Denver's The Shadow Sessions at The Walnut Room
Vanessa Gochnour
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DJ Shadow dismantled the hip-hop rule book 13 years ago when he released Endtroducing, a dense, psychedelic nightmare constructed entirely from samples that ranks high on the all-time list of fascinating, indispensable albums. Attempting to recreate the record note for note is like taking on Dark Side Of The Moon or The White Album. In a word: tricky.
But if a band like Denver's The Shadow Sessions feels up to the challenge (as they did on Saturday, December 20 at The Walnut Room), it's clear on whose shoulders its success rests. In its purest state, Endtroducing is an album about drums, and Shadow Sessions drummer Dan Luehring would have to distill Shadow's kick and snare matrix down to a cold, clinical, and soulful science to make it work.
Turns out, adding extra kick drum is the secret, and Luehring, with a scrunched up look on his face of determination and stink, annihilated the cavernous "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt" onstage Sunday. Having split his duties in the past between the heavy soul of The Brian Jordan Trio and the gentle pop of singer-songwriter Jessica Sonner, Luehring has had time to develop his current blend of light touch and tough muscle. Which, for Shadow’s soft-hard-soft dynamics, is a necessary skill.
Keyboardist Jon Wirtz, one-third of the Denver modern-jazz trio LSW, ran the majority of the show like a seasoned big-band leader, constantly morphing through textures and tones and triggering the goofy vocal snippets that too rarely lighten Endtroducing's dreadful mood. Bassist Jonathan Rakstang, switching between upright and electric bass all night, kept things simple and deep.
The rest of the Shadow Sessions crew—guitarist J.D. Sawyer, saxophonist Jon Hegel, and singers Jeremy D'Antonio and Heather Larabee—worked as the other three's co-pilots, adding a flourish here and a haunting chorus there, finally getting their own chances to stretch out on extended dance reworkings of Entroducing's untitled sixth track and "Why Hip Hop Sucks In '96."
Seeing Shadow Sessions live is ultimately better than seeing DJ Shadow live; after all, in concert, Shadow basically just runs around onstage pushing buttons. Take away his artsy slide shows and you're left with a thirtieth-row view of a man and his hat. To see Shadow Sessions is to observe cymbals wobbling, upright basses reverberating, and saxophones plugging. That night at the Walnut, Shadow Sessions gave a rare opportunity to see what Endtroducing might have actually looked like, had it been built of musicians instead of zeros and ones. It's a strange sign of the times to see musicians sampling the sampler (who sampled musicians in the first place). But the ferocity in the drumming built upon Shadow's original goals, and the smiles exchanged on stage, were those of a group of music nerds getting the rare chance to both take apart and take part in their favorite record.
