Low Cut Connie live, Columbus, OH, November 19, 2024
Rough fuckin' week in America / I wanna throw my haircut against that wall
There was a moment during Tuesday night’s Low Cut Connie show in the middle of a cover of the Velvets’ “Waiting for the Man” – introduced as “a song by a hero of mine” – where Adam Weiner took his microphone stand and using the base of the stand, bashed the keyboard. But it was with absolute control – the piano is Weiner’s, even if it wasn’t he’s not the kind of jerk who’d inflict damage on anyone’s instrument – and also, I observed, with precision – the dissonant chord that resulted was still very much in range of the at least general vicinity of the key of the song.
Over on the other side of the stage, guitarist/singer Abigail Dempsey was providing a perfectly contextual John Cale-esque collection of notes from her fiddle alongside everything else going on in this thoroughly muscular and emotionally intense rendition of the song, whether it was Weiner’s keyboard work or Will Donnelly’s guitar or the rhythm section that felt like a heartbeat or the backing vocals that added to the overall languor and borderline debauched feel of the performance of a song that is about going to buy heroin, so that’s a long way of saying that everything was exactly in alignment. And honestly, the whole thing owed as much to La Monte Young as it did the Velvet Underground and that’s actually kind of a circular assertion because the Velvets wouldn’t have existed without La Monte Young, and this is also something that is deliberate, because it’s Weiner’s understanding of music history and music fandom that is part of the reason that Low Cut Connie slash and burn every rock and roll club they walk into.
I was in Columbus because I hadn’t seen Connie since pre-pandemic, this was the closest they had been for a while, and I have good friends who live there. There is no direct interstate route between Detroit and Columbus. The drive isn’t terrible but for whatever reason my GPS sent me down an alternate through the country instead of the bland minor highway and I’ll never do that again because there was nowhere along the way I would have felt comfortable stopping because every other building has at least one MAGA sign. I’m already driving to a city that had Nazis marching through it just a few days earlier, to see an artist who is obviously Jewish, who sold a MAZEL TOV, MOTHERFUCKERS t-shirt (it’s a joke from his series of quarantine concerts, otherwise known as Tough Cookies, that Weiner held during lockdown, and are coming back next year) and a Connie-branded yarmulke and who, by invitation, played at a benefit for Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation. When I walked into the venue I definitely made sure I noted where the fucking exits were but I was also wearing the aforementioned t-shirt. Because there aren’t generally a lot of places I can wear it but also because, as my people say, fuck you.
I’ve been following Weiner for a while now, mostly because one of the things he and his people are very good at is finding the folks who will be sympatico to the kind of thing that he is doing and convincing them to come and hang. I still really, really hate the name (the main reason I avoided them for so long) but I’m deeply interested in anything he’s doing. Part of that is that I think it’s fascinating and thoughtful and always incredibly well done, and the other part of it is that I do not understand why he is not a bigger name. In 2015, President Obama put “Boozophilia” on his summer playlist. Elton John, who gets to be the expert in judging talented keyboard-oriented singers, has nothing but great things to say about him. And the shows are always at 11, always full of life and energy and purpose.
Caryn Rose
“Waiting For the Man” caught me by surprise because I hadn’t looked at setlists and I didn’t know that particular song was in the mix of things, even though I know Lou is an influence. I am not entirely sure it worked contextually but it didn’t matter because it was fucking insane and also because Connie shows are always a journey, by which I mean they are never predictable and I don’t know what I’m going to come out with on the other side of it. I know it’s going to rock and I know it’s going to end up with Adam on top of the piano at some point but I never know how he’s going to get there and what I’m going to feel or experience along the way. That is incredibly difficult to do.
On the drive back to Detroit I listened to the live album they recently released (Connie Live) because I was once again wondering why this guy who could definitely hold the attention of an arena doesn’t get to do that on the regular. He writes these vivid vignettes with characters you’re invested in and believe, and the dude knows how to write melody and riffs -- every record is full of them. I’m not interrogating Weiner on whether or not his narrative arc holds together or pointing out where it falls down because while he’s telling a story, a Connie show is absolutely about that old-fashioned term called “entertainment.”
Adam Weiner is absolutely an entertainer the way that Jackie Wilson or Sam & Dave or James Brown were entertainers. None of those guys would have been upset to have been referred to by that descriptor, but nowadays it’s generally used in a pejorative sense, which is definitely elitist and certainly rockist and also just dumb. Weiner’s skill is in raising the energy of the audience and the space he and his band are in. It’s also in building an ensemble of talent to accompany him the way he wants to be accompanied. It’s observing Weiner directing the band but it’s also watching how the band direct themselves. It’s seeing Adam get on top of his piano and not hit his head on the low ceiling and how you know he definitely had to have spent some soundcheck time figuring that out. Ann Powers recently called them the best live rock band in America. She’s not wrong! A Connie show is the most reliable bang for your buck in rock and roll at the moment.
I haven’t seen Connie in a hot second and the thing I was most struck by was how much better they are, even though they were never not instantly on HIGH coming out of the gate. Weiner’s voice is somehow warmer and richer, his piano playing better, Donnelly’s guitar roaring, the sideshow of Dempsey and backing vocalist Amanda “Rocky” Bullwinkel its own level of joy. It’s hot and it’s sweaty and it’s sexy while not being icky, which is another major accomplishment in 2024. A Connie show is consensual.
At some point during the evening Adam mentions the fact that the Nazis were marching in Columbus, and the audience booed -- there was even a conversational “We don’t even like them!” from the back of the crowd. The whole show is Weiner reminding everyone that he loves them all, that he doesn’t care who they date or what they look like, and he will be in the crowd at least two or three times personally making sure that this message is heard and felt. It’s like that line in Almost Famous where Jeff Bebe says, “I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off.” That is Adam Weiner every second of a Connie show. But that explicit mention was probably why I started crying in the middle of their Prince cover, “Controversy.” “Some people wanna die so they can be free.” It’s a brave cover because attempting Prince requires a fair amount of mettle but it’s a perfect song for Weiner because he inhabits the lyrics and it makes sense, it feels exactly right.
I don’t want to be basic and only talk about the cover versions a band does but the other thing that knocked me sideways was “Sway” by the Stones. Weiner is a polyglot music fan but he fuckin loves the Rolling Stones and this is another song I didn’t know was in the set and it’s a song I carry in my bones and it’s easy to do a really shitty version of it but it is exceedingly hard to not embarrass yourself. As soon as I got over my initial shock of OH MY GOD IT’S ‘SWAY’ I could've grabbed a chair and put my feet up because I absolutely trusted his ability to deliver, and the entire band did. It was fucking insane, but there were still, somehow, at least three more songs to go. Because that is how a Connie show works, motherfuckers. Go see them when you get a chance.
