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"The Other Side of the Bear" is TT's Monday night acoustic series: small, quiet, and soothing. Clayton Scoble is playing guitar and singing as I arrive, with someone (I missed the introduction.) helping out on light drums and backing vocals. They do a mixture of originals and covers, and the songs are good Monday-night songs, mellow and relaxing. I'm not crazy about the guitar; either some of these songs have a tonal structure that's weirder than I can follow, or it's just out of tune, and on some songs it seems kind of labored, as if there are normally more people playing these songs and he's trying to get too much of what the band does out of one guitar. But the highlight here is the singing. Whether singing in octaves, as they do on one song, or in lovely harmonies on most of them, the gruff baritone and lightweight tenor add up to way more than the sum of the parts.
Ad Frank headlines solo. He is an incredibly gifted songwriter, turning out one gorgeous, bittersweet pop epic after another. Ad's voice is pretty rough tonight, but his piano playing is just beautiful, spare and delicate and intensely musical. He doesn't actually play keyboards with his band, The Fast, Easy Women, presumably because that would inhibit his sassy front-man swagger, so it's a treat to hear this set. The covers that he chooses fit really well with his songs, and we get one great new tune that elicits heartfelt murmurs of approval from the audience--the "Other Side of the Bear" equivalent of a standing ovation. In mid-set he switches to guitar for a few songs, then back to piano for the big finish. He threatens to end with a fairly faithful cover of "What I Did For Love," but fortunately follows that up with an upbeat rocker of a Fast, Easy Women tune that sounds great in this stripped-down setting.
