Chris Thile and The Tensions Mountain Boys
Carnegie Hall - Zankel Hall, NYC
March 17, 2007
Chris Eldridge, Guitar and Vocals
Greg Garrison, Bass
Noam Pikelny, Banjo
Chris Thile, Mandolin and Vocals
Gabe Witcher, Fiddle and Vocals
Recorded with Canon S2 IS Digital Camera.
Recorded Stereo Sound directly to WAV - No video recorded.
Split tracks with CD Wave Editor.
Converted from WAV to FLAC with DB Poweramp.
Sample Rate: 44100 HZ
Channels: 2
Bits per Sample: 16
The sound in Zankel Hall was excellent. The camera was in my bag under a coat in the 4th row.
The recording has some minor distortion issues.
This was the World Premiere of Chris Thile's "The Blind Leaving the Blind (in Four Movements)
Worth a listen - Would love to see more Chris Thile.
He said during the show that this is their new band and they will keep doing this.
Included is are some photos including one of their setlist. And scans from the program.
Some of the banter is transcribed below. Sorry for any errors.
Feel free to clean it up and convert it for your use. Please do not sell.
Recorded and Uploaded by terrortubby.
Track Listing:
01. Cheers
02. O Santo De Polvora (Milladoiro)
03. Wayside (Back in Time) (Gillian Welch and David Rawlings)
04. St. Patrick's Day Banter
05. Stay Away
06. Blind Leaving the Blind Intro
07. More Laughter
08. Blind Leaving the Blind (Movement 1)
09. All Tuning as Predicted
10. Blind Leaving the Blind (Movement 2)
11. All Tuning as Predicted 2
12. Blind Leaving the Blind (Movement 3)
13. All Tuning as Predicted 3
14. Blind Leaving the Blind (Movement 4)
15. Cheers 2
16. Chris Thile, Noam Pikelny Banter and Recreation of the First Time
17. How to Grow a Woman from the Ground (Thomas Anderson Brosseau)
18. Cheers 3
19. Noam Pikelny "The Beekeeper" Banter
20. The Beekeeper
21. Cheers 4
22. Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground (White Stripes)
23. Thank yous
24. Watch 'At Breakdown
Encore 1
25. If The Sea Was Whiskey (missing/bad quality intro)
26. Cheers 5 and Tuning
27. Thanks and Cheers
28. The Eleventh Reel
Encore 2
29 You Guys Are Nice People
30. Ophelia (The Band) (Gabe Witcher, Main Vocals)
31. Cheers End
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Below is some of the banter transcribed:
St. Patrick's Day Banter
Thank you.
This is not the regarded Carnegie Hall.
This is Zankel Hall.
We're not nervous in the least
and uh and very actually amused
that you all decided to show up in nothing but underwear.
Kind of ridiculous though what were you thinking?
We got dressed up.
Looking pretty sharp for all of you.
So Ok.
So we started with a song called O Santo De Polvora and despite the title
and despite that it was written by a Spanish band called Milladoiro
um we kind of feel that it's fitting to play it on St. Patrick's Day.
First of all it sounds Celtic.
But also because again the title O Santo De Polvora
we're almost sure that it's a tribute to the great Cubs thirdbaseman Ron Santo
and he was a Chicago Cub.
Chicago, might be the most Irish of all American cities.
And he played Of course at Wrigley Field, Chicago which had the Ivy League of Green.
And it's a baseball field so actually there's a lot of green.
So we feel like that one was completely appropriate.
The song after that less appropriate
and we will continue to play less and less appropriate songs
and music
That one was called Wayside
and the parenthetical title
which I mention only because I like saying parenthetical
And that is Back in Time.
That was written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
And Dave, Dave always dresses sharp. So does Gil.
He would have shown up in a suit and tie if he were playing.
We're going to play another song off of our new record "How to Grow a Woman from the Ground"
before we get into the reason that we're totally...
This song is another song of mine called Stay Away.
*Laughter*
*Someone's program drops from the second balcony up*
*Chris offers by gesture to throw the used tissue on the stage near him that he has just been using.*
*The offer is apparently declined*
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Blind Leaving the Blind Intro
Alright, so we're going to play this piece that I wrote for five of us to play.
Quintet, quintet
A stringed quintet as the preferred term for our instruments and three of us will sing and we're very very excited.
And it's in Four Movements. It may sound like six depending on how you count.
There will be three complete stops. During which we'll tune no doubt. All of us.
See there are two stops where some of us will tune you may think that that's a new movement.
You would sitting there in your underwear. We love you people.
That's what the whole problem is. We love it here.
This song is called
This song?
a nice tune.
a nice tune.
A lttle long, It's a little long. Really.
We hope you like it.
It's called the Blind Leading the Blind.
And it's in V.
*Lights go blue*
That's why it's Carnegie Hall.
There's a vibe, there's a vibe if you play in here.
Blue for Bluegrass.
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Cheers, Chris Thile, Noam Pikelny BLTB Banter; Recreation of the First Time
CT: Thank you very much.
(From Audience: Thank you. That was nice.)
CT: Ok, we're gonna do a couple more normal songs now.
CT: Oh dear, I'm not ready to come down yet. Is everything 15 BPMs too fast?
...
NP: The first time that we tried playing certain sections of this piece
It was about a year and a half ago.
We got together for about a week.
And the first thing we started learning
which was the final movement the hardest part.
Which I think that's Chris's style, of course, to do the hard part first
We tried playing that, certain sections of that last movment.
After three days of rehearsal in the Living Room in NY about a year and a half ago
And I don't know how we had the idea that we could get through it
but we told ourselves we've got to just still play it
This is the only way we're gonna get better at it
And if anyone makes a mistake It's no big deal
But if you make a mistake that you can't recover from
Just scream out "What?" in the middle of the song
And we started the piece
And about 40 seconds into it Critter (Chris Eldridge) yelled out Who-What.
...
CT: We'll recreate it for you.
Ok now And then I was actually so incredibly nervous
it really was like 15 beats per minute too fast
and we'll recreate that part as well
*Performance*
(From audience: We love you critter.)
CT: It was awesome.
I think maybe it should be a secret,
we have it recorded
maybe it can be released as a secret track on our new record.
...
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Noam Pikelny "The Beekeeper" Banter
Explains why Chris Thile is like a musical Beekeeper and the origins of the title of the song.