Wino Wednesday: The Wino Trio, “The Woman in the Orange Pants” Live at the 9:30 Club, 2009
Their tenure was brief, but even six years later I can’t look at a clip of the three-piece Wino solo band without wondering what could’ve been had they kept going. With Scott “Wino” Weinrich on guitar and vocals, Clutch‘s Jean-Paul Gaster on drums and Rezin bassist Jon Blank, the group were a classic power trio. Hardly Wino‘s first, with The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan and The Hidden Hand under his belt by then, but the flowing, swinging style of Gaster suited Wino‘s guitar exceptionally well, and Blank held the songs together while solos both stringed and percussive took flight in this or that direction, making sure the two star players had somewhere to return when the song needed to kick back in. On stage, they were dizzying, and 2009’s Punctuated Equilibrium album remains a favorite to this day.
You know the story by now. The Wino trio went to Europe, conquered at festivals like Roadburn and Doom Shall Rise, returned to the States on top of the world and were effectively ended immediately with the death of Blank following a heroin overdose. It was sudden and brutal, and it’s essentially become part of the legacy of the band. Wino went on to do acoustic solo work, Shrinebuilder, the short-lived Premonition 13, the collaboration with Conny Ochs and reunions with Saint Vitus, The Obsessed and Spirit Caravan, Gaster went back to Clutch, and that was it. There was the 2010 Live at Roadburn 2009 release (review here), but there’s been no further mention since of the Wino trio or Wino and Gaster working together in any capacity. It happened faster than you could snap your fingers.
This week’s Wino Wednesday clip comes from just before that European tour. It’s a balcony shot at Washington D.C.’s famed 9:30 Club of Punctuated Equilibrium instrumental “The Woman in the Orange Pants,” and you can already see how well the three players mesh on stage, Gaster‘s fills wrapping around the spaces between Wino‘s power chords and Blank serving as the anchor for all three of them. Very cool band, very sad story, but there’s no denying the power they had on stage, and that’s worth celebrating.
Enjoy:
