American Aquarium kicked off the second leg of their Fear of Standing Still tour with Ken Pomeroy opening in Little Rock, Arkansas and Americana Highways was there.
Perhaps many readers can relate. Maybe you have a few favored bands you’ve seen a lot. Maybe it’s been thirty times or more. From show to show, the setlist changes a little. At certain shows there may be a couple extra songs in the encore. A certain mood may reveal a story you haven’t heard before.
This would accurately describe the approach of American Aquarium on tour. It’s not a cookie-cutter operation. And then, there is that show which goes further. It’s that show you wait to witness. This describes American Aquarium’s stop at Revolution Music Room.
And why not Little Rock? This is one of a few primary towns American Aquarium cut their early musical teeth. It’s the home of the Last Chance Records label where this band and John Moreland released some of their early work.
And let’s not forget a smaller venue not far away, the White Water Tavern. It’s a favorite of so many traveling musicians. Once in a while, American Aquarium, now an outsized band for the legendary spot, will book a show, threatening to pop the seams of the joint.
So there’s history and energy to a show stop for American Aquarium in Little Rock.
It would turn out, Little Rock provided the book ends for this second tour leg. American Aquarium announced a popup show at WWT to close out these string of shows. This was learned by Americana Highways just before interviewing BJ Barham at the Revolution Music Room. Little Rock is a modest drive from Oklahoma City when facing a daily driving limit for operating the tour bus.
The band starts out the evening with the fast tempo full-body experience of hard drum thumps, a deep bass line, reverberating guitar strums, pedal steel twangs and the hum of the keys on “Crier” from 2024’s The Fear of Standing Still.
It’s remarkable, ten albums in as a band, to have a song from the latest album carrying the weight of introducing a set and standing with established standards.
The tempo eases up with Burn.Flicker.Die‘s “Cape Fear River” and starts with a guitar whine and later we get to hear fantastic pedal steel licks.
BJ Barham is sure-footed and playful as ever on stage with the band during this autobiographical song about where he came from and getting out of small town ambition.
Then the audience gets a slow down in the tempo. The intro piano signals there will be an audience sing-along, for those who have learned these show ropes. It’s “Long Haul” from 2020’s Lamentations. It’s a song about perseverance after embracing sobriety.
With the signature change later with the outro, this is where we see a little more bounce than normal in Barham’s steps as he moves and strums about the stage.
Then comes another sing-along. Arguably it’s one of the core three songs (if you want to argue, then say, five songs) indispensable to an American Aquarium setlist. “Casualties” is about the indelible affects of constant touring.
Those telltale strums begin and in a few moments the band, and the crowd, all break loose.
A big surprise from the stage antics is some kicks like I’ve never seen before from Barham. You might conclude he’s been practicing to become the first pearl snap Rockette. This was quite the shocker.
The crowd is on a roll with more singing to Small Town Hymns, the title song from the 2010 album.
Things ease up because of the slower pace of “Jacksonville.” Keys find a place to emerge prominently in the mix. A catchy transition with the guitar fret work gives way to a sped up drum beat and the crowd is jazzed.
Then the catchy and soothing repeating guitar riffs of “Cherokee Purples” follow. The song is about memories with a grandmother and those memories are triggered by his favorite heirloom tomato sandwiches made in her kitchen (with Duke’s mayonaise).
Once during 2024’s Roadtrip to Raleigh weekend, BJ Barham says his wife suggested he write a song about these heirloom tomato sandwiches which he loves so much.
Following a song of memories, there is the driving and anthemic “The World Is On Fire” from 2020’s Things Change. It’s a dystopian yet hopeful song.
The state of the world and domestic US politics create deep concerns. Because the album was recorded a few months before the birth of a daughter, Barham looks to the future brightly for the possibility of a change in direction. Marvelous, resonating guitar licks fill in the space between the verses. And this is a song where Rhett Huffman’s organ sonics soar.
When Barham climbs on the raised platform where the drum kit rests, there is an extended roar from the crowd.
The show transitions with Barham discussing lessons he had to learn in the last couple years which resulted in the song “The Curse of Growing Old” from the 2024 album.
A lesson came from talking with his grandma (who made it to 93-years-old).
The family went all out on her 91st birthday and rented out the backroom of the Golden Corral. This included the flowing chocolate fondue machine. Barham said his grandma looked miserable.
“‘You know what I had to go through to get to 91?’“ she asked. “‘Lost friends, family, the love of her life,’ everyone she knew. She had to pay that price to know me and meet my child (Pearl),” Barham told the crowd.
Barham was telling the crowd that time with people is a precious commodity. And, the thought occurred, if your’re looking for happiness, perhaps don’t go chasing chocolate wonderfalls.
