tUnE-YarDs / Buke & Gass

Date: May 8th, 2011

Venue: Cedar Cultural Center

First off, I love this venue. The wait between doors and the opener is always half an hour, and they don’t mess around when switching sets.

Buke and Gass is a two person band made up of a girl, Arone, who plays the baritone ukulele and man, Aron, who plays a modified guitar bass, hence their name. In addition to modified instruments, they build their own amplifiers. They had at least 3 of these on stage.

The girl was rather quirky; swaying on her stool, bantering with the crowd, and smiling profusely. The man, on the other hand, was quiet and composed.

Their music is filled with ups and downs, where the two glance at each other, as if awaiting signals. With the inclusion of Arone’s signing, you might never know that the band is only two people, since Aron plays a kick drum, and Arone has some kind of foot gear that wraps around her shoe with 5 little sets of symbols on it, as well as a band of bells around her ankle.

The real treat was tUnE-YarDs. It was immediately clear that Merrill has stage experience by the way she looked over the crowd. There was no awkward eye contact as was common with Buke and Gass.

Accompanying Merrill was a bassist, who also played percussion, an alto saxophonist and a tenor saxophonist. Merrill sings, plays the ukulele, and does percussion and some keyboarding.

Merrill plays with a double loop pedal in her socks. One pedal she uses for vocals, the other for percussion. At the beginning of each song the crowd went crazy when she came in with the percussion and the track became recognizable. This was one of the best crowds I have been in in 2011, there was plenty of dancing and little to no side chatter.

The show was photographer heavy, explain-ably so for Merrill’s stage presence. I did have to tell an inexperienced photographer that when we told her she could take pictures in front of us, we didn’t mean for 5 songs.

Before the last song we got a Q and A session with Merrill herself because the keyboard was not working. She told us that her favorite color is magenta, her spirit animal is a fox, she choreographed Real Live Flesh, and a friend, Sarah, choreographed the new Bizness video.

The band then came out for an encore, where instead of playing the two songs as planned, Merrill took a song request from a very emphatic gay boy adjacent to me.

I left the show with a set-list handwritten, presumably, by Merrill herself.

Set List

1. Door Step
2. You Yes You
3. Es-So
4. Powa
5. Gangsta
6. FIYA
7. Bizness
8. Riotriot
9. Hatari
10. My Country

——

1. Lions (as requested, replacing Real Live Flesh)
2. Party Can