Spoon crashed a Spoon cover band's set and we watched it go down

by Ryan McNutt

June 22, 2015

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They joined their imitators on stage at a Portland, Maine afterparty.

On the scoff spectrum, the one that I let loose on my friend Tyler late Friday night at Portland, Maine’s tiny Empire bar was a doozy.

“Yeah, riiiiight,” I said, with an exaggerated eyeroll.

Tyler had just said the doorman downstairs told him Spoon were possibly going to show up at the venue later that night, which was clearly ridiculous. Granted, the band was in town, having just played the State Theatre down the street, and the festivities at Empire were billed as a Spoon afterparty. But the entertainment was a group of local musicians paying tribute to Spoon, performing classic albums Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight in full. Why on earth would Britt Daniel and company show up to see another band play Spoon songs?

As the band kicked into Moonlight, my friends and I were just about to leave — delayed only by my patient nursing of my last beer — when I glanced over at the bar and saw Spoon drummer Jim Eno ordering a drink beside me. I looked up and saw that bassist Rob Pope and keyboardist Eric Harvey had just entered the room. Utility player Alex Fischel lined up alongside Eno to also order a beer. And then frontman Britt Daniel walked into the bar.

Spoon had shown up to watch a Spoon cover band. And by night’s end, the real deal would take the stage and perform to a crowd of no more than 30 people.

* * *

The fact that my friends and I even made it to Spoon’s first ever show in the state of Maine was a bit of an accomplishment in and of itself. At the last minute, we shifted our road trip plans to spend the day at Six Flags New England, but erred in not taking Friday afternoon Boston rush-hour traffic into account. All of a sudden our quick drive to Portland was turning into a multi-hour ordeal, the sort that looked like it might get us to the State Theatre well after Spoon had started their set. In the end, the fates aligned: we arrived just in the nick of time and caught the tail end of opener Viva Viva. I settled into a spot on the floor while my friends parked a bit closer to the bar. Before we knew it, Spoon hit the stage and kicked into They Want My Soul highlight “Rainy Taxi.”

This was my second time seeing Spoon, but the first that counted; Their set at Matador’s 21st birthday festival five years ago is a blur for me, thanks to some questionable alcohol decisions (thanks, Vegas). Friday’s show was everything I’d hoped for from a group who’ve earned a place on any reasonable “best band of the century” list and are perhaps the frontrunner for “most consistent band of the century.” When Transference is your rut record, that’s a damn impressive set of albums.

Though the band could reasonably have focused more on They Want My Soul — which stands alongside Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as their best — Spoon instead offered up a diverse set that stretched back to Girls Can Tell highlights “Anything You Want” and “The Fitted Shirt” and also included new song “Satellite” and a cover of The Cramps’ “TV Set.” A mirrorball-aided version of “Do You” was a highlight, as were the band’s triple threat of change-of-pace curveballs (“The Ghost of You Lingers”, “Who Makes Your Money”, “Inside Out”), which just like on their respective albums served to jerk the mood in cool, unexpected directions.

The show ended after 23 songs and two encores with a double-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga blast of “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog.” The band was clearly having a great time, all smiles and lamenting how long it took for them to play Maine in the first place. The crowd, eager to clap and sing along all night, responded in kind, and with the final guitar-and-drums blast we were sent out into the night to find our way home.

Or, in our case, to further adventures.

* * *

We didn’t initially plan to go to the after show at Empire. I was so tired from just getting to the main concert, let alone from being up close in the crowd at the show itself, that I kind of just wanted to go to the hotel. But my compatriots, a few beers in, were eager to keep the night going. We stopped into one bar and found the service too slow. We asked multiple people on the street about what was happening in town but, between travelling Spoon-goers like us and Pride Portland, we kept running into outsiders who had no idea what to recommend.

When we ended up at Empire, I initially balked; We had just seen Spoon, so why would I want to spend the rest of my night seeing another band play Spoon songs? But Tyler was eager for live music and Spoon had played only a handful of songs from Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight at their show, so the experience wasn’t going to be too redundant.

The afterparty show was organized by local musician Jeff Beam who reunited the lineup from his Jeff Beam’s Loudspeaker Wallpaper project for the occasion. The band’s performances of Spoon’s songs were tight and engaging — not the real thing, no, but damn close.

“We’ve covered Spoon a few times in the past, but this was easily the biggest batch of songs of theirs that we’ve learned,” Beam explains via email a couple days after the show. “We learned these two albums just for this night, just because we could, a way to celebrate Spoon coming to Maine for the first time. They’re such an important part of my musical DNA. They’re a huge influence on me, and I almost can’t imagine a time when I wasn’t listening to them.”

My friends and I arrived halfway through Girls Can Tell and stuck around through Kill The Moonlight when, as noted earlier, Spoon arrived. What followed was a surreal experience of watching a band watch a tribute version of themselves, the sort of evening that would make simulation theorist Jean Baudrillard’s head spin. The only experience I can compare it to was attending a Smiths tribute night in Halifax a few years back that Smiths bassist Andy Rourke DJed — but while that was weird (especially when Rourke spun Smiths covers in his own sets), this was mainly just joyous. Spoon seemed to be having a grand time. Daniel, in particular, was all smiles as he recorded several of the band’s performances on his smartphone.

I couldn’t help but think how intimidating this must have been for Beam and the others on stage. Beam says he had a good feeling Spoon might show up but didn’t know for sure until he saw them in the crowd.

“Definitely one of the more surreal moments was when Britt walked up to the front of the stage and we locked eyes while I was singing ‘Small Stakes,’” he says. “We smiled and acknowledged each other. I didn’t get that nervous; We all had a moment of ‘What did we get ourselves into?’ but I was pretty confident in our ability to honour the studio recordings and do the songs justice, so I wasn’t too worried. If anything, it elevated our focus and intensity. The songs did get a tad bit faster when Spoon showed up.”

When Beam and his band — bassist Sam Peisner, guitarist Scott Nebel and drummer Jake Wolk — reached Moonlight’s penultimate track, “Back to the Life,” they extended an offer to anyone who might know the song to come and join them. Eric Harvey eagerly joined in to help with the piano part. Then, following the album-ending “Vittorio E.,” I saw the members of Spoon exchanging whispers between one another. With little prompting, four of them took to the stage. I’m not sure if Alex Fischel had left at this point, or just let the four veteran members of the band have the moment. After a few more whispers and some fiddling with the keyboards, Spoon launched into a roaring version of Gimmie Fiction’s “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine.”

There’s always a certain rawness to Spoon’s sound, but it was something else to hear them bash away, impromptu, with someone else’s instruments. “Jonathon Fisk,” which followed, was performed at ramshackle, breakneck speed. Then, in a flash, it was over. Last call was announced, patrons started to leave, and the band stuck around for a few quick minutes to chat and share a beer with their imitators.

“They seemed to enjoy themselves and approve of the performance,” says Beam. “Britt said he hasn’t listened to the album all the way through in a while and that it was cool to hear all the parts.”

How does Beam sum up the evening?

“Completely surreal. Unforgettable for everyone in attendance. The dudes in Spoon are just about the coolest and most down-to-earth guys that you could imagine. The whole night seemed like one big gift from the universe.”

Tags: , Interviews, News, Jeff Beam’s Loudspeaker Wallpaper, Spoon

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