LIVE SHOW: Blitzen Trapper
Blitzen Trapper plays at the El Rey Theater Anna Webber
The Oregon backwoods shepherded Blitzen Trapper to the El Rey Theater last week for a full set of rustic country mountain songs. They killed it every chord, key, smack and shake. Playing everything we all love about them and more, they included a Bob Dylan cover and other songs that sound exactly – like Bob Dylan.
Singer Eric Earley’s softer “Lady on the Water” put you on a dark cloud covered lake in the mountains, seamlessly soft in their weathered hinterland style. “Furr” is a song Bob Dylan might have written, very Queen Jane Approximately inspired lyrics, harmonica and intonations.
There were two outstanding things about this show that must not be set to the wind. One, the red headed furtrapper who could have been easily mistaken as an extremely talented guitar player (which he was) wearing some sort of afro/pony tail that seemed more of a Civil War period colonial ‘do than anything a weird hipster might ever even know to assemble. Two, the end outburst by what seemed to be a very upset bass player.
What exactly happened is still unknown, but it appeared that a girl was giggling about how the keyboardist’s interpretive dance during the last song was truly reminiscent of the Big Lebowski’s next door neighbor’s interpretive dance, and how magnificent he looked doing it. His shirt was a bit too small, his arms up in the air, jumping, girth fully exposed, accepting any sort of audience accolade. The bass player evidently yelled at the girl to “Shut Up” – and at the song’s end, threw his bass down to the floor and pouted offstage.
Aside from the two bandmembers who were either clearly on dodgy psilocybin mushrooms or possibly even nothing, Blitzen Trapper nonetheless supplied the place with extreme talent, ending the show after a full blitzkrieg encore.
