When I hear the opening guitar riff on “Back In Amsterdam” by Box Set, I am immediately transported back to my living room. It’s a sunny afternoon and my mother has just put in her signed cassette of Box Set’s self-titled first album. The duo of Jeff Pehrson and Jim Brunberg met back in 1991 in San Francisco and released 12 albums from 1993 to 2006.
The opening band, Portland based Wonderly, played a short but sweet set that set the tone for the evening: one of sadness after the election the previous Tuesday but also laced with the joy of the communal experience of live music. The duo consisted of Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk, who was added to Box Set about ten years ago. They arrived on stage armed with only a guitar, a stand up bass, a fiddle and some jaw dropping harmonies, playing a few originals alone with some covers of David Bowie and Simon and Garfunkel.
After a short intermission, Jim and Ben took to the stage again. This time, Jeff wore a clown nose, a tribute to the legendary Wavy Gravy, a friend of Jeff’s, sitting in the front row. The first portion of the night was acoustic – all three men stood right up at the front of the stage, bathed in purple lighting and singing their hearts out. Right before launching into an absolutely gorgeous rendition of “Red Winged Blackbird,” Jeff told us that they hadn’t really practiced any of the acoustic stuff. This lack of practice was far from evident, as their voices intertwined together until you couldn’t tell where one man’s voice ended and another’s started. On stage much of their acoustic set was instrumentally bare, with sometimes only one guitar playing, so it really gave space for their voices to shine through.
After the acoustic portion, they brought up three more musicians: Barry Sless on the pedal steel guitar, Jack Mortensn on the bass, and Box Set’s original drummer, Mark Abbott. Together the group played some of their top hits like “Back in Amsterdam”, “Misfits” and even some of the songs they played at their first ever gig together way back in 1991. As the show went on more and more people started to get up in the aisles and dance – you could practically see people reliving their youth through these nostalgic songs. The band’s camaraderie and humor was obvious: Jim tried to teach Jack how to dance a jazz square, the group improvised through a mistake in song order, and Jeff even joked about not having his reading glasses on him.
For an encore they performed three covers, including Bruce Springsteen’s “Red Headed Woman”, and John Prine’s “Blow Up Your TV” which they used to reference how they felt on election night. The final song of the night, “Brokedown Palace,” was dedicated to Phil Lesh, who Jeff credited as the man who got him into music. Before the song commenced Ben had taught us the harmonies so we could be involved in the chorus. Throughout the song you could feel the grief of the crowd, as many of them were also Grateful Dead fans. It was evident throughout the whole show that while Box Set has been on hiatus, the duo (now a trio) are so attuned to each other and their music that everything was able to fall back to what it used to be.
Review by Diana Dively
