The echoes of American music reverberate around the ornate setting of the Great American Music Hall in San Franciso.
The colourfully-historic 113-year-old venue, in the city's Tenderloin district, is reputed also to have more than a few ghosts which haunt its oakwood floor and decorative balconies.
So when punk stalwart Chuck Ragan dedicated Congratulations Joe - penned originally as a tribute - to his recently departed father in law who worked the nearby Oakland docks all his years during Saturday night's live stream with Dave Hause from the near-empty GAMH, you know this is personal. And that Joe is up there in the gods with audiences past enjoying this special one-off performance.
(Pic: Chuck Ragan, Manchester, UK; November 2019)
Over the years thousands of fans have crowded into the GAMH to enjoy live music, adding to those echoes and ghosts.
On Saturday night, punk legends Hause and Ragan took to its stage to perform a one hour and 45 minute set for devotees of the frontmen from two of the best-known bands on the scene - The Loved Ones and Hot Water Music.
Both are successful performers in their own right now, The Loved Ones having come to an early end, while Hot Water Music toured the UK last year with album anniversary shows. Either singer can command an audience in any venue.
This was a show with a difference. With just six other people in the venue due to the current covid19 restrictions in place, you could be forgiven for thinking two guys and their acoustic guitars in an albeit atmospheric venue, might not catch fire.
Lockdown has seen a series of live-from-home-via-various-streaming-platform shows. Dave Hause himself announced this show with Ragan at the end of one such performance a month or so back. Highlights so far have been Brian Fallon's one-man acoustic & piano streams and The Menzingers live from Studio Four full-band crash through their now stellar back catalogue of anthems.
The Great American Music Hall performance from two great American musicians will stand out as damn near perfection.
Streamed via Veep, of course it's not a direct replacement for standing in a crowded space with hundreds or thousands of other people, drink in hand, reacting to the music coming at you. It's a different dynamic watching a live stream - very obviously - and one this good still gives you that gut reaction that only live music can.
Everything is stripped back. Punk shows are not known for their elaborate stage set ups anyway. This is Chuck and Dave and their acoustic guitars, a couple of mics and the obligatory rug on the stage (why do performers go for stage rugs???). It's intimate - it's not standing at the barrier with the weight of the crowd at your back, but you get to be on stage, front row and in the wings all at once.
What's not stripped back, in any sense, is the power of the performance.
This is a 23-song epic set covering not just their own solo material, but songs by The Loved Ones (Pretty Good Year) and Hot Water Music (State of Grace and the anthemic Trusty Chords).
There are covers in there too, aptly spanning a wide range of influences throughout the years and genres - Brian Fallon's No Weather, Brandi Carlile's Hold Out Your Hands, Northcote's Worry, Moon Song by Patty Griffin and The Dillinger Four's fearsome and snarling The Great American Going Out of Business Sale - done by Hause on an acoustic with a nod to the fact the song was written in '98 but the themes are just as valid in 2020; the crescendo here is every bit as spat-out snarly as the breakneck speed original.
(Pic: Dave Hause, Glasgow Barrowlands; July 2018)
Some songs are duetted; their own material is picked up by each solo while the other sits on a stool watching on. Ragan says they're going to volley back and forth all night. At one point they chat about how many songs they're going to play - at mention of 40 both laugh and say they've got the kids to get back home to.
The friendship these two share is clear - even down a live stream cam. Years of tours, sharing stages and songs, performing each other's material. Both dedicated songs to their kids and Chuck's especially poignant Congratulations Joe, in memory of his father in law, adds another ghost to the venue's roll call of residents.
The vast array of material on display is specatcular. It's blue collar. It's Springsteen-esque in parts. It's punk, but it's also Americana. It speaks of toil, working hard, love lost and love found. It's political and it's personal. There are more than a few references to the Revival Tours featuring various punk, alt-country and bluegrass band, which were Ragan's brainchild around a decade ago.
What stands out is the voices. Ragan and Hause are perfect singing alone - when the sing together it's truly something else. Ragan has a roar that's like velvet coated gravel. At one point singing harmony to Hause's lead, he's standing about 5ft back from the mic and you can still hear the guy. When he let's rip, stand back. Seeing him with Hot Water Music a year ago in Manchester, he commands the stage and it's effortless. He does the same here.
When he passes singing duties to his companion, Hause just takes it and runs. Having seen him over the years on his own, with The Mermaid, headlining and supporting The Gaslight Anthem in Glasgow, he's truly become a class act. Lyrics that hit hard combined with musicianship and vocals that deliver right then left hooks consistently.
I've no idea how many people watched this show. The chatter running alongside showed people from Canada, USA, Germany and the UK. Performed at 1pm San Fran time, it was 9pm in the UK - recognising the huge fanbase that exists for both in Europe. No matter when you saw it - nobody who logged in could have failed to have been blown away by it. As the lights went down and we all logged out (the lockdown gig equivalent of lights-up and the venue team clearing away the debris as the PA plays to our deafened ears) there's no doubt this was another memorable addition to the story of the Great American Music Hall.
