Photos and Review by Stephen Bloch

For the past 20 odd years, Cass McCombs has quietly and poetically been doing the singer/songwriter thing, drawing on some very diverse influences including Bob Dylan, Wilco, and in some cases, the psychedelic sounds of the Grateful Dead. He’s no copycat.  He’s paved his own path. I’ve missed many opportunities to see him, unfortunately.  No Sunday scaries or prior commitments were going to keep me away from his show at Milwaukee’s Vivarium.  This was an intimate and unhurried show, no fanfare, no introduction, and zero banter.

McCombs and his full band have been on their Interior Live Oak tour for years. It’s an album filled with heartfelt lyrics and infectious jams. It’s an album fit to anchor an expansive two hour musical journey, which is exactly what we got. The show began with almost the entirety of the album.  It’s a mixture of understated jams mixed with spacey explorations beneath the eloquent troubadour tales that only Cass can produce. Mike Bones and Cass traded off lead riffs like switch hitters. Austin Vaughn and Brian Betancourt had the rhythm section locked down.

In addition to chasing the elusive McCombs show, I’ve been chasing one particular song of his, “Rounder”, off of his 2016 release Tip of the Sphere. It’s a song that McCombs hasn’t played since 2019. It’s an intimate and meandering song with disjointed wordplay and a very Grateful Dead jam. It seems to paint a picture of a drifter from America’s west. I am neither, yet it resonates with me. Maybe it’s the trancelike sprawling jams in the cut that put me in a warm state, like being in Mohave or Sonoran deserts, places I have frequented in my travels.   I put a little bug in Cass’ ear through socials.  I fully expected my request to fall flat, but that was not the case. My plea paid off.  Ten plus minutes of bliss followed by another fave, “Sleeping Volcanoes”, another Tip cut.

There was absolutely no pomp or bravado in the show last night. Those would have taken away from the deeply nuanced musicianship of Cass McCombs and his band.