I saw more concerts in 2024 than in any year since 2016 (though, oddly, many of the same artists!). I caught great experimental music in the smallest spaces, classic rock stadium spectacles, and all points in between. Just how I like it.

For the final Needle Drops of 2024, I would like to share some of the highlights, focusing less on the new and challenging and more on some of the classics I am grateful to be still able to see.

The Headhunters - Jazz Alley, Seattle, WA - September 17, 2024

I covered this show for the KNKX website, the local (jazz and blues-focused) NPR affiliate. As I said in my piece, "The Headhunters do not simply trade on nostalgia, though no one would fault them if they did. There is undoubtedly a lucrative lifestyle to be had playing clubs and festivals, rehashing their beloved '70s work with Herbie Hancock. That is not what this band is up to."

It's a smooth band, for sure, but it's not a bland one at all. The Headhunters have traded their '70s Hancock sound for a deeper exploration and fusion of all things New Orleans. The funk is still there. It's in the percussion and drums of Bill Summers and Mike Clark, respectively. It is in the alto sax of Big Chief of Congo Square Donald Harrison, and it is really there in the sinewy keyboard work of relative youngster Kyle Roussel, who stood out when I first saw him with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band several years back. On this night, he was superlative every time he soloed.

Dead & Company - Sphere, Las Vegas, NV - July 6, 2024

And this is how I spent my fifty-third birthday.

I journeyed off to Vegas on my own to see the band I was pretty sure I would not be seeing again. I was ok with that.

But seeing them again, in this format, was quite a trip (see what I did there?).

I am not big on defending how band members choose to carry on (or not) after losing members. Still, Dead & Company are particularly polarizing in some quarters for the same reason many fans embraced them: Bob Weir's sometimes snail-paced arrangements (something he has addressed head-on) and John Mayer's, well, existence. Oh yeah, and no Jerry.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but in 2025, Jerry Garcia will be dead for as long as the Grateful Dead were together—and music not played is music that does not exist.

I've yet to hear anyone on either side of the stage say Dead & Company or any other offshoots, side projects, tributes, etc., are meant to be or replace the Grateful Dead. They are all meant to keep an important and interesting songbook alive and hopefully create a little fun along the way.

Go, don't go. Care, don't care. It does not matter. Nor should it. For these past thirty years, I have enjoyed seeing and hearing how various musicians take on the songs, and I am happy to see the surviving members make their way in the world. I say enjoy them while you can. Or don't. It's ok.

The Rolling Stones - Lumen Field, Seattle, WA - May 15, 2024

Speaking of, how often do I have to see The Rolling Stones before they stop appearing on my year-end lists? Or until I stop going to see them?
At the rate they're going, we may never find out.

Any Rolling Stones show is a wonder in 2024, never mind one that still manages to clock almost two hours and leave one with the impression Mick could probably have done another hour or so.

That said, this show was the first I have seen (in thirty-five years of seeing them) with any obvious concessions to age, specifically the much shorter setlist than in the past. Within a show or two, Keith would perform three songs mid-show, increasing Mick's break by 50%.

Still a wonder, though. It is pretty hard to compute how (never mind why) Mick does it, and while Keith did not prowl the far reaches of the stage, preferring to stake out ground closer to the rest of the musicians, the band did not need to be graded on any curve.

The Jayhawks - Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA - March 31, 2024

I had not seen The Jayhawks since moving to the Pacific Northwest almost eight years ago, the longest stretch I'd gone without a show from them, singer Gary Louris solo, or his indie "supergroup" Golden Smog. The show I caught was the final in a three-night run at Seattle's Tractor Tavern as part of the venue's year-long thirtieth-anniversary concert series.

Small room. A little over four hundred people. I would imagine they could pull eight hundred or so here, so it was a treat to be packed into a real club with them. The sound was terrific, too.

The band looked great. It's hard to believe Louris is going to be seventy. His voice is in fine form, seeming to get stronger as the night wore on.

Their songbook is so expansive there is no way they could hit all the high points in ninety minutes, though they hit many of them.

Always on the lookout for the tapers in the crowd, the guy recording the embedded video was not hard to pick out—he was not even stealthy. He had a bracket mounted to a pillar just off-stage, holding an iPhone mount. He captured a great-looking and sounding recording. Always grateful for that.

I hope to see the band again, but if I don't, I get to carry memories of many great shows across several decades and lineups, including one bizarre night with them after a show in NYC, which is a story for another time...

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