On the heels of one of the worst musical experiences of my life at the Widespread Panic show last Tuesday comes one of the best when Dean Magraw (electric guitars), Bruce Kurnow (harmonicas), and Michael Bissonnette (percussion) assembled for two sets at the Aster Cafe in Minneapolis.
The trio first played publicly 5 July 2011 delivering two stellar sets at Saint Paul’s Black Dog Cafe. That show was breathtaking with very, very few rough edges. Covering everything from Magraw and Kurnow originals, to reads of John Coltrane and Joe Zawinul, it was clear these three were on to something very special.
They played again on 15 September at the 318 Cafe in Excelsior. I didn’t make it to that show, but I’m sure it was interesting.
For the Aster Cafe show, Dean Magraw broke out his acoustic guitar and Michael Bissonnette added more instruments—including homemade pistachio shell rattle anklets and an Aztec death whistle that totally freaked me out—to his percussion kit.
Michael Bissonnette and Dean Magraw, Aster Cafe, Minneapolis, 27 October 2011.
I hadn’t heard Magraw play acoustic since his recovery from a 2009 bone marrow transplant, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. Magraw is a musical chameleon—more so than any musician of which I know. I got introduced to the world of Dean through his folk duos with fiddler and mandolinist Peter Ostroushko as well as his sessions work with Greg Brown and just about everyone else in the upper midwest folk scene. Then came the solo shows, the Big Wu family reunion shows, Eight Head, duos with shamisenist Nirmala Masahiro, violinist Nigel Kennedy, veena player Nirmala Rajasekar, celtic music with Boiled in Lead and Altan, and various jazz configurations, most recently Red Planet, with that incredible white Stratocaster.
I’m convinced Dean Magraw can play any style of music. As he told Pamela Espeland in a 20089 MinnPost.com profile:
“I view the so-called different styles of music as one big family of sound. Those little bins in the record store, the categories, they don’t do justice to the similarities between so-called different styles. ... I don’t see them as separate, at war, superior, inferior, but as part of a continuum of us humans putting vibrations into the air, sharing that kind of healing energy, joy, safe, and healthy expression of every emotion available.”
Magraw and Kurnow have played together in the past, recording 2008’s Music for Healing and 2009’s Healing - Magraw & Kurnow. But this was only the third time this trio has played together publicly. Magraw announced that they had been working on a few demos and were either contemplating or planning a recording.
Dean Magraw and Bruce Kurnow, Aster Cafe, Minneapolis, 27 October 2011.
The set list again ran the gamut from unique covers and explorations of Coltrane to Magraw and Kurnow originals to calling Claudia Schmidt up from the audience for vocals on one tune. Kurnow’s outstanding “Dance of My Ancestors” drew a loud gasp from my wife, Karen, who had a very unique experience with this music at the Black Dog show last July.
At the end of the second set, I did something that I’ve never, ever done before: I asked Magraw for a version of Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” as an encore. They had played it at the 5 July 2011 Black Dog performance and it was one of the highlights of that show. This one didn’t disappoint. Zawinul wrote the song for Cannonball Adderley, and it’s a classic; Magraw, Kurnow, and Bissonnette made it their own.
From the opening note to the final strains of the reading of the all-too-short “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” each note struck the core of my soul, resonating with something deep down in there. In short, this was one of the best musical experiences of my life. I was hoping for an ear- and mind-cleaning from Tuesday’s Widespread Panic disaster, and I got a full-blown soul catharsis.
It’s very rare that one gets to witness the emergence of sublime talent like that embodied in these three individuals. When they come together, they create something outside of themselves that is totally different, totally inspiring, and something you’ll neither be able nor want to shake. Catch them when you can.
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