Jeffrey Alexander + The Heavy Lidders - Captain's Bar, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, May 10, 2025
You might not think that Stoke-on-Trent would be the place to enjoy some scorching dub-psych explorations — but you'd be wrong. For about 36 minutes this past spring, Jeffrey Alexander + The Heavy Lidders got seriously dank at the Captain's Bar.
"100% all-improv set, completely on the fly," Alexander tells us. "We showed up to this 'tropical' bar in Stoke-on-Trent and immediately got in the mood. Aaron Dooley said hey let's play some dub and why not."
Great stuff, presented here in a very nice recording, capturing the Lidders — on this tour comprised of Alexander, Dooley, Drew Gardner and Scott Verrastro — in full flight. Free-form grooves, capped beautifully by an off-the-cuff Sun Ra cover. Righteous! If this puts you in the mood for more, Alexander's Bandcamp page is fully stocked with the goods — and you can subscribe for even more.
Jeffrey Alexander - right guitar, percussion, fife, vocal
Drew Gardner - left guitar
Aaron Dooley - bass
Scott Verrastro - drums, percussion
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Jeffrey Alexander is a fixture in a free-wheeling, Grateful Dead-loving, guitar jam underground, a founder of the Iditarod and Black Forest/Black Sea and a sometime member of Jackie O Motherfucker. His Direwolves splice acid folk with a buzzing, humming motoric-ness that edges near Stereolab, but his latest band, the Heavy Lidders, is pure transcendental pleasure. In her review, Jennifer Kelly noted that, “These songs take their time to loosen and relax, pursuing repetitive vamps until the edges melt away and the hard colors swirl into pastels.” Alexander is also a DJ and here he lists some of the music he spins for listeners.
For this Listed, I decided to run down some of the bootlegs and quirky things that I often play on my radio show — hope you dig it. I started doing radio back in college in the 1980s, where I was also the record librarian. The archives at the station opened me up to a myriad of sounds and new zones. Radio for me is like a new mixtape — not knowing what is going to come next… or waiting for the next mic break to try and find out the name of that killer song they played 15 minutes ago. The mystery of it all is still exciting, like remnants of pre-internet music fandom when we searched through record stores, made lists from music magazines and traded tapes. I had a spell as a commercial FM DJ on WRNR in Maryland in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until moving to San Francisco that I started my own program called Pome Pome Tones. PPT currently broadcasts Wednesdays 7-9pm Central fortnightly on www.dunebuggyradio.com. Podcasts are up at www.mixcloud.com/dwlvs.
Fairport Convention — Reno Nevada — April 27, 1968
Recorded live on the French TV program Bouton Rouge. Brooke Sietinsons of The Espers turned me on this this when we were VHS tape trading in 2000 and I’ve been retreating to it every so often for 20 years. This is Fairport at their most delightfully blinding San Francisco ballroom jamming free flight. It’s just so fucking good. I love the crisp dual vocals of Judy Dyble and Ian Matthews, I especially love that they both sit down and look so bored during the guitar jam out. Especially Judy, just like a Donna Jean icy stare. But the jam out is super nice too — modal jazzy freak-outs, some of Richard Thompson’s best ever captured on video. This takes the most boring song from my favorite Richard and Mimi Farina album to incredible new zones. I also tend to play a lot of Ian Matthews’ early 1970s records on my radio show, as well. Such a pure voice and perfect ringwear rock vibes.
The Smiths — How Soon Is Now? (Chopped + Screwed)
The chopped + screwed style coming out of Houston, TX in the late 1990s/early 2000s is so fascinating. Full-on Robitussin-fueled shamanism, it’s like the modern-day version of dub. There are so many examples of this across the spectrum, but this 10-minute chopped version of The Smiths takes the cake — probably because 16-year-old me in 1984 sat on the floor listening to the original version of this over and over again, studying the gatefold. But this version is so much better. Thank you Scobed + Robed.
I’m Still In Love With You (Alton Ellis, Sean Paul)
Althea + Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking is one of my all-time favorite songs, and one of John Peel’s as well. A well-worn Jamaican riddim starting with Alton Ellis in 1967 and made famous again by Marcia Aitken in 1977. DJ Algoriddim has expertly mixed together a boat load of these variations here and it’s a killer 30-minute jam.
Jon Rose – Paganini’s Last Testimony
When things get autumnal each year, I gear up for a spooky edition of my radio show. One of my favorites featured this Jon Rose piece which he originally broadcast on ABC, Australia in 1988. It’s an amazing sinister collage of bible-belt radio bits, demonic violin, and Rose reciting devilish text from Paganini’s own letters. The CD is long out of print but you can hear the entire 57 minutes of this glorious creation on an old episode of Pome Pome Tones here.
10cc — I’m Not In Love 1975 Disco Purrfection Version
12-minute remix version of a favorite song from my early childhood — unbelievably smooth mix by DJ Disco Cat. Read the comments on the YouTube post for the full mix backstory. Purrfect.
Sun Ra Arkestra — at Victoria Theater, San Francisco California — Aug 3, 2013
I’ve been super fortunate to experience the live Arkestra a handful of times, and this set from 2013 simply floored me. They completely consumed that old ratty theater space with their magical floating power.
