Concert Review – Jeffrey Gaines @ Caffe Lena 1/12/24

To write an objective review of a concert so dominated by a solo artist’s free association would be akin to capturing fireflies in a jar and screwing down the lid.

In short order, the lights would flicker out.

Jeffrey Gaines was dressed all in black clothes that he revealed were begging him to find a washing machine. He took the stage along with his black Gibson guitar, which he plays like a drum, and launched into a two-hour musical and 10-minute vocal dialogue with a sold-out crowd at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs that honored him with two standing ovations.

Then he was gone. No merch, no after-show conversations. I looked skyward after walking out, wondering if I’d catch a glimpse of his flying saucer taking him back to his hotel room to watch “Perry Mason,” “Twilight Zone,” “Mannix” and Alfred Hitchcock on MeTV until 5 in the morning.

Gaines’ songs have no verse-chorus-verse structure, and he delivers them more aggressively than on his recordings. In a venue that has a notice at each table proclaiming “Shshshshs,” keep quiet, he invited his captivated fans to hoot, holler and respond to his music. He has no set list and obviously was making last-second decisions as he launched into 21 numbers, including an announced encore that he delivered without leaving the stage and a second encore that had the entire place standing in awe.

Gaines toured with the late Richie Havens, best remembered for his impromptu invention of “Freedom,” a song he delivered as a last-minute replacement in a three-hour opening act at the first Woodstock festival in 1969. Singing the spiritual “Motherless Child,” Havens vamped it into a rhythmic mantra of “Freedom.” He burned a defining image of the psychedelic era into the minds of the masses for decades to come in that one song, but the whole experience was a lucky accident for an artist.

Freedom is what Gaines is all about: freedom from the conventions of society in both the structure and themes of his music. His recordings are “sponsored” by fans with deep pockets, and he rewards his benefactors with music that defies convention, artifice and traditional structure.

Every ounce of Gaines’ being is focused on escaping the crap that clutters our lives. Indulge me if you have a minute to tell you the story of a friend I’ll simply identify as Fred. Fred was a Marine who bridged the mote at the city of Hue in a battle that U.S. forces won but with heavy casualties 1969. He earned two Purple Hearts for his wounds, and returned home to be literally and figuratively spat upon by family and strangers.

He rode his 1950 vintage Harley to Woodstock dressed in his fatigues and fell asleep under the main stage the first day of the festival, waking up to Havens’ impassioned cry for “Freedom” in front of half a million hippies and counterculture fans. Even though he was in uniform, Fred was greeted as a friend by everyone he encountered. It’s standard protocol at music festivals everywhere. If you’re there, you’re not square. Gaines is a flag-waving deliverer of freedom — freedom from the anger and frustration that seem to permeate our lives.

Havens once described for me what freedom meant in his era. “My generation was the first generation to have gone through two things: the first generational primal scream — it was called rock ’n’ roll — and the awakening of this generation to be able to be the first generation to actually be a phenomenon of between the lines.”

Said Fred: “My bike was underneath the main performance. I laid down there. I was beat tired. I went to sleep and woke up to his opening of the festival with him doing ‘Freedom.’ I thought I’d died and went to heaven. [I said to myself] ‘What’s going on?’ This is all about me, buddy.”

Yes, Gaines did his big hit “In Your Eyes.” “That song they heard all the time on the radio wasn’t even one of mine,” he told me in an earlier interview. “So when they get to the show, there’s a lot of catching up for them like, ‘Oh, so it’s even deeper than the one we like. It’s quieter than the one we like.’ But for me that was the anomaly. Like that’s weird, and I had fun with it, but it wasn’t long enough to get hooked on it.”

Gaines is the modern descendent of Havens’ cry for freedom. Gaines is all about freedom, and his concert at Caffe Lena took us along for the ride, a wild ride by one of the most right-brained artists I’ve ever witnessed in performance.