Drummer Ches Smith started with a groove built from rim shots. Shahzad Ismaily’s bass rumbled beneath it. They made a beat that surged forward as Marc Ribot unleashed an arc of notes from his electric guitar, like a lasso capturing all the ears in the room. The packed house at Cafe Nine on Thursday night was full of New Haven’s musicians and others who understood that this wasn’t a night to chat in the back. They were here to see guitar icon Ribot — here with his trio Ceramic Dog — in a rare New Haven performance that let the band rip through folk, jazz, punk, Latin, funk, and hip hop, all brought together by a musical sensibility that came out fists swinging and was full of surprises.
Born in 1954, Marc Ribot was a garage rocker in his teens, but after moving to New York in 1978, he became a fixture of that city’s downtown jazz scene, playing with the Lounge Lizards and John Zorn. He also fell in with Tom Waits, helping him redefine Americana across several albums that made him a sought-after player all around the United States. His stylistic repertoire ranges from Cuban music to Ornette Coleman. He’s played with everyone from Chuck Berry and WIlson Pickett to Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. He is, in short, a modern guitar icon, and his power trio Ceramic Dog easily drew enough people to fill the floor, even as they made a respectful space in front of the stage. It gave the music room to breathe.
Brian Slattery Photo
Ceramic Dog.
The general demeanor of the three musicians onstage — in New Haven to celebrate the release of their latest album, YRU Still Here? — might have suggested something more like a straight-ahead jazz show, as all three were seated, facing each other rather than the audience, and Ribot himself had a music stand with notes on it that he referred to now and again throughout the show. But the music was much more raucous than that. Together, Ribot, Ismaily, and Smith played songs with teeth, jaws strong enough to clamp down and draw blood.
As a bassist, Ismaily was strong and supple, capable of shaking the floor one minute and wisping away the next. He also switched to a synthesizer when the song demanded, and sometimes played both bass and synthesizer at the same time, one hand on the keys, the other tapping out the notes on the bass’s strings. Smith was a precise and muscular drummer, a dynamic engine for the music who also managed to wrench sounds from the drums that didn’t seem entirely possible. They gave Ribot what he needed to play in the way that has made his name. As he tore into the guitar’s strings, he found notes that no one else seems ever to find, and that everyone wants to hear.
Throughout, though, the more blistering moments were balanced by minutes of serenity and beauty, as angular workouts gave way to lush folk songs. On another song, Ribot laid down a simple line on a ukulele that let Ismaily and Smith fall into hard, double-jointed Southern funk. A dash of electronic music let Ribot chant the lyrics to a funny, bitter, and all-too-true song about how the idealism of the 1960s gave way to the selfishness of the 1980s and the internet boom of the late 1990s.
“Hippies used to be nice when they lived in San Francisco and had sex on leaky waterbeds,” he intoned. “But hippies are not nice anymore.”
Ceramic Dog wore its political heart on its sleeve, railing against the current administration, excesses in art and capitalism, and the increasing difficulty humans seem to have connecting with one another on a personal level. It worked, feeling less like a manifesto and more like a letter written in desperation, imploring us to change course before it’s all too late. The music and the message reached their most poignant point late in the set, when Ribot ended a song by singing the first line to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” He continued the next two lines on guitar as Ismaily and Smith joined him. Then, the three of them took the song to pieces. It fell apart, decaying in our ears, before being drowned in the squall of a chord that began the next song.
The set ended on a funk scorcher that felt almost like hip hop. Ribot thanked the crowd for coming and the trio left the stage. The audience denied them such an exit, clapping and shouting them back on the stage for an encore, which they provided in the form of a stabbing version of the jazz standard “Take 5,” Ismaily and Smith stomping around on the tune’s odd meter while Ribot played — still — like no one else can.