Mark Pickerel, Anthony Ladesich, Adam Lee
Monday, April 7
The Record Bar
By ANDREW MILLER
“Just because you’re playing last doesn’t mean you’re the headliner,” said Tony Ladesich, jokingly imparting T-shirt slogan wisdom to freshly anointed last-slot occupiers Adam Lee and the Dead Horse Sound Company. During this concert, every act had to adapt. Ladesich played solo because one of his Pendergast bandmates had family commitments; Lee’s group started its set hours later than expected; and Mark Pickerel took the stage alone because he couldn’t afford to transport his backing band the Hired Hands. The resulting show resembled an open mic night with unusually talented participants.
Mark Pickerel calls for help. Photo by Tia Kelly from MySpace.com
Ladesich opened the proceedings, singing “empty house, empty heart, empty life” to a nearly empty bar. At intervals during his lovelorn acoustic set, audience members would let out an incongruous whoop related to the Jayhawks’ title game comeback, broadcast on the Record Bar’s lone, seldom-tuned-to-sports television. As Ladesich mourned “she’s gone, she’s gone,” scattered applause greeted the game’s final score. The pathos inherent in the spectacle of a solitary man detailing his numerous woes to a small, distracted-at-best audience magnified the material’s already significant depressive power.
Ladesich played mostly new songs, so freshly created that he shuffled through lyrics sheets between songs. He delivered a timely line – I breathe more smoke than oxygen in this Midtown bar – minutes before someone started handing out fliers urging patrons to vote against the proposed Kansas City smoking ban. A weathered, bearded man seemed to be conducting a nicotine marathon, just in case. Sitting by himself at a stage-side table cluttered with spent butts and beer cans, he looked like the physical manifestation of Ladesich’s poignant laments. He faced away from the performer.
Cigarette-Smoking Man actively engaged the next artist Mark Pickerel, warbling “there’s a tear in my beer!” “I’ll be right down to help you with that,” Pickerel replied. When this surrogate fan sloppily communicated he wanted to hear the Hank Williams song of that title, Pickerel demurred, then said “any other requests?” in a prohibitive tone. CSM apparently took no offense, because he broke into girl-group choreography during the Motown-style coda to Pickerel’s slinky number “Let Me Down Easy.”
Pickerel played the kick-drum with one foot and triggered a tambourine with the other, a setup so unusual that the handful of people who approached the stage to take photos focused their cameras directly at his shoes. Formerly the drummer of Screaming Trees, Pickerel has the rhythmic instincts to pull off this unusual arrangement. His deep, dramatic voice, quick wit (he explained his “class clown” schtick wasn’t up to snuff because “I planned my drinking schedule around being the third artist”) and storytelling abilities make him the perfect standalone performer. When bassist Mike Elkins joined him for the final few selections, the duo generated an impressively rich full-band sound.
Adam Lee and Johnny Kenepaske couldn’t produce the same effect using only voices and acoustic guitars, but the Kansas City-based pair (recently relocated from Tempe) mustered more vocal affectations than a country bar on karaoke night. Lee made his mangy bark quiver and whinny, while Kenepaske preferred a pronounced twang. Those faux-rural inflections tangled when their voices met, producing an effect that was less harmony than free-form hootenanny.
Lee and Kenepaske’s solid covers of Gene Watson’s “14 Karat Mind” and “See See Rider” demonstrated that they’ve studied musical history, so their countless whiskey, train and death references came from a knowing place. However, the newly formed group needs to tinker with its authenticity-to-originality ratio.
But that just takes practice, and given that Record Bar employees, CSM and other artists on the bill comprised nearly the entire audience by the end of the set, this gig became a glorified practice session. Lee and Kenepaske handled this fate with good humor and an informal approach, false-starting several songs and bantering freely with each other and the crowd-planted Ladesich. Seeing musicians play this joyously in a sparsely populated setting can be more inspiring than disheartening, as long as the artists eventually find the fanbases they deserve.
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