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Friday Full-Length: Wino, Live at Roadburn 2009

This was a special moment. In 2009, Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich played Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, the Netherlands, with his newly-formed Wino trio, comprised of himself on vocals/guitar, Jon Blank (Resin) on bass and Clutch‘s Jean-Paul Gaster on drums. It was my first Roadburn, and Wino himself was in no small part the reason I ended up making the trip, since in addition to the set with what ended up by default being thought of as The Wino Band, he was also playing with a reunited Saint Vitus on the main stage of the 013 venue, one of the headliners of the multi-day fest, the scope for which seemed insurmountable at the time and has only grown more so in the years since.

The Wino set took place in the Green Room — a midsize space apart from the main stage in the 013, and then one of three rooms available as part of the fest. It was the final day of the fest, then called the Afterburner, so the Bat Cave, the smallest room, had merch available but no bands playing. I always liked the Afterburner. It was comparatively mellow but you could still see something incredible and the bands all still brought their best. Wino, Blank and Gaster were a fitting example of this, and the Live at Roadburn 2009 (review here) recording that Roadburn/Burning World Records released in 2010, is the evidence. The Wino trio had issued Punctuated Equilibrium (discussed here) on Southern Lord earlier in the year, and it brought together multiple sides of the man’s unmatched pedigree, which already by then included the aforementioned Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan and The Hidden Hand, as well as the supergroup Shrinebuilder and a CV with more guest appearances than anyone could hope to count, and with Gaster on drums, well, the live record tells the tale. It’s got a groove and a flow that holds strong even as the setlist jumps from new material to old, bringing in Spirit Caravan‘s “Lost Sun Dance” late after already playing back and forth righteously between The Obsessed and The Hidden Hand, sandwichingwino live at roadburn 2009 the latter’s “Sunblood” with the former’s “Streetside” and “Streamlined.” It was a damn good show.

I watched it from the balcony in the Green Room, and though I can’t do so, I also wouldn’t want to separate the experience of having been there from listening to the recording. I mean, don’t get me wrong. If you’ve got trouble listening to Wino blow out “Yen’s Sleep” from a stage, there’s not much I can really do for you about that — it’s your loss — but they were so locked in, so tight and so utterly triumphant in playing these songs that I value the recording that much more even 11 years after the fact because it evokes that personal memory. Whether you have that connection or not, whether you were there or not, the thing still rules.

This week should’ve been Roadburn 2020. In different circumstances, I’d be in the Netherlands right now, and though the fest hasn’t had Wino there for a while at this point in any of his many incarnations, having pushed off in multiple different aesthetic directions over recent years, it’s still always something amazing to behold. I guess I’m missing it, if you want me to be honest. So, nostalgia. I’ll cop to that.

It was a beautiful and strange time. My first foreign fest. I’d never seen anything like it and though I’ve been fortunate enough to do more traveling to other places since I’m still not sure I ever have. The scope of Roadburn has become so expansive it practically takes over the town of Tilburg at this point, but it was still building its base community in 2009, though it had been running for a decade already in one form or another. It was becoming what it would become. I felt lucky to be there, and I was. I’ve never felt anything other than lucky to be there. Except maybe tired. I’ve felt tired a bunch.

Of course, Wino‘s Live at Roadburn 2009 is tainted. It was the last performance of a European tour — a true victory lap — and on May 2, 2009, Jon Blank died of a heroin overdose, just two weeks after returning home. Wino went on tour with Clutch, I remember, but was flailing and rudderless enough as a result that when he put out his first-ever acoustic album the next year, he called it Adrift (review here). A stint in the short-lived and largely forgotten Premonition 13 followed, and then reunions with Spirit Caravan and The Obsessed, the latter which started first and is continuing, Weinrich‘s time in Saint Vitus having come to an end, and acoustic performances and periodic collaborations with German singer-songwriter Conny Ochs having continued all the while. He’ll reportedly have a new acoustic album out in June on Ripple Music. I haven’t heard it yet, which makes me a little sad, but after a decade since Adrift, anticipation is high as it invariably is for just about anything in which he’s involved.

As a general rule, I’m not huge on live albums, and even this one I don’t go back to all that often, but the point it emphasizes for me is the preciousness of the moment in which it happened and the idea that whatever you’re experiencing at the time, it’s fleeting. Positive or negative, “this too shall pass,” as my grandfather was apparently wont to say (we never met). No way the Wino band knew that Roadburn would be their last show, and no way Blank knew he’d pass away less than a month later, but as we look back, it seems like that’s as much a reason as any to celebrate the time that was when it was at least as much as to mourn what came after. Life is huge, and it encompasses all that joy, all that sadness, all the mania and the up and down and side to side of existence. We’re so small and yet our brains can’t even comprehend the expanses around and within us.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

Did I leave the house this week? Yeah, I did. I tried to go to Costco, but the line was down the side and around back of the building and I threw my hands up and said “fuck it” through my face mask, got back in the car and hit Wegman’s instead. The line was shorter to get in there.

These days are long.

I’ve been sleeping late to try to mitigate. I’ve been napping to make up for lost sleep overnight — also maybe causing the lost sleep overnight? I don’t know. I’ve been having anxiety dreams. I’ve been taking half a xanax pretty much daily. I find that if I eat something when I take it, it doesn’t put me to sleep in the same way. Novelty. The Patient Mrs. made me cookies with almond and macadamia flour. There have been days where dessert is the finish line getting me through the rest of it.

I feel terrible for The Pecan. He’s up now and I can see him on the monitor dancing in his bedroom. He wants to do stuff. Go to his places, see people. We video chat with grandmas, but it’s nowhere near the same. Last weekend we drove up to Connecticut for the day. We might do the same this weekend. Fuck it, at this point. If I didn’t catch COVID-19 from the Shop-Rite in Morris Plains, I ain’t gonna catch it from The Patient Mrs.’ mom.

Today is a new The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio. 5PM Eastern. Listen at http://gimmeradio.com

And I say that all the time, but please actually listen this time, huh? What else you got going on? It’s cool tunes and I recorded the voice tracks in my living room with the kid and The Patient Mrs. in the background, so it’s a mess, but it’s a fun mess, so yeah, please tune in.

More rona stuff next week. More of everything next week. I’m totally overwhelmed by all of it, which I guess is my preferred scenario, but speaking of that, it’s time for me to go grab The Pecan from upstairs, change his diaper and start the day. Another day. Another day in lockdown. Might go to Lowe’s later to get a five-gallon jug of water. We hydrate like bastards in this house. It’s the only way to be.

Next week: album streams from Lord Fowl and Gaffa Ghandi, a video premiere from The Earth Below, more rona than I can handle, an Elder review and whatever else I can throw together. It’ll be fun. It’ll be more than I can handle, which is the idea. It’ll occupy my brain in troubling ways. I love that.

Thanks for reading. Hope you’re well and staying safe. Oh, there ain’t no roneys on me.

Great and safe weekend. FRM.

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