Stein/Smith/Shead - Five Nights in the Midwest

By Brian Earley

 

Asking listeners to pay attention to an entire tour’s worth of music is asking a great deal. But, friends, because you are here you also already know one of the most powerful, even liberating, experiences to be had is patiently, closely listening to sound as it develops, increases or slows in pace, adjusts voicings, and surprises.

 

Well, Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Damon Smith (bass) and Adam Shead (drums) have not quite given us an entire tour of music, but they come pretty damn close. Five Nights in the Midwest is a three-CD set that preserves, well–five nights of music from a recent tour in December of 2025. Each recording presents one entire live musical take with no editing. Stops include The Sugar Maple in Milwaukee, State Street Pub in Indianapolis, three tracks from The Spot Tavern in Lafayette, Indiana (more on that in a second), Dissonant Works in St. Louis, and Reverberation Records in Bloomington, Illinois. 

 

The project is ambitious and it really pays off for those who pay attention. I have spent the past weekend immersed in this music, listening to it over and over, and the experience reminds me of what happens at an extended festival. Excitement and novelty quickly give way to attention fatigue, but the music is just so constantly good, so impressive and powerful, that fatigue yields again and again to something like spiritual enthusiasm and awakening.

 

I cannot possibly discuss each track or set in detail here, there is just way too much music, but here is what stands out to me as important. 

 

First, this is music that is not written out. Three people gather and entirely improvise sound into being for twenty minutes. Or thirty minutes (the longest piece runs 29.26). And, like so much I admire about the world we live in, here is an example of humanity at its best. No really. Night four was captured on film and is available on YouTube by Thom Null. Thom writes this with his video: “Sorry that it has taken me half a year to begin posting these long cell phone videos, but the incessant international holocaust has really had me operating at the lower level of Maslow's triangle, so to speak. Namaste!” Yep. Sounds about right. There is a lot of shit out there, and the vast, vast majority of us know this and have long been aware that thousands of deaths, and likely many more in the future, are happening so a very few people can benefit.

 

It wears us down. It fatigues, but it does not prevail.

 

Stein, Smith, and Shead embody this by acting together for mutual benefit. All three possess shockingly immense amounts of virtuosity on their respective instruments, but this hardly matters to them if these earned gifts are not in the service of beauty and art. Listeners, then, benefit by learning again that the effort of listening, and effort at all, is part of what makes us human (inhuman AI Data Centers don’t just remove the effort-they remove the searching that makes life meaningful, oh and about five million gallons of water each day). 

 

The three musicians focus on giving us one uncut performance from each night of the tour. However, The Spot Tavern in Lafayette is the exception, and this recording preserves three consecutive tracks, titled “set 1,” “set 2a,” and “set 2b” from this location. Close listening reveals why. To my ears, the music here is wonderfully varied, much more so than on the rest of the album. “set 1” functions as many of the pieces do: almost immediate high energy playing by all three. OK, this song takes about 1:30 to reach full energy, but check out almost any other track (say, the State Street Pub set, which is hot right out of the gate and remains that way for nearly twenty minutes). 

 

All three musicians share in the credit for this level of stamina. Each individual’s gifts inspire and propel their bandmates forward. Shead’s drumming, for instance, reminds me of Milford Graves. I know, I know, this is a bold comparison. But Shead’s polyrhythmic dexterity sometimes makes me think he must have eight arms, and the professor is the one of the few other drummers that elicit this response in me.

“Set 2b” from the Spot, on the other hand, proceeds much more like a ballad. The shortest work on the entire album, Stein plays with a breathy introspection. Smith bows atonal angles, but always with tenderness. Shead remains on the smaller cymbals and plays quietly ringing bells much of the time.

The trio clearly was pleased with the results from the Spot Tavern. In fact, they have recorded there before for 2023’s Hum (Irritable Mystic Records). 

 

I think maybe my favorite piece on the entire album comes from the final night, recorded at Reverberation Records. By this point the group has developed a sixth-sense, ESP-like communication system with each other, and they effortlessly build fires to wash them out extemporaneously and quickly ignite them again. On this piece, as on so many of the others, only Smith will lay out. His reasons are likely pragmatic: he has to grab his bow, or a drum stick, or a set of chains (!?) to play the bass. But in this practical restraint Shead often soars over temple wood blocks and slams his dented cymbal while Stein climbs, descends, growls, or sometimes crackles from his lips until Smith reenters, often bowing at a pitch and frequency that sound like he is opening the maws of hell itself. For an example of this, check out the 20.00 minute mark on this final tune. 

 

Someone, likely Shead, screams at about 20.50, the music has worked its way into such a frenzy. And, as the flames cool to embers and the music dies into silence, I find myself feeling lighter than before, like some great weight has been taken from me, some demon exorcized. And here is the gift these three musicians have given us: freedom, shared meaning making, a blessing built from mutual collaboration. 

 

Five Nights in the Midwest can be heard here:

Five Nights in the Midwest by Stein/Smith/Shead