From Hell To Breakfast: Musical Review With Recipe. Daniel Amos Revisited and Crab Queso Dip
Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 9:05PM | by Otter Okay, avoid this Hell To Breakfast if you hate gushing.
Because I've always had a guitar-crush on Jerry Chamberlain, guitarist for the band Daniel Amos, since the mid 1980's when I was at a party where somebody dropped the needle into the vinyl LP ¡Alarma! I'd never heard anybody play with that much energy and control, and it was a brilliant compliment to the literate spiritualism of Terry Scott Taylor's song-writing: it was lyrical, flowing, controlled but edgy. New Wave, but there was something else in there, a musical irony and mastery that suggested to me, "Oh, it's New Wave, now, is it...? I can do that: watch this!"
It's not ego if you can do it.
When the final track turned out to be a neo-folk anthem, I had a pretty good idea I was right. Not bad for a kid of twelve. I was somethin'.
Tonight I got to catch Daniel Amos's show webcast at Joe's Listening Room.
J
Just wow. I'd forgotten how, every time I hear them, Daniel Amos makes me think they're the hardest working band in rock 'n' roll.
The energy has waned a bit (hey, they're going on forty years as a band), but they're as tight and sassy as the boots my daughter is too shy to wear.
About this "sassy." This is of course the band that invited audience members to come up and play their show-stopper "I Love You #19" at the biggest gig of their year. (Cleanse your palate here.) The band that opened up for themselves. The band that plays all the evening's requests at the same time (each musician plays a different song).
Kind of Karl Barth meets John Chrysostum meets T.S. Eliot meets John Lennon meets Dylan Thomas meets...
Well, everybody I like best meet, and they all kiss and slip each other the tongue. If you're going to listen to music, and if you're going to have faith, then you kinda have to listen to Daniel Amos.
All these years on, and I can't stop listening.
Taylor's the man in the spotlight, with his Gretsch (which still goes out of tune), and his MacBook and a Santa-bag full of songs about living with faith and joy in a world of hypocrisy and pain.
Ed McTaggert, the band's original drummer, still keeps time, and while he's not going to wow you with an eight minute solo, he does for the skins what The Edge did for guitar... if you hit it just right, it doesn't matter if your riff is simple. There's something in his playing that resists criticism, and I think it has to do with the fact that he understands Terry Taylor's songs as songs, not as rock and roll pieces to be thrashed to death, but little gems to be upheld.
Newcomer bassist Paul Averitt does the bass (wizard Tim Chandler is the regular guy, but Averitt's background vocals are an uncanny ringer for Terry Taylor's voice, which is a huge bonus for a band whose studio recordings like to channel Beatles and Beach Boys multi-tracking harmonies).
Guitarist Greg Flesch is a sort of genius of the compression-sustain pedal and the hook-riff: he can take Terry Taylor's simple rhythm guitar parts and spin hooks that are airy as gossamer and strong as steel. He trades rhythm-and-lead duties with Jerry Chamberlain.
Flesch amazes me: but Jerry Chamberlain makes me want to be a better human being through his music somehow. He says things with music that speak to me.
Gush gush gush.
You were warned.
Ah, Jerry.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.
First of all, I want your Vox amp, and your gold Les Paul. And a handbook on how you get those edgy tones.
But really, man, how do you DO that shit with those hooks and riffs? Do you just take your soul like fishing twine and wrap it tight around Terry Taylor's brain and make it shimmer a little more with that fluid, lyrical playing? Oh, okay.
That smokey smell from New Orleans is my guitars burning.
Or perhaps me leaving unattended the lyrical and free-flowing crab queso dip.
Place the Döppleganger CD on repeat. (Or is Dopplegänger? Or Döpplegänger? Whatevs.) In a dutch oven or deep skillet, heat a tablespoon of olive oil or (preferably) clarified butter over medium high heat and add 1/2 a chopped onion, a diced red bell pepper, chopped or sliced jalapeños to taste, and 2 cloves of garlic.
If you're like me, you overdo garlic all the time. Don't do that here.
Cook 3-4 minutes until the vegetables are slightly softened.
Reduce heat to medium and add 16 ounces of cream cheese, cut up to facilitate its liquefaction. Stir it in and melt it, like that moment in Daniel Amos's "Do Big Boys Cry" when the voices and guitars are not quite blended but then elide into a sort of collage of creamy pathos.
When melted, add a cup each of sour cream and milk, and contact your cardiologist and have him on standby. Heat and stir until smooth. The mixture, not the cardiologist. Add two cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese: do not use medium or mild. That would be like playing "Little Crosses" on the cello and the ukelele, respectively.
Stir to melt.
Add 12 ounces of drained lump crab meat, a teaspoon of cumin, and a pinch each of salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Stir until well mixed and simmer for 5 minutes.
Consume with corn-chips or toasted french bread. And something rum- or tequila-based.
And Daniel Amos, turned up really loud.
Reader Comments (1)
Dude, I can't wait to try this crab queso dip! Of course, while listening to Daniel Amos.
It's a new favorite of mine and if I could make it myself... yeah.