Chris Thile Begins a New Era with APM Radio

[tiltman]

"Completely by accident I found that Chris will be performing in Portland, Oregon this Saturday. It only took about one second to decide I was buying tickets!"

Yeah! They released a bunch of tickets for $20 each. Couldn't pass that up! My daughter (10 year old) and I are going.
Saw GK do the show live at the zoo a few years ago...looking forward to seeing the changes.
Kirk

[Charlieshafer]

For those who might be new to the world of "alternative strings" you might want to go back in time 30 years and give the early works of Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, and Dawg a listen. Thile didn't happen in a vacuum, and it's interesting to see where it started. There was also an article published back in 2006, by Geoffrey Himes in the New York Times which discussed the re-emergeing and morphing string band scene, with Nickel Creek getting a mention. A fun read, and you can find it archived right here. . Hey, everything old is new again!

[Macabre]

Got our tickets to see them at the Grady Gammage theater (on the campus of Arizona State University) this March! Can't frikkin' wait!

I'll be there too!

[Gerry Cassidy]

I'll be there too!

Very cool! It should be a great show. My much-better-half and I have seats about 13 rows back from the stage. It would be neat to say 'Hello!'.

Have you heard any rumors of who the guests are going to be?

[Gerry Cassidy]

Got our tickets to see them at the Grady Gammage theater (on the campus of Arizona State University) this March! Can't frikkin' wait!

The Tempe Gammage show was yesterday evening and it was pure, unadulterated fun!

Thile is in his element.

Got to see Bryan Sutton live for the first time... oh my! He & Chris warmed us up with some serious pickin' before they went live on the radio.

Anything by Madison Cunningham is more than welcome in my music collection.

Bryan Sutton flatpicking his way through a Ravel piece (highlight of the night for Thile's mando playing) was new, and absolutely fantastic! This was my musical fave from the show. Thile, Gabe Wichter, Sutton sounding like a Chamber Orchestra.

As the show progressed the feeling of wanting this wonderful musical theater show to continue on for many years to come grew greater and greater in me.

Bobcat, Wood Brothers, Phoebe Bridgers (great voice, but kind of a "Debbie Downer" in the songwriting arena), the regulars... Great show!

[BradKlein]

I missed the show this weekend. Hope they put some of the Bryan Sutton material up on video. Love his playing.

[colorado_al]

Song of the week was really good this show!
I wish they'd release a "Phantom Edit" cut of the show with only the music, and none of the skits and such, but I'm sure that won't happen.

[MoreThanQuinn]

When is the show streamed? And how often? I would love to start listening/watching regularly.

[colorado_al]

Just go here to listen to the current and past shows:
https://www.livefromhere.org

[BradKlein]

The Tempe Gammage show ... Got to see Bryan Sutton live for the first time... oh my! He & Chris warmed us up with some serious pickin' before they went live on the radio.

While we wait for LFH to put up video of Bryan, I share this one that I produced a while back. It remains one of my faves, Sutton and Daves 'mind reading' during an original Sutton tune they'd probably only run through once a few hours earlier. In all seriousness, I think that what is making Thile's show so special is his sense for when it will work to keep things casual, sit in with others, mix things up with the LFH 'regulars'... and when it's best to let an artist do their thing the way they do. And of course his instincts there are much stronger than Garrison's given his much stronger background as a musician. And those instincts were honed by being the part of a big fluid scene of like minded musicians, including these two.

[Gerry Cassidy]

<snip> ...In all seriousness, I think that what is making Thile's show so special is his sense for when it will work to keep things casual, sit in with others, mix things up with the LFH 'regulars'... and when it's best to let an artist do their thing the way they do. And of course his instincts there are much stronger than Garrison's given his much stronger background as a musician. And those instincts were honed by being the part of a big fluid scene of like minded musicians, including these two.

I couldn't agree more. There is an amazing community of artists that are sharing their talents to create what I have dubbed as "Serendipitous Virtuosity"... Big words for describing a really fantastic sounding jam session. Although, it is a bit more put together than a straight out jam thing.

Players from this pool come together in various configurations and create music that comes off sounding as though they spend much more time than they actually do preparing the performance.

I am quite happy that Thile is taking advantage of this opportunity and taking the chances he does with the show. More often than not, it produces a level of creativity that would otherwise get squashed by over-thinking, and hours, days, weeks of rehearsal.

[JeffD]

He is making the show his own, and I really like it. While the show got a lot of momentum from PHC, I think the show has been running on its own steam for a while now. There is doubtless a loyal PHC following, but I think the PHC audience that is staying are there for the new show. And lots of new audience attracted to what Chris has put together.

[BradKlein]

Live From Here regulars, I'm With Her - LFH:IWH get some love from the NYTimes - old school PAPER edition! A limited number of copies pressed on... wait for it... newsprint. I'll be offering mine on eBay sometime soon.



But seriously, Jon Pareles, no dummy, gets it right about The Scene - and how all us fans are reaping the harvest of this generation's habits of intermixing, combining, recombining - and their nuanced take on tradition. OK... maybe we mandolin players are getting more than our share... but why not enjoy it while it lasts!

[Charlieshafer]

I posted this link before somewhere, but here's an article from almost 12 years ago talking about the same sort of new-meets-old, but this was nearer to the beginning of the alternative things, when Crooked Still and the Mammals, along with Nickel Creek, ruled the acoustic earth:

NYTimes, Geoffrey Himes, 2006

[allenhopkins]

This is a music-lover's show now....

