By Chris DeMento
On Friday night, Nov. 30, I caught Etienne de Rocher’s farewell tribute at the Rickshaw Stop. It went off all mellow, with candlelight and whatnot. Seems your boy is off to Athens, Geo., to buy property and raise his kids, kick it with his broski, and find a porchswing or something.
Et il me manque deja: I’m a sucker for the sounds of the overeducated. He did a most academic Slick Rick, despite botching a few lines. (This is a compliment.) And his old stuff, stuff I’d never heard before, the once-upon-a-time stuff he used to play with the same buddies who showed up to honor him on Friday evening, conjured perfect images of budding intelligentsia in khakis, Rod Levers, beanies, and shit-eating grins cutting Latin or some AP class to get high, eat Popeye’s, play video games, and bust arch freestyles over instrumental B-side cuts from Public Enemy EPs - underwrought, expropriated gesticulations and the stuff of preparedness’ memory.
Gala, a café acquaintance of mine was there - a smarty-party to herself with some great advice for me: indulge. I’d never seen de Rocher before so that’s certainly what I did, in my Boathouse warm-up pants, Stan Smiths, and an Extra Tasty Crispy mustache, my virgin ears teething against the literary tropes. I was picking up what de Rocher and friends were putting down, like the rest of the packed, booksmart house.
Kelley Stoltz only played for like a half hour, not even long enough to care to jump into some brilliant, monorhythmic improvisation. His scarf was pretty awesome, though, as was the satisfaction that he registered upon lighting the candles for de Rocher’s set.
The Moore Brothers played a little set somewhere in there, too, harmonizing, swapping their lone guitar between songs, too cutely. Bart Davenport opened, returning later in the evening on harmonica and electric, when the show ballooned more completely into an on-stage reunion. And it was soon after a rollicking midnight guitar solo by Bart Davenport that I quit the Rickshaw, having gotten my money’s worth, chalking the rest of the evening up to nostalgia’s music, her inside jokes, my aching dawgs, and my tired reading eyes.
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