I’ve been looking forward to this. I knew Bill Frisell was due to play with Big Thief at Red Rocks on October 6th. And so last night, after when I assumed the show would have ended, I was already checking YouTube for the great gift that the internet keeps giving, which is snippets and sometimes even full-length footage of concerts from far away. There may not have been a better time in human history to be an armchair concertgoer. (Not that I only witness concerts via video. I’m literally going to one tomorrow night.) In any case, it’s fantastic to see this crack ensemble welcome someone twice their age, if not older, into the crew. It reminded me a bit of when Nels Cline formally joined Wilco. This isn’t that, per se — it’s a one-off, for one thing — but the embrace still has a lot in common, the mix of exploration with formal rock’n’roll, not to mention that beauty of a bridged generation gap. This set is a preview of the upcoming Big Thief record, Horsepower, on which they play host to a large number of guests, including not only Frisell, but Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Iris DeMent, and Greg Leisz, among others. It sounds great, and there’s a jam not too far in, at around a minute, that’s worth checking out. But listen to the whole thing.
