Steven Chen and The Airborne Toxic Event took their game to a whole new level at their 2014 Fillmore residency. Photo by Jessica Sandoval.
By Glen and Julie
To kick off the tour, we’ve decided to do something we’ve never done before… For three consecutive nights at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco, we’ll be performing each of our three studio albums in order of release, beginning with our self-titled debut record on September 18th, continuing with All At Once on September 19th, and concluding with Such Hot Blood on September 20th. Of course, we’ll also play select songs from all our albums every night—plus brand-new ones.
Some of these songs we haven’t played since the first tour, some (including B-sides and various odds and ends) we’ve only played live a couple of times. We have surprises in store, new songs to debut, old songs we haven’t played in years and a general orientation towards the madness of crowds we plan to fully embrace. It just keeps getting louder.[i]
The Airborne Toxic Event had never shied away from a challenge; at least not when it came to touring. Whether it was playing 30 shows in 30 days throughout every nook and cranny of the U.K., reconstituting their arrangements to incorporate anywhere from four to 60 additional musicians, stripping everything bare for delicate acoustic performances, sweating it out under the hot summer sun in front of tens of thousands at festivals around the world, or welcoming preteen girls choirs and high school marching bands to their stage, there wasn’t a whole lot they hadn’t tried at some point.
Nevertheless, as Airborne 2.0 prepared for what they called their “biggest tour ever” (in ambition, if not in the number of dates), they dreamed up yet another fresh idea: a three night residency in which they would play each of their three studio albums in their entirety on consecutive nights, sprinkle in a bunch of rarities and pull back the curtain on new material. All this while breaking in a new bassist who had never played most of the songs.
Ballsy? Absolutely. And that’s just the way Mikel Jollett likes it.
“I’m just psyched right now,” he said the day before the Fillmore stand began. “I’m looking forward to getting out on the road and playing music. We usually go to tour 22 songs or so, but this time we’re coming with 50, just ready to play. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good moment for the band right now.”[ii]
“This is why we do it,” Jollett enthused. “Music is the only art form that is unfolding in front of you while it’s happening. You’ve gotta flirt with disaster. That’s what makes rock ’n’ roll rock ’n’ roll. Andy Warhol used to say that something as opposed to nothing has to happen; that’s the essence of rock ’n’ roll. And if nothing happens, then you’re just watching a play – who cares? It’s been scripted.
“It has to have the sense that it might all go terribly wrong. And when you have that extemporaneous moment of, you might fall, you might trip, you might die… why be in a rock band if you’re not gonna do that? If you’re in a rock band, be in a rock band. Hang from the chandeliers, put on your mother’s dress, dance around, jump around, scream, get in people’s faces, make people uncomfortable, break the fourth wall, bring people on stage, go out in the audience, scream into the mic for no reason, make a joke that people don’t quite understand, and then every now and then just absolutely slays, because then you’ve got the possibility, on a really good night, that it just feels like the last night on earth. That’s rock ’n’ roll. That moment where it’s like if people had some kind of light they gave out when they were excited, the whole room would be so bright you could see it from space.”[iii]
The band’s decision to tackle full albums in a live setting put them in good – if rare – company. Few artists attempt it, but a number of rock notables have done so at various times, including the likes of Van Morrison, Steely Dan and John Fogerty.
One of Jollett’s certified heroes, Bruce Springsteen, had also begun to sprinkle complete album sets into his live shows in recent years. Though it’s an unusual thing to do, the Boss posits that it’s actually a very natural concept.
“I like it a lot,” says Springsteen, “because, first of all, in most of these cases we spent years putting that sequence together. Just sequencing. They are full bodies of work, and they were meant to be listened to from start to finish. I still make my records like that, you know?
“It’s very strange, I’ve always thought, that the first thing that people do, when they come out on tour, is they break the album completely up. They play a few songs here, a few songs there… it’s actually very unusual, considering all the time and the care you take in the sequencing and in the content of the record.
