Performance: Bob Wiseman, "Actionable"

Bob Wiseman — "Actionable"

Summerworks Festival (Factory Studio Theatre). Saturday, August 15, 2009.

Me and Bob Wiseman have a history.

In fact, Bob Wiseman meant — means, I guess — a lot to me. One of the first musicians I dug when I realized that music wasn't just on cassettes and on MuchMusic, pretty much the first time I came to really dig someone through seeing them live.

First time I saw him would be in '92, I guess, if I'm doing the math right. Winnipeg. Went to The Spectrum¹ to see Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet — which, given they did the music for Kids in the Hall made them about the coolest thing under the sun in my book. Tour support were Huevos Rancheros who had their own take on the instrumental twang-rock thing. There was another opener, who didn't fit in that mold at all, but who suddenly had the dancefloor full of people sitting on the floor, watching raptly as a guy played his keyboards and sung his strange little songs.

A couple months later, I came across one of his albums, used, and bought it on a whim. And it hooked me. And after that, every time he came to town, I went to see Bob Wiseman. He'd stop in Winnipeg pretty frequently, because of family ties, so there were a good string of shows — some with band, some solo — that were different every time. Often filled with new, not-yet-released material, sometimes with more banter than songs, these shows were among the ones that taught me that going to a gig wasn't just like listening to the album, but louder.

So I was really into Bob Wiseman. I remember when "Accidentally Acquired Beliefs" came out, in '95. I put on my Bob Wiseman t-shirt (oh, yes!) and strolled down to the music store to go get a copy. And I especially remember a couple of shows at the Blue Note Café, summer of '96, with a new and totally kick-ass band that played what was to me at the time the best show I'd ever seen in my life — so good that I went back the next night to see them play the same set again and was equally blown away.

And then things changed in my life and I moved to a different city and didn't have the time or money to go looking for live shows any more. And I thought less about Bob. Our drift was probably exacerbated by the fact that after '97's More Work Songs from the Planet of the Apes there was a long gap between studio albums, and Bob became "something I used to listen to". But still, he wasn't entirely absent: after I bought my guitar and tried to learn how to operate it, the first song that I realized I knew the chords to, without having to look them up online but just from listening to the song as I was walking down the street, was Bob's "10,000 Miles".

And when, a few years ago, a lengthy recording hiatus ended with some new stuff on Blocks I bought the albums, but kinda kept my distance from his live shows for some reason, maybe figuring that anything I saw now couldn't live up to my memories.

It's against that background that I went to see Bob's show, "Actionable", at the Summerworks Festival.² Graduating from the music programme (in which he appeared last year) to the stage side of things, Bob hasn't so much changed his show (from what I can gather) as much as the context in which he's delivering it. His monologues and songs (on guit, key and accordion) were accompanied by video projections to create a multimedia happening that managed to feel like more than a gig — but perhaps also less like a fully-conceived theatre piece.

Which didn't particularly bother me too much, seeing as I was there for the music. Playing old and new songs, Bob played both some of his "actionable" songs that had resulted in layers' missives being sent his way ("Have a Nice Day", about notorious Canadian lawyer Douglas Christie, "Rock and Tree" about the political connections behind the 1973 Chilean coup³) as well as songs about love and confusion ("The Disappearing Trick", "Who Am I?").

Although it's outside my specific knowledge to go on too much about the qualities of this as a piece of live theatre, I found it interesting to put myself in the place of someone who might have come to this knowing nothing about Bob and his music. My feeling is that though they'd find some entertainment here from the songs and the thought put into the presentation, there'd also might be a sense of frustration at the lack of a dramatic arc through the whole thing. Although the "actionable" concept — discussing the various times over the years that Bob's songs have been frozen in their tracks by lawsuit-fearing suits — is used as a sort of thematic linking device in the show, it remains just that — a series of stories. there's no development of dramatic tension or a sense at the end how this has affected Bob as an artist or social activist.

Listening to this set of songs also raised some additional questions that the loose narrative didn't really touch on, mostly revolving around the time-bound nature of political songs. Is the "Actionable" concept just an easy way to prolong the life of topical songs that might now otherwise feel a little dated? For example, "My Cousin Dave", Bob's epistolary paean to David Geffin, is, these days, suffering the time-lapse wilting of pretty much any pop-culture riffing — much as I delighted in the song during all those mid-90's gigs. On the other hand, some of the songs taking a longer historical view still feel cutting, including "Response of a Lakota Woman to FBI Intimidation Circa 1973 Pine Ridge"⁴. The flipside of this time-boundedness, though, is that when the songs touch on something more immediate (such as the name-naming "Cpl. Monty Robinson, Const. Gerry Rundel, Const. Bill Bentley and Const. Kwesi Millington", about the death of Robert Dziekański) it feels as if they're touching a nerve.

I was also thinking about the fact of this show as an escape pod for Bob, a means to play music to attentive, relatively eager audiences in a theatre instead of in bars, before indifferent crowds there for something else. Is this a viable approach for other musicians to take? How does this kind of situation change the dynamic between artist and audience? At this performance, the audience clapped between songs, but besides some laughter, there was less of the back-and-forth energy between stage and crowd than might be expected at a gig. Does that make it a less fulfilling gig when people are interacting less, or does the audience's very attention make up for it?

In the end, this was a worthy performance. Besides Bob's songs and engaging manner, credit is also due to Marissa Zinni, who worked behind the screen providing the live visuals (and showed off a good set of pipes on "Rock and Tree" — perhaps more backing vox are indicated?). Because this was, after all, a visual show as well as a musical one, I will provide here this link to a youtube performance⁵ in this show's style, to give a flavour of Bob interacting with the screen:

And in the end, the show also reminded me of some of the reasons that I used to dig Bob Wiseman so much in the first place — not just the songs, but the sense that this is someone I'd want to have a cup of tea with, and listen to his stories. I've changed, Bob's changed, but it's still cool. I didn't mean to stay away for so long, I guess, but welcome back, Bob.

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¹ Or was it The Pyramid then?

² I must have picked an auspicious afternoon to check the show out, as the audience was populated by some of my favourite Bob-affiliated pop stars.

³ This song was, in fact, pulled from In Her Dream, Bob's first album, by Warner records just prior to its release. But you can download that song, along with the rest of that album — and it's a good 'un, too — at the Free Music Archive.

⁴ This one was played here on the guitar but accompanied by a mournful piano line playing on the screen — a particularly effective use of the audiovisual setup. Ex post facto question: does presenting this as "theatre" rather than "music" give the artist a loophole where they don't have to argue against the old rockist critics who rant when a musician is playing in any manner that is "not live"?

⁵ True story: because I sort of felt that different rules apply to what one can "take" from a theatre performance as opposed to a gig, I felt mildly weird about sharing a recording from this show. Just to make sure I was staying on the side of the angels, I emailed Bob to see if I was stepping on any toes and he not only responded that it was okay, but sent me some youtube links in case I needed any visuals to illustrate my points. A true mensch!