There are very few concert bills that offer an array of lovingly crafted and somewhat divergent sounds, so the area is lucky to have a joint bill of Bobby Bare Jr., and Blue Giant.
Bobby Bare Jr., who also has recently toured with the Drive-by Truckers and Justin Townes Earle, is on the road behind his humorous, folk-tinged album “A-Storm, A-Tree, My Mothers’ Head.” Blue Giant, a band Paste magazine lauded as “a turmoil of glorious noise,” has just released its self-titled debut.
“Most of the songs or more than half of these songs were in a notebook that I lost,” Bare said about of his recent album. “I should have given a thank you to my ex-wife because she found the notebook; you can see the page where I went from a notebook for the last record to this new record.”
Bare has been in the music business for years — literally since he was in the single digits. He was nominated for a Grammy Award at about age 8 for “Daddy What If,” a song he recorded with his father. Of course a lot has changed since then and the songs on the new album — based on incidents from his real life including when a storm came, a tree toppled, and his mother was struck — illustrate some of that as well as his humor.
His mom has fully recovered from the near life-threatening incident, Bare said, and she actually went into the studio with him to record screams for the song. The reason for the humor in the face of tragedy is simple, he said. If you can laugh and get others to laugh with you, it takes some of the horror away. Another song on the album talks about his son almost dying in a bicycle accident.
“I try to keep it all in perspective,” Bare said. “It’s not like I have millions of fans. They just think [the music] is cool and fun.”
When asked his family’s reactions, he said they enjoy the music: “They know I write [those songs] because I love them.”
Opening for Bare is Blue Giant, who critics at Venus Zine magazine noted “should make Bob Dylan proud with their mix of guitar, harmony-driven sound and lyrics embroidered with tinges of politics and heartbreak.”
That’s because the members totally immersed themselves in the songs, Anita Robinson said.
“The way the album evolved, we had been playing these songs for a while,” she said. “When it was time to record, the songs were already taking shape from us playing them live so [when we recorded] we had fun with it.”
The band recorded in the home Anita shares with husband and band member Kevin Robinson. The songs, all written by the Robinsons, move from folk to rock, to bluegrass and beyond.
The sound has critics labeling Blue Giant as an up-and-coming supergroup, and that seems to both please and embarrass Anita Robinson.
“There could be worse monikers. It makes me feel a little humble,” she said. “I just hope it’s the kind of album that no one would want to skip over a track.”
