), and Kraig Johnson (Run Rusty Run/Jayhawks/Golden Smog), the band takes its name from a song on Young’s album Tonight’s the Night.
To be fair, this wasn’t a cover band or a tribute act. It was the basic ingredients of Young and Crazy Horse in a packed, sweaty club. It was the sound of entropy unfolding in real time then folding back on itself. This was four grown up dirtballs, jamming in a garage—who took the primal ingredients of some of Young’s best raw and heartfelt songs and refracted them into something similar to the originals—but definitely not the same.
The first set ended with the band making sure everyone came back after the break by announcing the songs they’d play for the next set—a gesture that actually came off as something Young might have done in his Ditch era.
If the first set predicted the evening’s trajectory, the second set was a shakey deal.
Sparhawk played guitar like Karl Wallenda walking a tightrope. He and Rich Mattson attacked their hollow body guitars and stomped to the backbeat of the rhythm section. To the occasionally blown chord change or wrong lyric, Johnson might raise an eyebrow or maybe not. It wasn’t always pretty but it was magical.
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Fittingly, a highlight was “Tired Eyes,” the woeful tale of a drug deal gone south, which had Sparhawk and Rich speaking over each other, as if we were witnessing a Robert Altman movie in a rock song.
In a perfect touch, the encore began with Glen Mattson leaning into the center mic, holding a pair of dead Hamm’s tall boys, sending the band into “Tonight’s the Night.”
