It was a common scene at The Mohawk Place on Thursday night for Grass Widow and All of Them Witches. A sparsely attended show, it was the kind of which, when audience members return for drinks after a set, they’re not enough to line the length of the bar. To be fair, The Mohawk Place has a rather long bar. As a venue it is one of the shining beacons of the Buffalo music scene, and a worthy setting for the second date of an East Coast tour for San Francisco’s Grass Widow; a warm up of sorts, a chance to road-trial the new songs from their just released third LP, Internal Logic, before debuting them for the larger markets down the line.
That new LP, by the way, is being released on the band’s own HLR imprint, ‘HLR’ standing for “Hannah Lillian Raven,” the first names of the three women in Grass Widow. This move towards self-releasing their records, after having such previous successes on the well-respected Captured Tracks and Kill Rock Stars labels, is a gesture that embodies their true DIY ethos, one obviously influenced by close involvement with the influential San Francisco scene from which the group was born.
Before Grass Widow’s performance the night began with a blistering set from Buffalo’s own All of Them Witches. It should be said, above all else, that All of Them Witches are an impressive band. The guitar and drums combo of Phil Freedenberg and Cameron Rogers, respectively, are absolute math-rock purists, diluting the noodling guitar and start-stop rhythm sound championed by the likes of Don Caballero and Hella in the mid-aughts down to its elemental state. While it has been said that Freedenberg’s dual guitar tapping is the main draw of the act, it was Rogers who truly shined this night, his kinetic drumming under the colored and strobing lights leaving the impression that a pair of Chinese fans were being run up and down his drum kit. Though for all their impressiveness, All of Them Witches, as a local band, seemed somewhat disconnected. And by more than a matter of miles. Their multiple 'thank-yous' to the 'Grass Widows' left the impression that the gesture, while well intentioned, revealed an unfamiliarity that spoke louder than their music.
After a brief intermission (the show moved along with an unusual efficiency), Grass Widow took the stage. “We’re happy to be here. We hadn’t realized before that Buffalo wings, excuse me, ‘wings,’ are named so because they're from Buffalo,” quipped lead guitarist Raven Mahon. “It’s not because we’re ditsy,” added bassist and filmmaker, Hannah Lew, “People outside of Buffalo really don’t know that!” The opening banter set the tone for the rest of the set, which showed the women of Grass Widow to be exceptionally genial, speaking to each other often in an easy, familiar way that made the audience feel included in the performance.
This familiarity and ease of communication carried over to their performing and is perhaps Grass Widow’s secret weapon. So much of the success of their music lies in their relationships with each other: the strong vocal harmonies, the collaborative songwriting, and the guitar/bass interplay between Mahon and Lew, whose bass lines often take Peter Hook-like leaps up into the higher register. And this is yet to say anything of the monstrous drumming from Lillian Maring, who manages intricate fills and beats while also absolutely pummeling at the skins. Her drumming is the total backbone of the group, setting the lively pace on standouts from Internal Logic such as “Milo Minute” and “Disappearing Industries”. Halfway through the set a friend remarked, speaking without metaphor, “She’s destroying the drums!” This preceded by moments their road manager hauling a concrete block onto stage and placing it in front of the set, so that Maring might not accidentally boot the kick drum into the front row.
By the end of the show, Grass Widow had ripped through an impressive mix of material from their catalogue and presumably gained some new fans in the process. Some were even compelled to dance wildly through the last few songs. “Well, since we got you dancing, I guess we can do one more,” responded Mahon to the applause before leading the group into the encore, an energetic cover of Wire’s “Mannequin”. Here’s hoping Grass Widow might feel similarly obliged to returning for an encore performance sometime soon.
~B Ellis
Photo by Jill Greenberg
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