Some nights go really well and you pay your money and hear your band and go home with the taste of ecstatic satisfaction on your lips. This night went well, …in the end. It was a long and twisting path to get there though; we had a good laugh or three all the way through. MChutney and I dashed downtown to The Dark Room to catch one of our favorite bands, Arizona on their last stop of a 25+ gig tour that took them from Philly in April to Chicago by the end of May. These guys play and travel hard!

At a booth in the club, they sat listening to the Southern Rock/Country inspired band on stage and I snuck over to ask if they had already played (we came a bit late and I was worried we missed them!) Ben, the fuzzy haired (he calls himself a “hobbit-man” I’m not gonna go there) singer/guitarist and often keyboardist seemed to recognize me. Nope, not on yet, whew! We settled in… no one knew how many bands were going to play exactly or in what order, …interesting. Ben came up to me after a few minutes and we chatted with him throughout the night. That guy has a real brain for faces;  we had talked about 7 months ago! And now tell me how often do you get to just shoot the shit with a member of one of your favorite bands? See, this is the coolest thing about indie music. I learned alot about this guy. He’s got size 9 feet. His girlfriend knitted him a beard for his keyboard on the last tour, where I saw them play with Amy Ray, reviewed here. (I must admit to wondering what that was dangling from it at the time.) His guitar is made by a guy in MN (?) and it gives the sweetest tone I’ve heard in a good long while. Wow. And, even though Arizona weren’t able to follow through, they did offer to cover Poison’s “Fallen Angel” for us. Now that’s entertainment folks!

But you came here for the music, didn’t you? Well so did we that night, and we sat through three bands to get it. By the time Arizona took the stage I told Ben I was a little scared for them! He laughed and said, “Me too!”  The crowd was rowdy, the previous bands were rough and rude and rockin, and here’s these indie kids who play this amazing psychedelica/prog rock with high toned harmonies and sharp contrasts and prolonged pauses and measured moments of reverb and feedback. ”Glowing Bird” is perhaps the best example of this.  It seemed to be a little like throwing the antelope out in front of the lion for the cameras in Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (were you as disappointed as I was to learn they did that?!?) But Arizona did exactly what they said they would. They played a great show to our little crowd. They sang over the hecklers, over the guy asking where their balls were, over the very drunk loud talkers. And we soaked up the goodness of this amazing music.

Their voices were in fine form, Ben’s high, strong and clear. Nick, playing mandolin and soloing beautifully on “Whiskey or Wine” (maybe another as well, memory fails) also provided harmonies on everything. Alex sang backup and complimented and filled in the blank spaces just enough to let a little light shine through. Ben’s new(ish) guitar was absolutely gorgeous, even though it went out on him a few times, hardly anyone noticed due to the “forest of sound” as MChutney put it. We had been talking about how bands produce a wall of sound, how it hits you, hard. With Arizona, it’s equally forceful, just as big and complete. But not dense like a wall—more depth and texture, hidden and open spaces, seemingly an endless terrain that you want to go back to again and again. Their guitar work (two guitars and a bass) is all twisted around itself, there’s a feeling of banjo/bluegrass to it at times in that it’s lush and complicated but not rambling. Alex’s bass was as wonderful as I remembered it to be the last time I heard them. And their new songs …. wow, just wow. The album they must be conjuring up is really going to captivate you, my dear readers!

Go over to their MySpace and peek at the video Nick Fiore made of them creating a song. It’s about 20 mins long and it sheds some real insight into how these four guys work together. It echos the feeling I got from them Saturday night, no one personality runs this thing. This really seems like a band of brothers who are moving forward on a rising crest of creativity and just plain passion for music. When Ben left the stage, the first thing he said to me was, “Well that was a weird show.” And yeah it was, it was a rough night to play. But Arizona got caught up in their own trap of effervescence. This hard-working band performed wonderfully. If they come near you on their next tour go see them. They are amazing live, much bigger than their recordings lead you to believe. Thanks so much for coming, guys! xoxoxo

buy Glowing Bird here