Jacco Gardner

June 30, 2014 Lucky

Jacco Gardner
The Church on York
Los Angeles, CA
By Lucky
Photography by Mila Reynaud

Days later, I am still in a perpetual state, walking a dimension not my own, repercussions of an ethereal night of melodies courtesy of Jacco Gardner and his companions. Melodies enhanced by atmospheric surrealism thanks to the one hundred year old locale and an enlightened assembly.

A Johnny-come lately to the Jacco fan base; I just recently discovered this amazing talent and have been delving into his music with an unbridled fervor. For me it brings back a mind-set of early musical masterpiece, thought, perhaps in my mind’s eye, sorely lacking from todays compositional semantics.

Minimal fanfare and zero pretenses heralded as Jacco and band causally assembled, each with his own medium, poised to fill the audible void. The airy refrains of “Summer’s Game” ascended upwards and propelled me to bethink wonders. Colorful colloquialism and tonal passage brought storybook imagery from long ago.

Spiraling keys, courtesy of Fran Matson (Frank’s band Matson filled a support slot in the night’s bill), propelled “House on the Moon”, as multi instrumentalist Jacco Gardner helmed his Guild six-string. Floor pedal vocal effects provided an almost underwater ambience as the band set their lunar controls.

“Puppets Dangling”, perhaps my favorite Jacco Gardner tune at the time, concurred blissful dream like enhance. Roaming subtitles combined in unison to create an extraordinary experience of both mind and sound. Backing vocal intonations from Japer and Keez induced hypnotic.

Reverberant chimes of “Clear the Air” exemplified the clarity of each ornate detail. Precession hits from Jos van Tol brought about the upbeat merriment. Trancelike, I took in the surrounding architecture of the century old building, a perfect companion to the lavish inklings of the bands music. It surely was one of those times where all elements lived in harmonic unison.

We had the delight of hearing a new Jacco Gardner composition entitled “Outside Forever”, which started stand alone, then the band breached into transcendent. I was held captive by the rhythmic rhymes and the directional changeup. Oblivious of the masses around, I was on a fantastic journey to the sublime.

Incorporating discernible bluster and merry-go-round swirl, “The Ballad of Little Jane” was a psychedelic soiree. Jacco was raconteur extraordinaire, while the band added texture to the refrain. Keyboard and drums fluctuated seesaw with intentional glee.

The band fused strings, percussion and electric into an almost straight-ahead rock drive with “Where will you Go”. The vocal arrangements were celestial, while musical imagery prevailed. This is one of those near perfect songs that represent abundant. I read somewhere that this song is what feelings sound like. Never a truer word has been spoken.

What seemed to be yet another new entity in the Jacco Gardner catalogue, “Find Yourself” (or at least that is how it was refer to on the stolen set list), incorporated familiar with a wide reach of new horizons. Modern overtone with a psychedelia supreme undertow, the crowd seemed to relish in the offering.

Closing out the show was “Chameleon” that triggered a distant glimpse of a memory, just enough that I couldn’t quite put a fine point on it. Things like that happen, usually to cause some mid-night realization. “Chameleon” erupted into a full-fledge hallucinatory jam where the band really went all out, to bring it all home. An amazing finish to an even more amazing show.