“So when you get to play these album shows, you get some of that back. You get the cumulative experience of a very particular place and time, a very particular group of songs. And that has its own identity. And I believe that the accumulation of those songs together is greater than the individual playing of each particular song on any given night. You get a sense of a time, you get a sense of where your head was, the issues you were thinking about, who you were at that moment… it really marks a certain moment in your work life. So I like to play the records in their entirety. When you’re done, you feel like you’ve had the full experience of the album. It’s fun to hear, and I think it’s fun for the musicians to do.”[iv]
For fans of the group, the Fillmore residency promised to be THE Airborne Toxic Event to end all events; and as such, TATE fans from around the world pilgrimaged to San Francisco for the occasion. It created something of a circus atmosphere; things get complicated when hundreds of fans who are all accustomed to securing prime barrier real estate at their local gigs suddenly find themselves having to jockey for position with one another.
If the musicians were taken aback by the intensity, they were also appreciative of the devotion. “It’s extremely gratifying,” says Jollett of playing for a passionately committed audience. “You get to be in this small room with this group of people who know every word to every song. They want to know how the songs were made and why you made them and what your intentions were and what your feelings are now and despite what anyone might tell you about the mythologies of rock and roll – sex, drugs, fame, what-have-you – that feeling of connection is far and away the most fulfilling thing you can have as an artist. It’s why you ever wrote a song in the first place.”[v]
—————————–
When the Airborne Toxic Event’s fall tour and Fillmore residency kicked off on a Thursday night in San Francisco, the venue doubled as a time machine that transported the assembled masses back to 2007, then jumped ahead to 2015, before finally dipping back into 2011 to close things off.
The Airborne Toxic Event’s majestic new stage prop gave rise to a new game for photographically-inclined fans: Pin the Wings on the Band Member. Photo by Tracey Hluckey, Fillmore Residency, Sept. 2014.
Everything about that first night seemed big, whether it was the massive white bird looming over the stage, Daren Taylor’s drum kit elevated several feet above his bandmates, the green lasers slashing through the air on “Papillon,” the thundering sound of the newly debuted song “Wrong,” or the smile on Mikel Jollett’s face as he and his partners basked in the glow of the electric crowd.
The pattern for the residency was set from the opening bars of “Wishing Well,” which signaled that the trip down the memory lane of Airborne’s self-titled debut album would be the first order of business. No build-up required; from the get-go, the band channeled the relentless energy and reckless abandon of their fresh-faced selves circa eight years prior. “Papillon,” bolstered by a light show the likes of which had never been seen at a TATE show, came on like a ravenous beast that threatened to swallow the place whole. Two songs in and the sweat was already cascading from Jollett’s brow.
A trio of crowd favorites followed in “Gasoline,” “Happiness is Overrated,” and “Does This Mean You’re Moving On,” the latter of which found Jollett in the midst of the crowd as they jumped around “like fuckin’ monkeys,” as people have been known to do during that particular number.
“This Is Nowhere” was the one true live rarity from the first record, having been dropped from regular rotation during the All at Once tour. This gave it a unique freshness as it made its welcome return to action.
“Sometime Around Midnight” arrived earlier in the setlist than usual, but was no less climactic. In fact, Jollett screamed out the last verse with a gusto not heard since well before the specter of laryngitis reared its head several years earlier.
A fun “Something New” and “Missy” followed, ushering in one of several highlights on the night: the majesty of “Innocence.” Rarely played in the previous couple years despite being frequently named by fans as perhaps TATE’s best live song, those in attendance were clearly grateful to experience it again. Adrian Rodriguez even pulled something out of his predecessor’s bag of tricks when he put bow to bass guitar for the first time since joining the band.
One burning question heading into the concert was whether the full album performances would include the B-sides. That query was put to rest as Jollett introduced “an old anti-war song,” and the roaring guitar intro to “The Winning Side” shook the Fillmore. The hard rocking rarity was followed by “This Losing” and “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.” The former had a slightly stripped down arrangement in the middle, with Anna Bulbrook going it alone on the viola without her traditional support from the bass, while the latter featured some fun interplay between Jollett and Bulbrook, the singer playfully giving her the once-over as he assured those listening, “I wasn’t looking at her ass.”
