Califone at Lawrence Public Library Auditorium, Lawrence KS (2025-02-19)

CALIFONE TOUR DATES

FEB 21 BOULDER, CO
FEB 22 DENVER, CO
FEB 24 SALT LAKE CITY, UT
FEB 26 PHOENIX, AZ
FEB 27 TUCSON, AZ
FEB 28 SAN DIEGO, CA
MARCH 29 LONG BEACH, CA @ ART THEATRE
MAY14 WASHINGTON, DC @ DC9
MAY15 BROOKLYN, NY @ BABY’S ALL RIGHT
MAY16 PHILADELPHIA, PA @ WORLD CAFE 
MAY 17 BOSTON, MA @ ROCKWELL
MAY 18 KEENE, NH @ THING IN THE SPRING
MAY 19 PORTLAND, ME @ SPACE

An ideal excuse to get loud in the library–

Experimental noise blues folk band Califone is out on a run of acoustic duo Undertow shows playing mostly living rooms in support of their 2023 release, “Villagers” and its just-released companion piece, “The Villager’s Companion” (both via Jealous Butcher Records).

Thanks to Lawrence Public Library director Brad Allen and local benefactor Sylvie Rueff, the stripped duo of Chicago-born, LA-based Tim Rutili and current wingman guitarist Max Knouse managed to schedule in a free show at a small library auditorium in middle America, on their way across the country for the group’s first area appearance in almost a decade.

The evening opened with a short acoustic set from local and beloved singer-songwriter Heidi Lynne Gluck, whose July 2023 full-length is entitled “Migrate or Die” (available on Bandcamp) and who turned out to be a fine pairing with the headliners, proving her musical dexterity by working a previous duet collaboration, into a solo song of her own.

Spinning out of Chicago band Red Red Meat, Rutilli has been making music under the Califone moniker for twenty-seven years and has almost twenty albums worth of material to choose from. Guitarist Knouse proved to be a fine musical companion, constantly tweaking and twiddling knobs on his pedal board and provided musical punctuation and sonic accompaniment to Rutilli’s own guitar and pedal work.

Their experimental musical style was even more highlighted as a duo– whether finger picking a folk number or using a slide to perform a more bluesy number, any song starting traditionally would soon fragment and deconstruct amid an audio canvas of static crackles, reverb and feedback, bleeps, and blooping signals over Rutelli’s road-worn vocals to become more of a sonic art piece, than simple traditionally played song.

Lyrically, there’s poetic stories of cinematic abstraction, roadside storytelling of strangers’ lives, and literal and figurative searches for that needle of light amongst a blanket of darkness. The pair’s stage demeanor for these shows is focused and attentive, each busy manipulating their own sets of sounds that seamlessly merge together to create their complete landscape.

In between songs, Rutelli becomes more relaxed, going into somewhat random topics, or explaining that the newest of his acoustic guitars formerly belonged to a now-deceased member of the house band of a mega church, complete with Sharpie-inscribed scripture on its face (the guitar’s tone still sounded warm though).

The opening “Fisherman’s Wife” which began the ninety-minute performance, dated back to 2001 and a somewhat obscure Psychic TV cover from 1983, was also worked in early to the set.

2023’s “Skunkish” lyrically asked “When did I become the destruction in the story that you wear, like an anvil on your back?”, 2005’s “There’s a Star Above the Manger Tonight” has a burst of stream of consciousness lyrics, and the title track from “Villiagers” got existential: “Worlds never collide, they just hover and spin, the sweetest forever is always and never halfway home.”

The set became more immersive as it went on, with recent single, “Burn the Sheets. Bleach the Books” and its lyrics, “Innocent, always been a grain of sound in an ocean of static, without a mask without a ring a cloud of moths circling heaven” played near the set’s end amidst a cacophony of purposeful noise and found sound, perhaps was the apex of the hour-and-a-half.

Being able to see Califone play an intimate set on a Winter weeknight, was a true musical treat, and something we’d love to see more of. The library previously had a 780s Series, which brought national musicians to town to speak about and play their songs, but that seems to be spotty since coming out of the pandemic, and is likely due to funding (or a lack thereof). Let’s hope there are more of these surprise performances to experience.