There are genteel ways to play a violin where its long history as one of the bourgeois of string instruments is fully appreciated by players in tuxedos and black dresses, and at the other end of the spectrum, there’s the foot-stomping fiddle stylings of country and western.
But rock is an area of which the violin knows little. Watching the Dambuilders’ Joan Wasser Saturday night at Lounge Ax, you’d never have known.
Swinging her shock of black and blonde dreadlocks behind her, to the floor, over her face, Wasser’s bow was often nothing more than a winking flash of silvery white against her violin’s gilding. Amped with a microphone, its musical swirls and gesticulations were aural mirrors of Wasser’s body, now undulating and frantic, now almost limp, swooning from heel to heel.
Physically, her three companions seemed almost oblivious to one another, rocking personal realms bordered only by the reach of their power cords or the ramparts of the drumkit. Rather than a band, they were four distinct artists finding mental communion with their instruments.
Lowering into the brooding four-note bassline of the instrumental “Cop Sucker,” from their ’94 release “Encendedor,” Dave Derby spread his legs in his best Pete Townsend stance, bangs hanging rakishly in his eyes as drummer Kevin March fed additional rhythm and Wasser’s string swoops took the fore.
Guitarist Eric Masunaga was the picture of concentration when he wasn’t clenching his skinny frame into airborne guitar catharsis. Alternately spiking harmonics over Wasser’s low surges and carrying rhythm threads under her soaring, searing solos, he worked his guitar as an ideal complement.
Infusing an element of crazed fervor into songs which sometimes don’t reflect it in their recordings, especially “Smell” and “Smooth Control,” the intensity of Derby’s flushed face and corded neck belied his cheap-suit-cheap-shoes-cheap-shirt appearance. Looking like one of the rogue party boys from a John Hughes movie, Derby arched over his bass while standing on tip-toe to throttle his microphone with a sturdy upper-range that teetered on the edge of a scream without quite pitching over.
Where Wasser’s vocals were often drowned under the accompanying musical maelstrom, Derby managed to wail over the mix with a voice whose power rivaled the stomach-pounding notes of his bass.
But lest the Dambuilders be accused of lacking subtlety, “Down” showcased Derby’s falsetto side, with Wasser’s ethereal violin holding her body, and the crowd, suspended in exhausted hypnosis.