With that, the time machine left the early days and teleported the troops into the future, whereupon the band introduced the lead track off their upcoming fourth album, titled “Wrong.” The new tune seamlessly blended electronica and guitar, while showcasing Jollett’s falsetto in the verses and delivering a chorus that hit harder than anything the group had produced since “Welcome to Your Wedding Day.”
After a brief detour to late 2013 for the hit single “Hell and Back,” the show came to an end with a quartet of songs previewing the following night’s All at Once set: “Changing” and “All I Ever Wanted” brought the main part of the set to a close, before “The Graveyard Near the House”/”All at Once” duo sent the crowd home exhilarated… and anxiously awaiting the return engagement.
—————————–
“We always say you have to play the room you’re in, not the room you’re not,” says Mikel Jollett. “I don’t think location really matters that much. It’s mostly a rapport with the audience. We’ve had some great rapport where you feel every fist in the air, every full-throated scream, and we realize we’re in this too. It’s less like we’re performing on stage and more like we’re conjuring these stories together, and we’re together with the audience in the entire experience. I forget where I am most of the time. Once we’re on stage I don’t even know what country I’m in. We just get into this state and we’re jumping off of stuff, and climbing all over the venue, and there’s beer being thrown around, and we’re climbing on each other’s backs or going out into the middle of the crowd. There’s a frenzy that happens and that frenzy is what it’s about. Place just really doesn’t make a difference.”[vi]
The atmosphere was electric when The Airborne Toxic Event took the stage before a worldwide audience tuning in via live stream for the second night of their Fillmore residency. Photo by Ryan Tuttle.
The frenzy was full force on the second night of the residency, in which The Airborne Toxic Time Machine jumped back to 2011 for the presentation of sophomore album All at Once. This time, it went out not just to the delirious in-house crowd, but also to a worldwide audience that tuned in through a Yahoo! Screen live stream.
Whereas the previous night’s show found the band in full throttle rock mode from beginning to end, the follow-up showed off the full range of Airborne’s versatility, allowing viewers to sample the many diverse flavors the group has to offer. The result was a set that gave both band and audience some room to breathe, with a number of ballads and mid-tempo numbers mixed in among the higher octane tunes.
The first half of the show found TATE ripping through the featured record with many highlights along the way. Though a good two thirds of the tracks on the record had been setlist staples for the previous three-plus years, that still left a number of rarely played morsels on the menu.
The first on that list was “All For a Woman,” which enthralled the audience with Jollett’s impassioned vocal delivery and Steven Chen’s shimmering guitar solo. (The band’s new configuration found Chen taking lead electric guitar, with Adrian Rodriguez holding down bass – unlike the former arrangement which saw Chen and original bassist Noah Harmon swap instruments for the song.)
Next up was “It Doesn’t Mean a Thing,” which was ever-so-slightly slowed down from the “Gasoline”-esque pace of the studio recording. Hot on the heels of that rockabilly number came the one-two anti-war punch of “The Kids Are Ready to Die” and “Welcome to Your Wedding Day,” with the former played punk style a la the All at Once tour.
Arguably, the high point of the album portion of the set came in the form of “Strange Girl,” a song that Jollett introduced as being about how, as an adult, you wish you were as passionate about anything as you were about a song by The Cure when you were 16 years old. Fans had wondered whether “Strange Girl” would be played in upbeat fashion as per the album, or in the stripped-down ballad format favored by the band during their previous (infrequent) live performances. The answer: both/and. It started off slow, with all focus on Jollett’s arresting vocals, but as the first verse wound down, the band kicked into high gear and delivered the rest of the song at full power.
