There was no way I could pass up seeing The Gene Clark No Other tour when it came to Brooklyn. First of all No Other is truly a great record, one that often gets forgotten. Secondly, members of some of my favorite bands were getting together to put it on. Where else would you get to see members of Fleet Foxes, Beach House, Grizzly Bear and The Walkmen on the same stage?
Before the performance began, we were shown a good 12-minutes or so of the upcoming Gene Clark Documentary: ‘The Byrd Who Flew Alone.’ It was a perfect way to get us ready for the performance, as it really set the mood quite right.
The band consisted of Victoria Legrand (Beach House), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak), Tony Drummond (Celebration) and Cricket Arrison on backup vocals. Then you have Alex Scally (Beach House) on bass, and members of Mt. Royal, Carloman, Celebration, and Lower Dens. It was quite the band. Coming in to the show I was wondering how it would all go down. Soon, it became clear that a new featured singer would take the lead of a song all while the Gene Clark band played them through it.
Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes kicked things off with No Other’s lead track “Life’s Greatest Fool.” It was a perfect fit and the band arranged beautiful arrangements to bring it to life. Iain Matthews of Fairport Convention and Plainsong was up next, tackling “Silver Raven.” He passed the torch to Dan Rossen of Grizzly Bear who offered a great rendition of the album’s title track. Robin came back out for “Strength Of Strings” and then Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen took over for “From A Silver Phial.” From there on out, we saw a good rotation of all the all-stars, providing a revolving door of amazing covers.
No Other is only 8-songs long, a rather short number of songs for a show. So for the encore, the whole band (all singers included) came out for some covers of other solo songs of Clark’s, as well as some covers of The Byrds classic hits. This included Vicoria Legrand covering Clark’s “Hear The Wind,” Pecknold, Rossen, and Leithauser taking turns covering The Byrds’ “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better” and Pecknold & Hamilton dueting for an epic cover of The Byrds’ hit “Eight Mile High.”
It was a once in a lifetime experience to witness the whole thing go down, and I really hope some of you get to catch the show (they return for a second night tonight). Most importantly, the tour serves as a reminder and celebration on Clark’s fantastic album, whose iTunes sales have gone up 4000% percent since the tour, as Iain Matthews pointed out. Clearly, it was a job well done.
I was able to capture a good chunk of the action on video. I’ve shared all of them below, along with some photos from the night. Find them all below:
Dan Rossen – “No Other”
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