Butch Walker Week: The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker Live

Grace was the first girl Willy ever kissed growing up in Virginia and little did he know it, but Grace would be his wife and companion for the better part of a few decades until he could no longer remember her. She died one year before he did, but there was loveliness in her death. Will sadly had Alzheimer's yet during the final year of his life, he wasn't fully aware that Grace had passed, so he thought she was with him right until the end. In a day and age where couples seem to be addicted to drama, this is a great love story. The sad thing is I have heard the story, but I never listened to it. One of the alluring aspects of Storytellers and Unplugged was the stories the acts shared with the fans. We were taken inside and felt as if we were receiving privileged information. Before long-form television shows, these types of reveals were limited to print interviews and to concerts. This is why the live performance will always exist; we want to seek a glimpse of their brilliance. Storytellers and Unplugged opened a small family gathering to millions, yet it still felt as real and intimate as being there. Sometimes, it wasn't even the  stories told but the familiarity with which the songs were performed. It shed light on music in ways we otherwise never could have grasped or imagined. Every artist should consider this route when re-visiting older records. Of the four nights Butch Walker was doing in Chicago, the one I was least looking forward to was the second one where he did his 2006 album The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites. A marginal album had an unexpected rebirth. The above story is about the grandparents of Butch Walker immortalized in the song "Dominoes", a song I have largely misinterpreted and shrugged off over the last few years. It's in the middle of a rather scorching record that indulges in Friday-night excess and as a result, I felt it was a poor man's "Joan" (a multifaceted piano ballad on Walker's Letters). The Rise & Fall… has always been a record I couldn't get my head around and as a result, I overlooked many of the songs on the record and didn't seem them as being up to Walker's high standards. In Schubas Tavern on Walker's second of four nights, he proved me wrong by bringing the crowd into his own little personal world for a few moments. With a simple story, he completely changed my view of the song and how I feel about it emotionally and let me tell you, there wasn't a person at Schubas who isn't better for him telling it. 

In a day and age of musical surplus, if an album doesn't connect it might not get the same number of spins it would have two-decades ago. As a result, The Rise & Fall… never made an overpowering impression on me and was a record I admired more than loved. That changed at Schubas. This was the one show I wasn't looking forward to, but it turned out to be my favorite as Walker defied my impressions of this record with a pure and illuminating performance. Unlike the previous evening, Walker had his electric guitar plugged in for a large part of the evening, which he made a point of pointing out by saying "Electric guitar meet Chicago", and right from the opening chords of "Hot Girls In Good Moods", he seemed to be in high spirits. As Walker explained to the crowd, he was in a good place when he wrote and recorded the album and it didn't produce his most brooding and contemplative songs, but some of his most muscular. 

He was playful with the crowd and there was more of a loose atmosphere. As he begun "Ladies & Gentlemen…" this record opened up for me in ways I never imagined. The tongue-twisting lyrics were front and center and the "la-la" chorus was in full force with a little help from the crowd. "Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty) was vitalizing with some raging strumming on an acoustic. While not as soul bearing as previous records, you can't deny the hooks in this one. "Too Famous To Get Fully Dressed" was exuberant while "We're All Going Down" was one of the few songs not performed live on the initial tour in support of the record. Moody and spacious, it had an intricate vocal from Walker. "Sometimes you regret songs" is how he introduced "Paid To Get Excited". "Did I just hear him say that?" I thought to myself. In a world where we're besieged by PR blitzes where the truth is grey, it was refreshing to see an act disown a song. The truth is we all evolve as humans every moment on this earth and artists are no different. What we watched was more than the progression of an artist over these intimate shows…but a human as well. This isn't someone who is selling out their values, but a truthful admission. In a day and age where you can smell bulls*** a mile away, this was refreshing. I love "Song Without a Chorus" but the album version left me cold, but once again (like it was on the 2005 tour) it was charming in a sparse arrangement. "The Taste of Red" was performed on a twelve-string guitar and I couldn't help but wish it was on the bar's jukebox to be played later. A whimsical and romantically sweeping song was delivered in an arrangement that wouldn't have been out of place on Letters. There was even a cover, "Common People" by Pulp. It was piercing and preceeded with some hilarious banter from a fan who when Butch introduced the song as by "a band that never broke through" and a fan gleefully shouted out "Hall and Oates" to a wide smile by Walker who couldn't wipe the smile off his face. Walker teased the fan for figuring out what the song was by looking it up on their iPhone. He joked about how his father refers to YouTube as "GoogleTube" which still has me cracking a smile ever since. The stories were amusing, alluring and illuminating and complimeted the songs. Walker pulled his audience in on a record that many have issues with, but those concerns fell to the wayside in a evening that surprised everyone. 

This was a night of second chances as I reveled in the brilliance of songs I dismissed many years ago. This is what differentiates pop stars from artists. A pop star delivers you note for note replications thast won't sway you one way or another, but an artist pushes you out of your comfortzone and makes you take a hard look at yourself in the process. A distinguished artist is always growing, pushing the envelope and on nights like this one, reinventing your thought process about their work. Letters housed a bedroom intensity where each song felt like a confessional, but on The Rise and Fall… Walker had the amps turned up to 11 and in the process, a few songs got lost amidst the static, but fortunately they were rediscovered during this show. Ultimately musicians are storytellers and are our vessels to better understanding ourselves. Butch Walker showed sides of himself during this second show I'd never seen before. Our pain makes more sense when we decipher a lyric and our joys are that more joyous when the riotous music allows us to rock our pain away. Everyone has a story to tell no matter how small or insignificant, but they need a narrator to tell it compellingly. For an album about panties- around-the-ankles debauchery this was a sacred moment. On this second night, Butch Walker, the storyteller came out and illuminated us in ways no one could have forseen.
 

Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.

Butch Walker Week: The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker Live

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