An amusing moment came during the ever-popular, album-closing “The Graveyard Near the House.” After Anna Bulbrook made a mistake by repeating the first “You have no idea about me” ahead of schedule, one could detect just the slightest hint of playful chastisement as Jollett glanced at her accusingly as he sang, “Did you memorize your lines, ’cause I did…”
The next question to be answered was what rarities would be pulled out of the hat. Rather than playing B-sides from All at Once, the band dipped into the All I Ever Wanted live album and dusted off a couple of seldom-played fan favorites: “A Letter to Georgia” and “Goodbye Horses.”
Moving into more current material, the first Such Hot Blood tune of the residency, “Safe,” was sandwiched between a pair of songs from the yet-to-be-released fourth album, “California” and “Wrong.” Fans had been buzzing all day about the latter’s premiere the previous night, and on second listen it was even stronger, despite Jollett being forced to abandon a recalcitrant guitar mid-song.
After closing the main set with “Sometime Around Midnight,” the band took some time to revise their planned encore. Obviously feeling the urge to go out with a bang, the setlisted ballad “Duet” was scratched in favor of a spontaneous “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?” which opened with an extended drum trio from Daren Taylor, Jollett and Adrian Rodriguez, and climaxed with Chen leaping from the elevated drum riser as he struck the familiar riff. Before long, Jollett was into the crowd for selfies and monkey dancing.
The energy continued to flow through a raucous “Happiness is Overrated” and “Hell and Back,” before the musicians turned it down a notch for “The Book of Love,” which found Jollett sitting on the edge of the stage, providing a moment of uncommon intimacy for the front row observers.
Finally, the band reconvened to sign off for another night with their signature “Missy”/”I Fought the Law” combo, leaving an exhausted crowd in their wake as they disembarked to rest up in preparation for the third and final night of what felt like a three-day gig.
—————————–
Both band and stage were awash in white for the grand finale of The Airborne Toxic Event’s Fillmore residency. Photo by Ryan Tuttle.
If Mikel Jollett and crew were feeling the effects of two insane nights when they took the stage for the finale – and the smart money says they were – it hardly showed. “Some days you really just don’t feel like screaming into a microphone about an ex-girlfriend,” admits Jollett. [So] you have to get into character. Any good performer does that. If the character is really good, if it’s sincere, if there’s an emotional truth to it, then it doesn’t matter if it isn’t really happening. It’s like magical realism.”[vii]
Two years to the day after The Airborne Toxic Event introduced Such Hot Blood at Red Rocks, the group performed the album through in its entirety for the very first time. And that was merely the tip of the iceberg on this occasion, which became a communal celebration of the bond between a band and its fans.
The stage was set for a special night when Jollett backed up his contention that he never should’ve allowed himself to be talked into cutting a minute from opening track “The Secret.” The band delighted those in attendance by playing the original longer version for the first time since the album’s release. “So you drink to forget, or you drink to remember…” lamented the singer, reviving one of TATE’s great lost lyrics. “Timeless” followed, with the crowd in unrestrained sing-along mode, before “What’s in a Name?” established itself as a stadium-sized rocker.
The momentum continued with a very strong rendition of “The Storm,” as the singer attacked the closing lines with all the power he could muster. “Safe” followed, receiving its second airing of the residency, sweeping the crowd away in its peerless interplay between Jollett’s guitar, Anna Bulbrook’s viola and the pair’s flawless voices. Fan favorite “Bride and Groom” was next, with the combined volume of every fan in the building singing along threatening to drown out the vocalist entirely.
With “True Love” looming, a mandolin was slipped surreptitiously onstage. The question hung in the air like a half-filled balloon: in Noah Harmon’s absence, who would pick up the instrument?
Steven Chen, ladies and gentlemen.
The guitarist traded his usual tool for the much smaller weapon, which he used to create a great big moment when he nailed the mandolin solo like he’d been doing it forever. (He later admitted that it had only been six weeks.)
Over the next twenty minutes, the crowd would be utterly captivated by a quartet of rarities that begged not to be so rare in the future. First up, “This Is London,” featuring Bulbrook’s gorgeous viola sandwiched between Jollett’s equally lovely lyrics.
