Elephant Revival at the Cedar, Minneapolis (25 Sep 2014)

Tour Dates

There’s no denying it, bluegrass/Americana music is huge in Minnesota, as demonstrated by the recent Trample by Turtles’ Festival Palomino that took place over last weekend. Elephant Revival and the Lowest Pair are currently heading down to “Boats & Bluegrass Festival” and “Maximum Ames Music Festival” in late September, but before stopped all that, they were in town at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last night, September 25th.

As previously mentioned, The Lowest Pair are a folk duo, Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee. Both were already accomplished musicians, with Kendl Winter (the self-described “Jewish girl from Arkansas”), notably had already released several albums under Olympia’s K Records.



At the very last minute, the two made some major changes to their setlist, resulting in them spending a few minutes on stage tuning both their banjos.



Some of their songs used old familiar public domain songs – for example “Oh Susanna” with a bluegrass twist and “Hush, Little Baby” lyrics were incorporated into “Say Darling”.



As you can see from their setlist, there were a few tracks from their debut album 36¢ (“Oh Susanna”, “Living Is Dying”, “Pear Tree”, and “Magpies At Sunset”). Making up the rest of their set were a couple of new songs, including my highlight of the show, “Wolves”. Winter explained that, “This song sounds really good if you all howl.” And immediately, everyone in the room were making wolf/dog noises.



They ended their set with a Kendl Winter song, “Rosie”, which Lee said that he once wish he was named after a flower…

Hearing all these Elephant Revival songs live, I can tell you that the band is obsessed with nature: the moon, the river / ocean / water, the mountains, the trees, birds, etc. The other thing about this five-piece band, is that they really have three singers: Daniel Rodriguez (who also plays guitar and bass), Bonnie Paine (who also plays washboard, djembe, and musical-saw) and Sage T. Cook (who also plays banjo and mandolin). They alternate on singing duties, based on the way they wrote the setlist.
Making up the rest of the band are upright bassist Dango Rose and fiddler Bridget Law.



The band kept the audience dancing throughout their set. Many of the instrumentals were clearly favorites among the crowd, including “The Pasture” which was dedicated to an Amy (for her birthday) in the audience.



During “Stolen”, they asked for someone specific (someone from Trampled By Turtles) in the audience to join them on stage, but clearly he wasn’t at the show or preoccupied. Rodriguez said, “Well it worked last time!”, then noted, “maybe that was the problem…” (that he learned his lesson).



When the band announced “Ring Around the Moon” as their last song, someone shouted “No freakin’ way, you’re not leaving tonight!” while some girl shouted, “I wasn’t ready!” Affectionately, the band came back to play three additional songs for the encore, “Spinning”, “Go On”, and “A’ Part.”



I think it’s clear that there are strong support for bluegrass / Americana / folk music in the Midwest, and other bands in the genre should take notice and plan their next tour in the area. And you can tell that Lowest Pair and Elephant Revival will definitely come back to Minneapolis as soon as they can. As they said on stage, the bluegrass community in Minneapolis is exceptional… and they are all jealous of what we have here.