Tubby’s is a small neighborhood bar and live-music venue, about two hours north of NYC in Kingston. It has gained quite a legendary reputation since opening in 2018 and is named after dub pioneer King Tubby.
Tubby’s has become known for adventurous, genre-bending bookings, from punk and psych to ambient and jazz. Intimate, community-driven, and musician-friendly, Tubby’s blends strong cocktails with underground music in a space where you’re as likely to chat with the band as hear them tear the roof off.
It was in this space that another set of underground music legends played a rip-roaring set on August 9, 2024. We’re talking about Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders, the psychedelic jam-rockers we know very well here at The Third Eye.
Thanks to the efforts of Jake Lyons of NYC Taper (#thankataper), we have a document of this 2024 Lidders set, which will be released via Eiderdown Records on November 7th.
Jeffrey Alexander and the Lidders offer an annual subscription on Bandcamp that provides a steady stream of jams, including live ones. So, this live release is like a little preview of what you’ll get from that subscription option.
The opening track, “Outer (Eel) Time (Shiv) Inner (Dryad) > Space,” slinks in with some nasty duel-guitar action from Jeffrey and Drew Gardner. I’m not sure how they make the one guitar sound like that, but hot damn, is it cool. Wednesday Knudsen’s saxophone takes a jam that’s already cosmic and pushes it into galaxies far, far away.
Flip to Side B, and Jeffrey and the Lidders tear into a version of CSNY’s “Almost Cut My Hair.” The band stretches it out into a seventeen-minute-plus slow-burning jam, with tremendous guitar work and Knudsen’s saxophone adding a cool touch again.
That’s not to mention Jeffrey’s vocals, which are soulful and in tune with the deep grooves the rest of the band is laying down.
Between Jeffrey and the Lidders, Tubby’s, and Eiderdown Records, this live record represents the perfect psych-rock trifecta. It embodies everything good about underground music, and that’s why you need to listen to it.
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