I approached John Hasbrouck’s debut Ice Cream with trepidation. As a guitar virtuoso of astounding talent who traffics in Americana (a touch of country, pop, bluegrass, roots) my reaction was that he was everything I couldn’t relate to. After I got a copy of Ice Cream it not only knocked me over but challenged my perspective on music. Ice Cream defines why we listen to music in the first place, and why it’s a cornerstone in every life.
To the classical fan who goes to Grant Park in the heat of 7/4 to hear the same program year after year, to the club kid who gets lost in circuit parties, to the older guy who seeks out an oldies station because it makes him feel relevant. The relationship we have to our world, admit it or not, is largely based on music.
Ice Cream’s liner notes detail the CD as an education and journey. It’s not concerned with details or cornerstones (divorces, births, deaths), but with Hasbrouck’s relation to the music. That he’s in love with it is the big story here, and like several Chicago artists (Andrew Bird, Mike Arnapol, Kevin O’Donnell, Pat Barber), that love is powerfully intoxicating.
Seeing him at his CD release party at the Hideout Sept. 19 only reaffirmed it.
Appropriately titled, Ice Cream is pure pleasure; indulgent, enrapturing, seductive, its elegance is to be enjoyed slowly, one spoonful at a time. But you have to hush up and LISTEN to it. It’s quiet, like a private livingroom concert. But if Hasbrouck’s playing is as delicate as a crystal butterfly, his vocals are just as nuanced. All that quiet and detail is hardly at the cost of a good time. His gentle cover of Herman Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By,” probably THE most sentimental song ever, becomes fresh and unsticky through his handling. Of all things, “House of the Rising Sun” gets turned on its ear; thumpingly slippery vocals, the melody balled up like Play Doh, and rushed through with a bopping velocity, the song is unrecognizable and a hoot. Better still is the body of the CD. Covers abound (“I’m So Lonely I Could Cry,” “Lady Be Good,” “Cry Me a River”) but Hasbrouck’s own compositions add a solid balance (“The Ravenous Wolf,” “All Those Wasted Years,” “Harry Smith Lays Down”). The whole of Ice Cream is reminiscent of Terrence Malik’s film Days of Heaven and its Ennio Morricone score; elliptical, diaphanous, enchanted with its own beauty, and thoroughly spellbinding for it.
The Hideout gig by contrast was anything but low-key. With a line-up to kill for, the party got wild quick. Hasbrouck joined Ellen Rosner and Chuck Harling for a take on Rosner’s “Promise after Promise.” To hear Hasbrouck’s delicate guitar lines pirouetting around Harling and Rosner’s thunder was a revelation (these three SHOULD play together more often). Then a put-together band (Rosner, Harling, Hasbrouck, Tyler Wilson, Edgar Gabriel, and Steve Doyle) lit into a swaggering slide through the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia” with the whole bunch delighting in the lyric, “Got to scrap the shit right off your shoes…” Twang Bang nearly stole the show (they always do) until the Wabash Jug Band hit the stage. Fronted by Joel Paterson with horn man Johnny Doyle (both of the Four Charms), they dove into a fevered revival meeting take on Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother’s “Woke Up this Morning (with Jesus on my Mind).” Paterson and Doyle (who will play anything he can get his fucking hands on–this night he used a beer bottle as a wind instrument) and Itzi Rothowski and Redd Klaatf (of Bang Twang) are so religiously passionate about the music–any music–that it doesn’t matter what they’re playing.
And after every set, up would pop Hasbrouck to offer more from Ice Cream, just him and his guitar. Amusingly, you got a free ice cream sandwich when you bought a CD (thanks Itzi) and though the show was on the last truly muggy day of summer, I had to admit, it was a perfect seasonal send off. I didn’t get to stay for Devil in a Woodpile (I know I missed something), but as I passed Rosner on my way out the door, she summed up how I felt: “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m having the time of my life.”