Live Recap: Les Claypool with The Budos Band at Salt Shed
Someone threw up in a trashcan near the stage four songs into the opener for Colonel Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, but that didn’t put a damper on what was definitely a memorable reunion tour stop at the Salt Shed.
The crowd was more or less what I expected–an assortment of middle-aged people, some younger, about two thirds men. “White trash,” my friend assessed, although I saw some more sophisticated weirdos as well as people donning dreads.
Budos Band made for a killer first set. The band’s uncategorizable sound melded Afro-funk with hard rock and a number of other influences. Perhaps the most memorable of the group’s small army of members was Robert “Bobby” Lombardo. The drummer put his entire body–and curtain of long hair–into his congas, pausing only to run across the stage and hype up the audience. Lombardo was joined by an army of other instruments, including two trumpets and a saxophonist. The music they churned out was delightfully dissonant, yet upbeat.
Between Budos Band and the Frog Brigade, I headed to the bar for a drink, where I received a free sticker from the man ahead of me in line. I ran into him the next day and learned that he’d traveled all the way from Vegas to see Budos Band open for Les’s band. The sticker he gave me depicted a frog with strawberry-textured skin and a little leaf-and-stem hat. Frogs were, for obvious reasons, a motif throughout the evening; the venue wasn’t selling Frog Brigade’s signature amphibian hats, but several fans showed up in handmade ones—My favorite was a mother-daughter pair with foam visors, and cute little cartoonish eyes drawn on.
The Frog Brigade came out full-force with its cover of “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” a bass-heavy rendition that showcased Les Claypool’s fittingly frog-like dancey playing style. Les’s hammered out more than two hours of originals and covers, most of them a part of its regular, live arsenal. The group dedicated the middle chunk of its set to Pink Floyd’s “Animals.” The more exciting parts of the set, though, for me at least, were the Primus-adjacent tracks Les had penned himself. He donned his signature pig mask for “Precipitation,” conjuring delightfully freakish melodies from an upright, electric bass as the band played along. It was the kind of song I imagine someone would write if asked to put Animal Farm to music.
Joining Les in the Frog Brigade were a xylophonist, drummer and keyboardist in their uniform of army fatigues. Sean Lennon took his usual place as Les’s right-hand-man guitarist. Skerik was out of commission for the first leg of reunion tour due to a shoulder injury, so saxophonist Frank Catalano, whom Les stage named “Ballpark Frank” for reasons I cannot recall, filled in.
The Frog Brigade wrapped up after 11 with bouncy, funky “One Better,” a Les Original, followed by a two-song encore. After a bottleneck out of the venue across a floor crunchy with abandoned beer cups, audience members had the chance to smoke and chat outside over a venue-curated queue of hardcore 90s music. I opted to head out, passing burger and whippit vendors on my way to my car–ah, Primus fans.
Check out photos from the show below, and see where you can catch Les Claypool on tour next here.
