January 22, 2009 – Berkeley, California: Rubber Souldiers live at Ashkenaz. Three guys in front, Lorin Rowan, David Gans and Chris Rowan, singing their hearts out and throwing down the jam. It’s the Beatles catalog, songs everybody knows, but this is different. This is deconstruction– shifting time signatures, riffs morphing into improvised rivers of tone, a hail of electric guitars join mandolins where pianos once played, but always that great singing. This is the Rowan Brothers folks, with their new brother David, and those boys got the pipes. The audience is up and dancing four bars into the first song, the driving Dr. Robert. Rubber Souldiers they are, and plenty of 1965 is here: Girl, The Word, Norwegian Wood. N-Wood shows what this band can do, departing from the original but always finding the handle again and giving us our Beatle kicks. Zac Matthews, late of Hot Buttered Rum, joined in here, in fact wrote the arrangement, and lays in some ripping mando leads along with brother Lorin. As the night grew deeper, darker, we felt the mood expand, and by the time they came through with the cosmic Day Tripper to close out the evening, we knew we had seen the beginning of something big.
Souldiers captured at Ashkenaz 1/22/09