Fingers dance along the keyboard competing with the slide and plucks of steel just beneath the bass line on “Before the Dogwood Blooms.” Toward the end you hear the keys elevate in ambience just before the last lyric line is sung
“Losing Side of Twenty-Five” has lots of word for word reciters on this song at shows and in Little Rock it’s no exception. The angst of the expectations transitioning out of young adulthood resonated with fans and brought many more into the fold with this song from Wolves in 2015. For some of us now, that struggle is nostalgia. Some nice guitar twangs thread the song with a steady drum pattern driving it along.
Then the band bounces right into the title song from Wolves with delay and reverb on Shane Boeker’s string work in the interlude to that brief moment where it’s only Barham’s vocals. The everyone in the band slaps it leading to a sweep of steel which trails at the end.
The band follows with a song about a “glorious mistake” with a woman met at the White Water Tavern. “Rattlesnake” is filled with fancy key work, jabs of guitar, and some fast fingers on the pedal steel guitar.
The song closes with Barham’s exaggerated sibbilance (song recording-speak for the hissing sound on the “s” consonant in “rattlesnake”) and organ notes trail to close the song.
“Messy as a Magnolia” comes next. The song is inspired by a seasonal view BJ Barham has looking out his window. He draws a comparison to a dysfunctional time is his life and there is a love in his life to see it through. The song has a steady beat and is heavy on the bass drum. When the song hits its highest elevation, the audience is cheering
Hardly skipping a beat, the band shuffles into “Tough Folks”. Fast fingers start on the bass by Alden Hedges.
Midway, Barham takes a moment to pause on the vocals and gives plaudits to show opener Ken Pomeroy. She draws a big audience reaction.
“I don’t what they’re putting in the water in Tulsa Oklahoma. Some of my favorite songwriters are there,” Barham said.
The band dives deeper into the song catalogue for “Bigger in Texas” which appears on the 2008 Bones EP. There are some pleasing sweeps of steel by Neil Jones as well and the strings work by Shane Boeker on his red Gibson.
The next song will always get your attention quick because the heavy booms on the drum kit by Ryan Van Fleet start it out. That complements the bass strum and the deeper notes of the electric guitar on “The Luckier You Get.”
There’s memorable riffing, a sweep of the neck and then the drum beat suddenly changes to make the transition to… “Wichita Falls” That great instrumental build up primes the audience to participating in the song.
Another vital song to a set is “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart.” It’s about the hope for karma on an ex-lover who caused heartbreak.
Organ play punches after BJ retreats briefly from the stage followed by his return being front and center with his acoustic guitar. There are moments Barham is at the stage edge as the audience shouts out the lyrics he’s singing. Barham raises his guitar high in center moments and the audience has their hands up at this music revival.
Next is arguably the song which saved the band in 2012, “Burn.Flicker.Die.”
The sound is centered by the deep drum beat with the other instruments around it bleeding in.
There’s super shredding on the electric guitar, lickety-split steel slides and bass thumping in the outro. The crowd explodes with applause at the close of the regular set.
The encore begins with serious talk from BJ Barham. “It’s just as depressingly sad, I promise you. I played it for the first time the last time when I was here,” Barham announces to the Little Rock crowd. The band has departed so a Barham solo.
“One of the hardest things I’ve written about is something me and my wife went through – a miscarriage in 2016.”
And you think, “Everyone else is having kids. Why can’t we have kids.”
“Something flipped inside me when she told me we were going to have a kid. It broke us both when we got the news at the appointment. We’re so open but then a wall developed up between us because we couldn’t talk about it.”
”It took a lot of patience and time. It’s the only song I’ve asked my wife for permission to write because
It wasn’t just my story to tell. It was our story to tell.
Her only requirement was to be brutally honest.”
Relieving the tension of the moment, Barham says, “It’s easier now that we have a six-year-old heathen.”
In “Chicamacomico” there’s reference to a nursery room that’s not going to get used (this time).
Barham is visibly affected by the song. Light breaks are heard in his voice and this is where discretion is used not to take any photos.
The full band reassembled for what will be the last song of the night which is “Me + Mine (Lane actions) from 2022’s Lamentations
Pleasing delay sets the guitar style play. With “Me + Mine” there is lament about lost jobs and empty promises from politicians. It’s a critique of the American Dream. Guitar and steel increase in volume. The outro is Barham’s guitar strums and vocals and the cymbals shimmer.
While BJ gives well wishes to the crowd the band shifts to an instrumental and he steps off as the band continues a moment.
There’s electric guitar mania and a human drum machine. The keys get a solid workout. The band is in deep dive mode on the instruments which is exhilarating for the crowd as this outro comes to a finish.
After the show, the printed setlist reveals “Chicamacomico” wasn’t original planned. The details of that change are revealed in the interview which occurred after all the band packed up and the merch was being loaded in the belly of the bus.
