Although it’s somewhat common for professional athletes to play through the pain, rarely are musicians put in a position where they need to. But that wasn’t the case last night for Bent Knee’s drummer, Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth, who like the Foo Fighter’s Dave Grohl and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, took a wrong step while leaving the stage at the Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco the night prior and fell from the stage. Gavin (and band) spent the night at the local emergency room where he was treated for a broken leg and dislocated ankle. But as the saying goes, 'the show must go on', so with roughly 12 hours of ‘rest’ since being released from the hospital in SF at 6:30am, Gavin and co. were back at it at the Art Boutiki in San Jose.
Bent Knee's Courtney Swain, Ben Levin, and Jessica Kion (Photo: Kevin Keating)
Let me back-up a bit and first admit that I’d never heard of the Art Boutiki up until I found out about the Bent Knee show, and as it turns out, it’s a local gem of the south bay! The place holds about 150-200 people and is located in the back of a comic book shop. Unless you’ve been there, I can almost guarantee that you’ve never seen anything like this place. And similar to my awareness of the Art Boutiki, I was only mildly aware of Bent Knee — first hearing of them last year when they last hit SF with a show again at the Cafe Du Nord. Unfortunately, I was out of town at that last appearance, but was luckily able to make it to to their show in San Jose last night which also featured Byzantine Talk and the Gatherers as show openers.
Bent Knee @ the Art Boutiki (Photo: Kevin Keating)
For those of you not already familiar with Bent Knee, the group’s a 6-piece genre-bending, art-rock band originally formed at the Berklee College of Music in 2009 and comprised of Courtney Swain on vocals & keyboards, Ben Levin on lead guitar and backing vocals, Jessica Kion on bass guitar and backing vocals, Vince Welch on synths and some rhythm guitar, Gavin on drums, and Chris Baum on violin and backing vocals.
Due to Gavin’s broken leg, the band was augmented with not one, but two replacement drummers for three of their kick-drum heavy songs; The Gatherers’ Adam Cichocki filled-in on “Hands-Up”, and Billy Rymer from The Dillinger Escape Plan took over on “Land Animal” and “Way Too Long”. Courtney was teary-eyed while explaining how emotional the past day had been and how moved the band was when both Adam and Billy offered to step in. In an age where performances are so scripted and exactly that, performances, it was nice to see a moment of sincerity that was punctuated with the raw passion from the rest of their set.
Bent Knee's Courtney Swain (Photo: Kevin Keating)
Ben & Jessica, together on the right side of the stage, would routinely bounce around and interact with each other as their guitar and bass parts would collide and crescendo at certain peaks within the music. And Chris, the violinist on the left side of the stage was the furthest thing from a subdued concert violinist you might expect, but was just as animated as Ben & Jessica were on the other side of the stage. And the three of them sandwiched Courtney’s ethereal vocals that soared through the Art Boutiki. Take a listen below as Courtney can easily shift from vocals that float through the air to the more punctuated, scat-like staccato vocals that you might hear in a hip-hop track. There’s nothing quite like the music of Bent Knee, which could be a blessing and a curse for the young band. I found myself today talking about the show with colleagues and having a hard time describing what they sound like; and like I’ll do here in this review, you just have to give them a listen, because words — especially mine — just won’t do them justice.
It was a great show and I'm glad I was finally able to catch them live! Be sure to check out their tour page for dates in your area and don't miss Bent Knee the next time they come around! Thanks for reading and be sure to follow us across social at: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