“The Fifth Day” was a true showstopper, with the band somehow managing to replicate the song’s massive orchestral conclusion with only five players on stage. Bulbrook’s whistles leading into the climactic symphony were spot on, as were the high harmonies to end the song.
Album closer “Elizabeth” had a bit of a rough start, as Jollett found himself distracted by an electric fan blowing in his face and called for a redo. The second attempt was spot on, with the crowd again joining in on every word.
Though the B-side “Dublin” was passed over, the Such Hot Blood portion of the evening wasn’t quite finished yet: not before the long-awaited and much-requested world premiere of “The Way Home.” Though Jollett humbly predicted that he would screw it up, the song was executed without a hitch.
The remainder of the main set was one textbook rocker after another: “Wishing Well,” “Dope Machines,” “All I Ever Wanted,” “Wrong,” “Sometime Around Midnight,” and finally a second San Francisco helping of “Innocence.” “Dope Machines,” off the upcoming album, was played for the first time since Lollapalooza seven weeks earlier, and combined with another impeccable rendering of “Wrong,” excitement for the new album was quickly becoming feverish.
The first of two encores was the Jollett-and-Bulbrook show, beginning with “Duet” (whose inclusion in the set made up for it being passed over the night before), and culminating with “The Graveyard Near the House,” performed for the third consecutive evening. The latter functioned as a sequel to the previous night’s incident in which Jollett chided Bulbrook for a premature line. This time, it was Jollett who made the very same mistake, allowing Bulbrook to give it right back to him as they sang, “Did you memorize your lines, ’cause I did.”
The second encore brought an enthusiastic and rocking end to both the show and the residency, with four hits that had audience members pouring out every last ounce of energy, not wanting to leave anything in the tank: “Gasoline,” “Changing,” “Hell and Back” and “All at Once.” The band slowed down only long enough for Jollett to express his and his bandmates’ profound gratitude for the fans who make their dream possible. That feeling was mutual, as more than one fan could be overheard despairing, “This can’t be over!” as the opening notes of “All at Once” rang out.
—————————–
Any fan who has seen a band multiple times on the same tour knows that the most common refrain among such devotees is, “I wish they’d mix up the setlist more.” Bands generally plan their sets for the overwhelming majority of audience members who will only see them once, in their own city of residence – not for the diehards who follow them from town to town. The typical concert-goer wants to hear the hits, the songs they can sing along to, not the obscure deep cuts. Musicians accommodate this, and it’s perfectly understandable. But it does leave a lot of great music unplayed.
Even those acts with a well-earned reputation for drawing from their full catalog – your Pearl Jams, your Springsteens – still play just a handful of rarities on any given night, mixing them in amongst their latest releases and the tracks that made them famous. If you wanted to see them all, you’d have to hit the road for months.
But what if your favorite band announced that they were going to play virtually every song they’d ever released over the course of three nights in one city? It’s every music fan’s dream.
That’s what The Airborne Toxic Event did at The Fillmore. From Sept. 18-20, they played three full albums plus every original song from the live All I Ever Wanted album. They played B-sides. They played covers. They played three songs from an album that was still months away from release. They played extended versions. They played new versions. They played radio hits. They played songs that only the biggest fans knew. They played two songs for the first time ever, and they may very well have played several songs for the last time ever.
And they did all this with a new bassist in tow. Adrian Rodriguez’s efforts were heroic in light of the sheer volume of material he had to learn in a short amount of time. Not that the other band members had it easy, mind you. They too had to remember how to play songs they hadn’t touched in years, while also figuring out how to perform tunes that they had only recently put the finishing touches on in the recording studio. They had to rearrange songs in light of the lineup change, and, at least in Steven Chen’s case, they had to learn new instruments (mandolin). And as if all that wasn’t enough pressure, they did it in front of a crowd of superfans who flew in from around the world who, in addition to being the biggest supporters of the band, can also be the most critical audience when things aren’t up to snuff.