Dire Wolves — at Festival of Endless Gratitude, Copenhagen Denmark — Sep 13, 2019
Live DWLVS ! Yeah, I play my own music on my radio show all the time, somebody has to. This is a short rough audience clip — the proper audio of the whole set was released on LP by Feeding Tube / Cardinal Fuzz with a fabulous poster.
Flow & Heady by Dire Wolves Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band
Copenhagen 2019 was the last time I saw these DWLVS bandmates in person, but we have plans to meet up again at the Milwaukee Psych Fest November 19-20, 2021, unless ya all spreadnecks shut it down.
Chuck Brown and The Junkyard Band — at Wilmer’s Park, Brandywine Maryland — Sep 19, 1989
I grew up in Baltimore and spent a lot of time going to punk and hippie shows in DC (old 9:30, DC space) in the 1980s, but Wilmer’s Park in southern MD was totally the place. All-day and night go-go shows, mini festivals with overnight camping, shows from Hot Tuna, Zero, Allmans, Root Boy Slim (!!!) and some of the best BBQ I’ve eaten, oh man. There was a lot of crossover of punk/funk/crunchy scenes back then, I loved it all. I went to a lot of Trouble Funk gigs, but this was the only time I witnessed the legendary Chuck Brown.
Alice Coltrane — at Palace of Culture, Warsaw Poland — Oct 23, 1987
Harp solo during her appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in 1987. Perfect, transportive.
Bardo Pond — What Are Their Names?
Probably the greatest band of the last 30 years covering one of my absolute favorite David Crosby songs, what could be better? I curated this Terrastock festival in Providence RI in 2006 and assembled a CD compilation of some of the performers for a micro release on the label I used operate called Secret Eye. The original features Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Phil Lesh (what an amazing LP!) and this Bardo version somehow channels that essence in a slow fried perfect hash jar tempo.
Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders — S-T (Arrowhawk)
Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders by Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders
These are languid, spectral grooves, anchored in folk and blues but allowed to spin off into the distance. Slow, haunted choruses float free of a jangling, acoustic base, little flares of blues-bent notes going off in the margins. These songs take their time to loosen and relax, pursuing repetitive vamps until the edges melt away and the hard colors swirl into pastels. The Heavy Lidders — even the band name promises sleepy dissolution — are a new configuration made up of West Coast outfolker Jeffrey Alexander, plus Elkhorn’s Jesse Shepard and Drew Gardner and Kouhoutek’s Scot Verrastro on drums. Guests including Marissa Nadler, Pat Gubler, Rosali and Ryley Walker drummer Ryan Jewell stop by to join the jams.
Alexander is a fixture in a free-wheeling, Grateful Dead-loving, guitar jam underground, a founder of the Iditarod and Black Forest/Black Sea and a sometime member of Jackie O Motherfucker. The last time we caught up with him, he was fronting Direwolves, a nouveau folk-jam outfit shading gently into kraut-y propulsion. In my review of the 2019 album Grow Toward the Light, I wrote that, “Instrumental parts intersect and converse at a muted volume; there is a weightless, airy open-ness to these grooves, so that you can nearly feel a sun-tipped breeze blowing through.” This new one lives in a shadier, more melancholic space, evoking whispery acid folk artists like Matt Valentine in his Neil Young phase, acoustic 6 Organs and Sore Eros.
Here, in long, drifting originals like “Audubon Trooper,” luminous textures unfurl, a slow roll of percussion with icy shards of vibraphone filtering in, nodding cadences of bass and spiraling mandalas of guitar. Nature is a primary inspiration for Alexander. He sings about trees here with a worn-in familiarity. Yet though trees are trees, they also stand in for something deeper and more significant, as does music, as does life itself. Alexander finds hidden resonance in plain words, uncanny echoes in wholly recognizable instrumental tones. Everything is itself. Everything stands in for the infinite.
“Dark Ships in the Forest” is somewhat more straightforward, with a forthright rock drum beat with the push of bass behind it. The lyrics recount natural and human-made disaster—fires burning out of control, children in cages—in a grounded, realistic way. And yet, even here, in a dense, full-band, rock arrangement, there’s a mist of the unordinary hanging over. Even ripped from the headlines, the song carries a sense of mystery.
A couple of covers hint at where Alexander comes from. He takes on “Black Peter,” from the Grateful Dead’s 1969 back-to-folk-basics album Workingman’s Dead (surely it’s not coincidental that this is the one with a song called “Dire Wolf”). His version is even more pared back and slouchy than the original. It moves at a mournful crawl, undulating guitar licks twisting off into bent notes. Nadler shadows Alexander’s tripped out vocals in a high, pure, distant soprano, sending a shiver through the mix. The music seems to hardly move at all; it has the stillness of a hot day at noon, asphalt throwing heat mirages into the air. Later, Alexander revisits Gene Clark’s “Strength of Strings,” from the 1974 album No Other. Clark’s version was massively orchestrated with a huge choir, piano and strings. Alexander’s is far more reticent, lit by eerie, jazzy bits of vibraphone, his wavering voice bolstered, just a bit, by airy female backing vocals. If Clark blew up his mystic vision into an all-hands showstopper, Alexander lets his flicker in the twilight, inviting listeners in but very gently. If you like your campfire singalongs quiet, contemplative and with ghosts flitting through the branches overhead, this record is for you.
