A Light Of Day with Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) at The Saint
Ashley Daniels
Light of Day is a world wide foundation founded by Bob Benjamin to raise money and awareness towards a cure for Parkinson's Disease. It is a week long music festival filled of talented musicians and comedians raising money to find a cure. This year seems extremely special to be involved because there is a vaccine developing in Austria that has the potential to reverse the progression in the brain and will be tested on people during 2015. The New Jersey segment of the festival kicked off on Jan. 9th performances throughout the week included Ben Arnold, John Easdale, Steve Conte, James Maddock, Willie Nile, Holme, Alexis Krauss, Thomas Wesley Stern, Will Lee, Anton Fig, Suzanne Vega, Joe D'Urso, and cast members of The Sopranos.
I caught Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) frontman of Ween's show at The Saint on Jan 15th. Aaron had band mate Joe Young (Freeman) sit in with him playing guitar acoustically as well. When the curtains of The Saint drew back we were greeted by Aaron's enormous smile "I just want to say how happy I am to be playing in the LOD festival! The f@&kin Saint! We just drove in from Minneapolis, I haven't been to Asbury Park in a couple of years. Looks like there's some nice places here (pauses) oh whatever, I'm confused." Sharing a laugh with the crowd he was so comfortable and playfully goofy throughout his performance. He opens with Black Bush, power playing every chord with a huge giddy smile on his face. You could tell he was so ecstatic to have been performing for this event, he was so animated while playing and his joy flowed out with every chord.
Ween's song "Transitions," follows next playing the notes in a Spanish style "The greatest soldier that erodes all the orders, is my favorite lyric in that number" Aaron tells the audience. The majority of the crowd sang along to the next number. In the Ween song "Flutes of Chi," Aaron ends the song with a huge burp into the microphone. Then introduces Joe Young on stage with him. Joe Young is a guitarist/bassist from New York. He has a Kurt Cobain like demeanor to him he echoes a lot of Kurt's features through his music and body language. The two had amazing chemistry on stage they started to quietly tune their instruments "I'm just going to do this for a while," Aaron jokes to the crowd. Aaron and Joe goof off and have a tuning battle on stage for the highest note "Yehhhh" Aaron sighs and smiles with a laugh to the crowd.
Ween anthem "Your Party," immediately excited the crowd. Whistling along, Aaron added on to a verse "We had the best time at your party, guests were screaming!" fans screamed along with Aaron. When he finished up the number he looks out with a smile. "How you guys doing!? What's going on out there?" "The Argus," was one of my favorite numbers of the night. The lyrics were written so beautifully and poetically, the words were flowing out gracefully into the crowd. You could once again feel the love and happiness Aaron felt while on stage at this event it left me and others speechless. After he takes a sip from his Polar Seltzer and turns to Joe and thanks him with a big smile.
Aaron perks up on his seat and says "This is a song I wrote that I left off the record it's called Cops are Coming" the collaboration of the two acoustic guitars tied together geniusly suddenly it sounded as if there was a bassist on stage. "The Mollusk," was one of my other favorites of the night and I can now cross that off my bucket list of songs to see live. Aaron and Joe had a playful fast battle of guitar picking during the middle of the song. He encored with "Nature Man," and shouts "Joe!" and Joe takes it with an amazing guitar solo captivating it Spanish style. Aaron quietly says "Listen carefully (Burp)" into the microphone and begins to play Bananas and Blow after he holds up his guitar and shouts "Thank you beautiful people!" and exits behind the bar.
After Aaron Freeman, Asbury Park’s own local bluegrass band Dark City Strings came on. They picked the night away playing some originals and covers. Mandolin player Michael Byrnes takes the mic and says "A big thanks to The Saint for having us". They cover an Old Crow Medicine Show song the fiddle player Evan Fitzgerald blew me away during the number. I noticed while they were playing the talented banjoist Andrew Duch plays with a slide on his finger. The band busts out a Fleetwood Mac tune with energy excelling in their mannerisms, you could tell how thrilled they were to be playing at this event. They then broke out with "Garden State Shakedown," written by Evan. The song sounded like a bluegrass "King Crimson" almost, they had a very unique cool style to them. They are taking a break for a little bit because the fiddler player Evan has to have surgery on his finger due to a Rugby injury.
Later that night at The Saint newly formed band The Bones of LayLow Jones came on Sean Watson, Chris Fay and Kevin Kopack's latest project. They blew me away, they had a lot of various styles of sounds that they tapped into. They had hints of Railroad Earth, Jerry Garcia, The Band and a smidgen of Phish. I wondered to myself as they played just who is Laylow Jones. I spoke with Kevin and he explained to me that LayLow was Chris Fay’s nickname in college. After leaving Blue Highway’s he is finally putting La Low to rest. The lyrics of their originals were telling stories to the crowd and we loved it!