Over the course of three shows that got progressively longer, The Airborne Toxic Event played a total of 64 songs, including 43 unique tracks. It was an impressive display of musicianship, passion, hard work and dedication to both their craft and their fans. As Jollett has said, “That’s part of why they’re so devoted to us. They can sense our devotion to them.”[viii]
The Fillmore residency was merely the beginning of an intensive seven-week North American tour. As the band headed out with nearly four-dozen songs polished up and ready to go, the groundwork was laid for their most unpredictable tour to date. Each night featured setlist surprises that likely never would have happened otherwise.
The scale of the show also dwarfed anything the band had previously offered up. With a majestic white bird spreading its wings over drummer Daren Taylor, reflecting lively lighting effects, the tour was visually spectacular, with a different point of interest from every angle.
The Fillmore residency was both a celebration of all that came before it, and a bold proclamation of what was next to come. The past was brought to life through insights that Jollett shared on each song leading up to the opening date, and in stories shared from the stage looking back on earlier visits to San Francisco. The future was brought into the present through “Dope Machines” and “California” and especially “Wrong,” which combined the best of what TATE had been with the promise of what they would soon become.
If indeed the Fillmore represented a turning of the page for The Airborne Toxic Event, it established them as a band that would not forget its past, even as it built towards a new and exciting future.
Songs Played at the Fillmore Residency:
A Letter to Georgia
All At Once (x3)
All for a Woman
All I Ever Wanted (x3)
The Book of Love
Bride and Groom
California
Changing (x3)
Does This Mean You’re Moving On? (x2)
Dope Machines
Duet
Elizabeth
The Fifth Day
Gasoline (x2)
The Girls in Their Summer Dresses
Goodbye Horses
The Graveyard Near the House (x3)
Half of Something Else
Happiness is Overrated (x2)
Hell and Back (x3)
Innocence (x2)
It Doesn’t Mean a Thing
The Kids Are Ready to Die
Missy (x2)
Numb
Papillon
Safe (x2)
The Secret
Something New
Sometime Around Midnight (x3)
The Storm
Strange Girl
This is London
This is Nowhere
This Losing
Timeless
True Love
The Way Home (*world premiere)
Welcome to Your Wedding Day
What’s in a Name?
The Winning Side
Wishing Well (x2)
Wrong (x3) (*world premiere)
< Previous (Chapter 36: Something New) |
Notes:
[i] The Airborne Toxic Event band e-mail, (May 12, 2014).
[ii] Craig Rosen, “The Airborne Toxic Event Reconnects With L.A.,” Yahoo! Music, (Sept. 18, 2014), https://www.yahoo.com/music/bp/the-airborne-toxic-event-reconnects-with-l-a-195647557.html.
[iii] “The Airborne Toxic Event and R&B Reborn,” Music Weekly Podcast, (Oct. 10, 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/music/audio/2013/oct/10/airborne-toxic-event-music-weekly-podcast.
[iv] Christopher Phillips, “The Backstreets Interview – Many Rivers to Cross: Bruce Springsteen on the River Tour 2016,” Backstreets, (Dec. 10, 2015), http://www.backstreets.com/riverinterview.html.
[v] “Interview :: Mikel Jollett of Airborne Toxic Event,” 32 Ft / Second, (May 3, 2011).
[vi] Rachel, “On the Road with: The Airborne Toxic Event,” Songkick Blog, (Dec. 6, 2011).
[vii] Erin Ryan, “43 Minutes with Mikel Jollett,” Las Vegas Weekly, (Jun. 9, 2011).
[viii] Ryan.
Julie publishes musingsfromboston.com, a music blog with the bipolar personality of wannabe philosopher and charlatan music critic, where she is just as likely to review the audience as she is the band. Her first Airborne show was at a lingerie party hosted by WFNX at an Irish-Mexican bar in Boston’s financial district. She does her best to live by the motto “only one who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.”
Glen is the founder and editor of This Is Nowhere. He’s grateful for an understanding wife and kids who indulge his silly compulsion to chase a band all over the Pacific Northwest (and occasionally beyond) every time the opportunity arises.