Little Wings and Karl Blau
Johnny Brenda's
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
July 23, 2025
Last night I made my way back to Johnny Brenda’s for the postponed Little Wings show; their Yankee Charms tour was originally slated to come to town last fall, but the whole shebang had to be put off until now. It was worth the wait in every way; the long-running band, spearheaded by multi-hyphenate artist (and sole permanent member) Kyle Field, is a perennial favorite of mine. Karl Blau, local to Germantown and reviewed previously here by me, opened the show.
I’ve seen Karl Blau perform in Philadelphia six or seven times now, and each show is a different experience. Whether playing sans-instruments, looping his voice with a pedal in the backyard of The Random Tea Room & Curiosity Shop, or assembling a full-bodied rock and soul outfit at his recording studio in Germantown, one thing remains constant: the pleasure of hearing Blau sing. His supple baritone is an earthy, rich instrument in any setting. And this was my third time seeing the great Kyle Field’s band Little Wings, owner of at least two or three of my favorite songs ever written.
Blau and Field share notable commonalities; both are accomplished painters and visual artists in addition to their music, and both are long-running influential figures of the post-grunge music scene of the Pacific Northwest in the late 90’s, releasing early records on the legendary K Records and cutting their teeth at the famed Department of Safety. One musically mutual trait I clocked at the show was a similar way both Blau and Field play the guitar: each strums and picks with their fingers and provides their own backbeat with a clapping right-hand motion into the strings, the kind of gesture you find in clave rhythms and flamenco music. Two groovy dudes, any way you slice it.
Blau – accompanied by Corrine Dodenhoff on bass VI and Chris Covatta on electric guitar (that makes 18 steel strings, y’all) – assembled his set list out of a selection of songs from his first three albums for K, to mark the occasion of their recently being reissued. The music was tender and lovely one minute, borne of classic country and crooner soul, then left field and discordant the next, the three musicians playing in tandem almost like a bizarro, distorted false equivalent of cello, viola and violin. They bookended the set with two covers: Blau’s definitive take on Tom T. Hall’s country weeper “That’s How I Got To Memphis” up front, and the haunting rockabilly tune “Still As The Night," recorded by Sanford Clark way back in 1958, at the end. Something about hearing Blau sing in this mode, on this stage, with Dodenhoff’s lovely harmonies and Covatta’s twangy atmospheric accompaniment, put me in the mind of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
It is all too appropriate to describe Little Wings as surfy — I’ve heard apocryphally that Field has booked tours with the underlying agenda of hitting certain beaches along the way – and their set at JB’s drove that point home. The sometimes-bearded Field looked positively boyish with a fresh shave and a Beach Boys-styled striped short-sleeve. Rounded out with Maine’s Peter McLaughlin on drums and former Dirty Projectors' Nat Baldwin on electric bass, Field was a force of lax exuberance onstage, moving like he just found out about dancing last week. Live, Field strikes me as something like a tequila-soda-with-lime’d-out jazz singer, singing with chalant gallantry and fun freedom: interjecting pops, hoots, yelps, ow!’s, and clicks that sound like a woodblock if a woodblock was actually bubblegum popping right between your iris and your eardrum. His cartwheeling melodies and rubbery glides, elastic with pitch, match his physicality: grinning ear to ear, kicking his legs out with youthful charm.
Whether performing gently-loping, ambling three-chord country or evoking reggae, surf rock and West Coast cool jazz, Field commanded the now-full crowd, balcony included, with his delightfully Technicolor presence. They played songs from throughout his 25-year-plus recording career, including classics like “The Shredder,” “Boom!,” “Look At What The Light Did Now” (an evergreen miracle of a song), and “Fat Chance,” during which McLaughlin’s brushed, loose, wrist-flicking filigrees drove the band and audience alike into a graceful fury. It was all totally endearing and wonderful, as Little Wings always is.