We should be a bit realistic: it's UNrealistic to expect the new show to have as broad an appeal as A Prairie Home Companion. Whatever we may think about Garrison Keillor as a performer (or about his personality and off-mic behavior), he succeeded in creating a sort of "alternate universe" for APHC fans. I used to get the Wireless catalog of Lake Woebegone etc. gear -- clothing, books, recordings, chachkies. Not that I bought any, but it was clear that the old show had a real merchandising side.

Live From Here has its own personality -- probably one that we, as "music heads," prefer to Guy Noir and Dusty & Lefty. We've heard all the "News From Lake Woebegone" we probably need to for our lifetimes. But there was a significant segment of APHC listeners who just sat through the music -- other than the parodies and comedy songs -- and waited for the skits and monologues. And at these, it was hard to beat Keillor and his writers and actors.

What worries me is that there may be some attrition along the public radio path ahead. There are a lot of good public radio music programs –– I hold up Mountain Stage as a fine example. A Prairie Home Companion was close to unique, for better or worse, and it attracted a really strong following. We shouldn't be confident that Live From Here will be as successful.

I know we all have been waiting most of our lives for a national show featuring a star mandolin player. Well, we have one, but national media success is hard to achieve, even on public radio. Let's hope.

[Jeff Mando]

Good points made by all. Thanks. I can still remember when A Prairie Home Companion was brand new and exciting. We thought it was so clever and "retro" to sit around the radio on a Saturday night listening to this odd "throwback" old-timey radio program. (although the terms retro and throwback were yet to be coined) Also, from time to time the music was pretty good.

I'm glad Thile got his training with Keillor and then was allowed to run with it. I think he has expanded the musical stuff and trimmed down the cornball stuff -- although there is still some of that, probably as a nod to the past. And Thile seems to take it in stride. As far as being "alternative" musically with the mixing of genres, etc. -- that's been going on for a long time -- Stones and Led Zepplin turning blues songs into rock songs by merely adding volume, for example. What has changed is that the players and fans are new, representing a new generation discovering this stuff for the first time.

[Gerry Cassidy]

Periodically I need to remind myself; Thile isn't Keilor. This show isn't A Prairie Home Companion. It's easy to drift amongst all of the current media hype buzzing around recent changes the show has gone through.

I can only hope the intensity of the comparisons will lessen from claims of heresy, and sacriledge to the realization this was simply the point where one really good institution transitioned into another really good, yet different institution.

Sure, he's had his training with Garrison, and has a good idea of how not to tread on sacred ground from the past. I wouldn't expect he would ever do anything to spite this shows origins. He doesn't seem to be that type of person...

...But, the show is his now. It doesn't seem to me that he is running every new idea he has through a "What Would GK Do?" algorithm. To me, this is healthy. This is creative. Is it what the diehard APHC fan wants to hear? Probably not, but it seems he is intent on taking the show where his nose leads him. Arguably, a fairly good track record, thus far.

For now, I trust him. I can't find find any reason to think that he isn't going to do everything he possibly can to ensure his, and an incredible community of collaborators, work will receive positive musings from worldwide interweb hacks like me for years to come.

[allenhopkins]

...I can only hope the intensity of the comparisons will lessen from claims of heresy, and sacriledge to the realization this was simply the point where one really good institution transitioned into another really good, yet different institution....e.

Don't know if this was directed towards my recent post; if so, it misses my point. I didn't say that Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion was better than Thile's Live From Here. I just said that the new show is different, more, as Brian H stated, "a music lover's show."

As such, it will attract some listeners (like many of us) who didn't particularly care about the skits and fake commercials and Keillor monologues, but loved the diversity of music and the reality of live performance. On the other hand, it will lose some listeners who considered the music just part of the "variety show," and really loved Keillor's Lake Woebegone and ongoing faux-old-radio segments.

Keillor and APR developed a real following; I mentioned the Wireless catalog of APHC gear that used to arrive regularly. It seems to me unlikely that LFH is going to compete; maybe we'll see some Chris Thile T-shirts or whatever, but he and the sponsoring organization are taking a different route -- wisely, because the worst course would have been a "What would GK do -- let's do it that way" path. Bad imitations -- even good imitations -- have a way of not lasting.

But, as a mostly-music show, it'll be compared more to other public radio music shows; I mentioned Mountain Stage, but there are quite a few others; the excellent World Cafe combines recorded music with live music and interviews, focused on individual artists, for example.

A Prairie Home Companion was in a way unique; in some ways it harkened back to old radio shows (you kids don't remember them -- young whippersnappers!) with Arthur Godfrey and Garry Moore and Don McNeil's Breakfast Club. It mixed live music, sketch comedy, and a fictional news report from an imaginary Minnesota town. Thile and APR are wise in not trying to copy or resuscitate it; I wish them the best with a more specific and intense focus on live music.

[Gerry Cassidy]

Don't know if this was directed towards my recent post; if so, it misses my point.

No, not at all. I thought your APHC/LFH comparison was fair and made perfect sense.

My point was more directed at other media outlets that consistently persecuted the transitional process between the two shows.

For one example, I follow both the show(s) and Chris Thile on FB and use it as one source for staying up to date. I got to the point where I quit doing that as the stuff folks were saying was bad enough to read once, but it was an ongoing thing and got really old, really quick.

It seems to be settling down to more of a simmer now, and I am hoping it will eventually flatten out.