Has it really been four years since I’ve seen a band playing indoors? Time flies when you’re having fun. According to this very site, the last club gig I saw was my neighbor’s blues cover band, The Unrepentant Heathens, at the skankiest dive bar I’d seen yet in nearly 20 years of Asheville residency. But with a trip to Europe looming large in about five weeks, when I saw last week that Tony Levin’s crack band Stick Men were playing at The Grey Eagle on February 28th, I thought, “I might as well go.” Sooner or later I’ve got to get out of my cocoon. It’s not as though I don’t rock a top quality N95 everywhere I go for the last three years.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I have been wanting to see Stick Men for…ever since their formation in 2007. I’ve wanted to see Stick Men since Robert Fripp had retired and had tabled King Crimson. I’ve wanted to see Stick Men since Fripp reformed King Crimson and toured an amazing 7-8 member lineup [also featuring Levin with drummer Pat Mastelotto] for five to seven years as interrupted by the pandemic. And as of this month, I still wanted to see Stick Men! So I did.

I’ve already seen touch guitarist Markus Reuter as part of Centrozoon in 2016. Now I got to see him in context with his Stick Men cohorts, Levin + Mastelotto. And the show was a seated show with tickets a scanty $30 + [minor] eTix fees. What’s not to love? My neighbor Jacob agreed to fill in for my wife who decided not to attend. I was kind of surprised when she asked me to get her a ticket, honestly. Being of good company and taste, it was pleasing to attend a show with him.

We hit the merch first and I was going to buy either their first CD or their latest, ‘Tentacles.” My neighbor opted for a shirt and he bought me a copy of the latter so “Stick Men” it was! I see now that the OOP CD is selling for a mid two figures on Discogs, but apparently the band’s merch guru found a cache so it was my lucky night in more ways than one! The preshow music was good; heavy on the Brian Eno album “Another Day On Earth,” which was my wife’s most listened to album of the noughts. I knew the opening act We Are As Ants To Them, since that was the performing aspect of Andre Cholmondeley. I’d met Andre at the David Torn concert at a Streamside Studios house concert some years ago. As Andre, he’s guitar tech to many famous names of the largely Prog world, and he was at that gig probably as Torn’s guitar tech as much as being the audience in that intimate gig. As We Are As Ants To Them, he’s a performer using modular synths and vocal looping to proffer “audio responses to frayed nerves in a mad mad world.” Andre did a sampled/musique concréte presentation in four movements. Each distinct but essentially improvised in the moment.

After his brief set, Stick Men wasted no time in coming to the stage and starting the show with the birdlike sibilance that any Crim-Head recognizes immediately as “Lark’s Tongues In Aspic Pt. 2.” I knew that Stick Men didn’t shy away from playing Crim Canon in their concerts. It’s always a pleasure hearing Crimson members reinterpret the music of the band they contributed to, but opening with a climactic number like that one seemed to deliberately play against expectation. Indeed, Tony Levin admitted such after the song. Talking about how the tune usually worked as a set closer but they were deliberately shaking up any paradigms. I guess all those decades of playing with Robert Fripp rubbed off!

After that curve ball, the band dove into their own material, and pretty much stayed there for half of the show. I’ve seen Kind Crimson in large PACs and theaters, with their 2003 show at The Orange Peel being the most intimate of climes I’d seen the band play in, but The Grey Eagle was even more intimate. It offered a change to see players like Tony Levin very up close and personal, and I could only marvel at how little Tony had aged in his appearance in the 44 years I have been paying attention to him! But appearances of a Dorian Grey nature weren’t why we were there that evening!

We were there to hear some hot players 20 feet away giving up some complex music. The joy of Markus Reuter and Tony Levin in a band was that on their respective instruments, they were capable of swapping off rhythm and melody at will. And with Pat Mastelotto throwing down a wide variety of time signatures to knit it all together, that meant that the bands mocha swirl of Art Rock with dustings of Jazz went a long way towards slaking that thirst for accomplished music that didn’t begin to pander. Though I did feel that while moments of intensity such as with “Danger In The Workplace” were provided, the music shied away from the punishing side of the Crimson sound. There were more moments of beauty here.

One interesting aspect of the show was that between every song, each of the members would address the audience and say something about what had been played and what was coming up next. None of them were shrinking violets, but Pat Mastelotto, was obviously the sardonic humorist of the band. He related how the still-forming song they were going to play at one point was going to be called “Voodoo,” which he had told Tony Levin, was as tired a title as one could imagine in rock. So by the time they finally record it, it may have an alternate moniker.

At the show’s midpoint they pulled out a surprising treat from the background of Mr. Levin. They played a track from Robert Fripp’s “Exposure” magnum opus! The added “Breathless” to the show and I was overjoyed at the chance to hear a track, any track, from “Exposure” once more. King Crimson had done it the time I saw them in 29017, but that’s been quite a while ago. Hearing Mr. Reuter playing Frippmusik only underscored how much he had learned from The Headmaster during his time in Fripp’s Guitar Craft classes.

At the back end of the evening they pulled out another King Crimson piece and when I heard “Level Five” beginning, I imagined that this was the symmetrical bookend of the night’s show. As the track may well have been called “Lark’s Tongues In Aspic Part 5” in an alternate universe. This indeed was the case but after the band took their bows they didn’t bother leaving the stage and went right back to their instruments for the encore, a King Crimson song from “Discipline” that I’d never heard live, the shimmering, elusive “Sheltering Sky! Hearing Mr. Reuter ascending up the scales of that one was a treat. What a beautiful number to close out a show. The set list below tells all.

Stick Men @ The Grey Eagle 2-28-24

• Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two
• Ringtone
• Hide the Trees
• Tentacles
• Horatio
• Voodoo
• Cusp
• Breathless
• Mantra
• Danger in the Workplace
• Swimming in T
• Prog Noir
• Level Five
• The Sheltering Sky

With last Summer’s Adrian Belew visit, it was gratifying to hear further music from the King Crimson wing of Art Rock. Belew often plays in Asheville, but this was only the second time Stick Men have come. The first time had been a little too soon for me to be attending a club show a couple of years ago. It’s good to see them here again since this town is definitely a Crimson Stronghold. When I moved here in 2000, every record store had a fat King Crimson section the likes of which I had not seen before in Florida. Stick Men are still on the road for a few more dates, so if you have the urge to scratch that Crimsonoid itch, the band will still be playing in the Southeast for the next week or so.

STICK MEN | More In ’24 Tou

• 2 Mar | Live Wire | Athens, GA
• 5 Mar | Underbelly | Jacksonville, FL
• 6 Mar | Cage Brewing | St. Petersburg
• 8 Mar | Cruise to the Edge | Miami, Jamaica, Grand Cayman

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