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An ever-mutating group, Dire Wolves (Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band) describe their activities as “a sound of ecstatic improvisation.” They explore the confluence of psychedelic rock and free music, rambling through kosmiche rhythms and formless jazz, sometimes during the same spontaneously-created piece. Band leader Jeffrey Alexander previously participated in Black Forest/Black Sea and The Iditarod, and has played with Jackie-O Motherfucker for several years. With both a new Dire Wolves album (reviewed here) and a new solo release this summer, it’s a fine time to get his set of “ten musical things that have made me what I am, I think”:
Warner Brothers loss leaders comps
Especially The Big Ball, which was the first one I got, had a huge impact on my pre-teen brain. Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Pentangle, Pearls Before Swine, Neil Young, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley, Jethro Tull, Incredible String Band, wow the list goes on and on. As a little wannabe-punk obsessed with all things SST, these collections expanded my ears to folk and classic rock, and continue to inform my record buying and listening habits to this day, some 40 years on.
Pearls Before Swine and Tom Rapp—For the Dead In Space
For The Dead In Space by Various
More specifically, Pearls Before Swine and Tom Rapp. I went down this rabbit hole in a major way in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Sometimes things just get under your skin, I guess. Delicate and truly psychedelic. I collected everything I could find and even recorded my own cover versions. Then I decided to ask others to do the same: projects that I worked on for years, and one of the things I’m most proud of. I turned my friend Marissa onto PBS and recorded her version of this track (her debut release) as part of these tribute albums.
Kate Bush—Hounds Of Love
A friend of mine in high school art class gave me a cassette of Hounds Of Love when it was first released. We listened to it while sculpting and painting that entire semester. I still have that same piece of plastic, although it sounds like it’s been underwater lately.
Lau Nau—Painovoimaa, valoa
I met Lau Nau on my first tour of Finland in 2004. She crafts some of the finest music of our times, deeply personal and hypnotic with subtle textures. I’m amazed and honored that she has been part of Dire Wolves these past few years.
Spires That In The Sunset Rise—“Wide Awake”
I first stumbled upon them at a camping music festival on a Wisconsin farm, also in 2004, and I was simply floored! I ended up releasing 3 of their albums (and 2 Ka Baird solo discs) on my now-defunct record label. Haunting and timeless music, played with perfection. Like Laura, Taralie and Ka are incredible improvisers with excellent ears and I’m equally amazed and honored that they have also recently been collaborating with Dire Wolves. We are not worthy.
WHFS
I can’t forget the radio station that I grew up with in Maryland. Totally free-form, deep cuts, far-out progressive. Improvisational radio is just like playing improv music – it doesn’t always work, but when it’s ON there is nothing better. I listened to this station every single day and on headphones on my newspaper bike delivery route. WHFS absolutely warped my brain, no question! And in the early ‘90s I even took a job as the M-F graveyard shift overnight DJ on Jake Einstein’s new station WRNR, after he sold HFS.
Flo + Eddie—By the Fireside
Speaking of radio, I have to include Flo + Eddie. Their ‘70s show By The Fireside was an amazing hodgepodge of sounds; they cut off records indiscriminately, were obviously totally wasted and having a ball. And just look at them here on German TV! Freaks living the dream.
Alice Coltrane—Journey In Satchidananda
The best. I return to her albums probably more than any others: profoundly moving. And of course Pharaoh Sanders wow!
Urdog—”Zombie Cloud”
I moved to Providence, RI in 1997 and stayed for ten years. I feel very lucky to have been part of an extremely special time/space for some incredible happenings/art/music/adventures. So many wonderful artists came to study at RISD and Brown and many moved into cheap, busted Olneyville warehouses, put on masks, and the rest is history. Urdog – a trio of guitar/farfisa/drums – was one of the best of the lot. I had the privilege of traveling with them across Europe in 2005, playing with bands like Sunn, Boris and Träd Gräs.
Träd, Gräs och Stenar—Gardet Fest, Stockholm 1970
Speaking of which – yes of course! Träd, Gräs och Stenar. Everything I love about about choogle and kosmische and free-spirited groove all rolled into one. My absolute favorite is their set at the Gardet Fest, Stockholm 1970. Here’s a great Swedish documentary (TGoS feature at the end of part 1 and into part 2).
The Dead—Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA, 10-9-89
Finally, I must mention The Dead, again. I traveled in a campervan across the country for several years on that trip. Here’s a Dark Star from Hampton VA in 1989. It was the first DS in many years (and my first), not to mention Drums>Space>Death Don’t (holy wow) but this video is especially great for me to actually view, as I was in the tapers section watching my levels. But we were all on another planet. After the Attics encore (again, wowow) the venue put up the house lights and the crowd refused to leave. Howling! Grateful Dead combine everything for me - trad folk, blues, jazz, improv … transportive ecstatic music, totally in the moment. Like I said earlier, when it’s ON...
