On the alternate timeline where the Meat Puppets inherited the bulk of the Grateful Dead’s tourheads when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, none of this would be necessary, because Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders would already be a household name.
Over there, they’re famous for evolving their own musical space, building an audience that ranges from open-eared curiosity seekers to deep, committed music weirdos. That audience has, naturally, yielded an infamous sub-cult of concert tapers you’re already sick of hearing about. A lot of other things are better over on that timeline, too.
But in this consensus reality (and probably the other one too), Liquid Donnon catches the Lidders at their heaviest, with “heavy” in the Lidderverse being far from a monolithic idea. There’s heavy like the album-opening “From Loch Raven to Fells Point,” one of several tracks built on elegant, gnarled, conversational jams from the core lineup. Alexander alongside guitarist Drew Gardner and bassist Jesse Sheppard (both of Elkhorn) and drummer Scott Verrastro.
And then there’s heavy like “Calliope Walker” and “Tightroping,” where Gardner shifts to dream-space vibraphone, the former joined by saxophonist Tacuma Bradley, the latter by Christina Carter of Texas noise-psych legends Charalambides on veil-crossing wordless vocals, her first collaboration with Alexander in something like 20 years.
But then there’s also heavy like the cover photo: Alexander’s late friend and album namesake Donnon, captured at a Dead show at Rich Stadium in Buffalo in 1989. His spirit threads through the songs and weaves, unexpectedly, into Alexander’s life decades later, emerging especially after Alexander passed through a near-death experience of his own. Taken together, the different heavies of Liquid Donnon add up into a state of musical grace, where all the Heavy Lidders from all the universes come together as one.
Convened in 2019 around Alexander’s relocation back to his native east coast, the Heavy Lidders are the latest hard-touring vehicle for the guitarist’s music, joining a vast and tangled discography (and tape list) that includes the beloved, long-running west coast outfit Dire Wolves Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band, and before them, the Iditarod and Black Forest/Black Sea, plus a bushel of solo play-all-the-instruments projects, a stint with Jackie-O Motherfucker, sessions with Kemialliset Ystävät and Avarus, and more you’ll just have to keep digging for.
It’s not hard to find tapers at Lidders gigs (they encourage you to be one), and you can track themes and songs evolving across Alexander’s many live releases. But Liquid Donnon is a new primary text with original studio versions of six new pieces for the repertoire.
The album closes with a devastating pairing, “Reservoir Drop” into “The Summer Song,” floating down into a duo between Alexander’s guitar and Carter’s voice alone. Catch a half-dozen Lidders shows this summer and you might never hear them play it quite like that again, but you just might find the doorway back to that better place.
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