Bands Grow Well in Philadelphia

By Shenelle Williams
Special to Phillyist

You know that saying…"Philly is the place between NY and DC?” Well, I’m starting to think that maybe it’s true. Waiting in a sea of cotton sweaters and wavy hair at World Live Café, the overdue arrival of Chris Thile and The How to Grow a Band was announced. When the emcee declared the woes of I-95 as being the reason for the late arrival, I assumed that perhaps a treacherous accident or icy conditions were to blame. Thile quickly set things straight. No, the band simply drove by Philly without noticing it.

“Here we have the Delaware to your left and…damn it…did we just miss Philadelphia?” If The How to Grow a Band weren’t such brilliant musicians, I would have made all sorts of assumptions about their mental capacity. The performance however made up for any lapses in navigational judgment.

How to Grow a Woman from the Ground Up is an album which appropriately returns to bluegrass roots in style but features a variety of material. Everything from Thile’s own “Watch at Breakdown” to a cover of the Strokes’ “Heart in a Cage” could be heard.

Though advertised as Chris Thile and the How to Grow a Band, Saturday night’s performance was just as much about the band as it was Chris Thile. Instrumental pieces by banjo player Noam Pikelny and Grammy Award-winning guitarist Bryan Sutton had the audience ooing, ahhing and everything in between. Each song loaded with improvisatory sections made the audience sound more like a jazz crowd in a smoke-filled night club than calm bluegrass junkies.

Different from most of his work with Nickel Creek, Thile’s original compositions were not catchy tunes. He has progressed to a different level of composition dominated by complex and ever changing harmonies. One such piece “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” a four-movement work, will be performed next month at Carnegie Hall. So I guess when you’ve made it to Carnegie, Philadelphia really is “that place south of NYC.”