It was fantastic the Revolution Music Room hosted a barn burner of a show. The interview which followed is usually the last thing done after a show, so many thanks go to the attentive and cooperative staff.
KEN POMEROY
Unless you saw her at Holiday Hangout at White Water Tavern in December 2023, or opening some shows for Willi Carlile early in 2024, chances are Ken Pomeroy’s opening set for American Aquarium was a first.
She starts out the set with “Paradelita” which appears in an episode of Reservoir Dogs. Hollers of approval abound from the crowd.
Next, Pomeroy sings about her “badass dog” immortalized in “Wrango.” He’s an adopted stray.
Her vocals carry superbly in the downtown Little Rock venue. A listening room has assembled.
The double acoustic solos of Ken Pomeroy and Dakota McDaniel together in the outro make a beautiful ending.
Pomeroy tells the crowd she’s been writing songs longer than she hasn’t been.
”I started writing poems to get the feelings out,” she said. She starts playing “Gray Skies” which she wrote at she 13.
Her strums and Dak’s finger picking style make a beautiful sonic compliment
The strums are harder in the closing moments and there is loud applause which follows from the audience.
Then she decides to play an untitled song publicly for the first time at the Revolution Music Room.
It could possibly be titled “The Devil’s Hiding in the Bible Belt” since those lyrics repeat twice in the song.
“It’s not really a religious song,” Pomeroy says.
Maybe it’s things not seen. If you know Oklahoma, there’s pockets of fervor and drug use.”
As a metaphor she sings “There’s coyotes outside” and she hits a higher vocal range which results in an approving roar from the crowd.
In 2023, she opened for bluegrass legend
Ricky Skaggs. She used to be in a bluegrass band and knows his standards. And we learn her indigenous name means “Little Wolf.”
Pomeroy starts on “Coyote” which is a song she released two years ago. It starts with a slow solo strum and her vocals. Midsong, McDaniel adds some light guitar accents. Her rhythmic strum increases with the complement of McDaniel taking strumming steps up the guitar neck.
Pomeroy tells the crowd about her more recent timeline. To get herself out there, she did an opening set for Todd Snider for no pay. She took a hardware store job for a few months to make ends meet. After opening shows for Willi Carlile, she decided to step out and actively tour. “We can do this.”
Pomeroy then shifts to a song about someone she met at a Des Moines show who was blackout drunk. The song is titled “Rodeo Clown” and, on this, Dak does slide on electric guitar.
A vibrating guitar hum from McDaniel shifts to some cosmic moments in the outro.
Pomeroy tells the crowd she has had adult-sized feeling as a kid and she “loves her mom as she is.”
On “Stranger” it’s about a lot of traumatic things. She performs it solo acoustic. If you don’t know it ahead of time, the opening verse will make your eyes well up with tears: “The wind keeps hitting me like my mother used to.”
After the song she expresses that “I haven’t cried in front of myself, let alone anyone else.” There’s a moment when she thinks she cried in front of people at a recording studio, like it just happened unprepared.
The Revolution Music Room is definitely a listening room during this set. Thankfully with the deeply personal subject matter Pomeroy delivers, over in a back corner by the bar, there is barely a touch of chatter.
During the pandemic, Pomeroy spent two months in Montana. Before starting the next song “Flannel Cowboy” she thanks the crowd for being quiet during the lighter parts. It’s mid tempo with double acoustic play. Pomeroy holds some long notes on soaring vocals and after the closing strums there is extended applause from the crowd.
Pomeroy closes with the song “Cicadas” which went viral on Reddit and first got her attention to a larger audience. “I’m thankful for what this song brought.”
“Cicadas” She changes up her vocal pitch –
“Cicadas crying out to me…”
While Ken and Dakota are both playing the same rhythmic guitar style, her voice is clearly the main instrument on this song.
Pomeroy’s set gets much respect from the Little Rock crowd and she receives an American Aquarium level of applause. Find more information here on her website: https://www.kenpomeroymusic.com
Enjoy our interview with BJ Barham: BJ Barham Discusses 10 Years Of Moving Forward On Standing Still Tour
Stay up to date on American Aquarium on their website here: http://www.americanaquarium.com
SETLIST
American Aquarium
November 1, 2024
Crier
Cape Fear River
Long Haul
Casualties
St. Mary’s
Jacksonville
Cherokee Purples
The World Is On Fire
The Curse of Growing Old
Before the Dogwood Blooms
Losing Side of Twenty-Five
Wolves
Rattlesnake
Messy as a Magnolia
Tough Folks
Bigger in Texas
The Luckier You Get
Wichita Falls
I Hope He Breaks Your Heart
Burn.Flicker.Die
ENCORE:
Chicamacomico
Me + Mine (Lamentations)
