Zeo Boekbinder
Private Venue, Oakland
July 10, 2024
Photos by Tyler King
When I entered the side yard of the house that was hosting Zeo Boekbinder for the Bay Area stop on their West Coast tour I had a lot on my mind. I hadn’t seen Boekbinder perform in over a dozen years, at the now-defunct Viracocha in San Francisco in 2011. In the span of just a couple of years between 2008-2011 I saw Boekbinder perform over a dozen times, both solo and in their band at the time Vermillion Lies. In the thirteen years since my musical tastes have changed as I’ve grown up, and admittedly my connection with Boekbinder and their music faded more and more. So when they announced not only a new album, Wildflower, but also a COVID-conscious tour to support it with multiple stops in the Bay Area, I knew that I had to make up for lost time and go see them again.
Playing to a crowd of a couple dozen of people all wearing N95 masks, Zeo opened their solo acoustic set with “Where Time Is Free,” a song from their new album. After it ended they remarked that they hoped the crowd liked that song because it’s their only happy one, and sure enough they followed their first song with “Mycelium.” It’s one of the many songs on Wildflower that has lyrics dealing with loss, and it’s also one of the many songs on the album that showcases Boekbinder’s amazing vocal talents. When I first saw Zeo performing with Vermillion Lies in 2008, the first thing that struck me is how powerful their voice is in a live setting, and seeing them singing again reminded me of how commanding their vocals are.
With the exception of a few songs, everything played by Zeo was from the Wildflower album. Given the fact that I had mostly seen them when they were playing shows in support of their debut album, Artichoke Perfume, I welcomed seeing a host of songs that I had never seen before, including selections like “Grass Or The Ground” from their album Baby Bandit or “Haunted” and “What Have I Done?” from Shadows. I will admit though, I did have a deep feeling of nostalgia when Zoe introduced a song as having been written about their firs queer relationship and began to play the opening of “December,” a song that I saw Zeo perform at most of the shows of theirs that I attended, and I couldn’t help but cheer upon seeing this old friend of a song in the flesh after all these years.
Besides being a master musician and singer, Zeo Boekbinder is also a master storyteller who knows how to interact with a crowd. One of the great things about seeing them live, and hopefully they forgive me for saying this, is seeing them mess up a song and how they handle it. Usually they will stop the song dead in its tracks, make a self-deprecating comment, and then continue on. “When I toured with Shenandoah Davis she told me to just power through any mistakes I make while I’m playing instead of just stopping,” Zeo said during one of those occasions. “That was fifteen years ago.”
Over their last few albums Zeo Boekbinder’s songs have been getting progressively more and more stripped down in terms of production, and the songs from Wildflower sounded perfect in this live setting. Although there are some extra flourishes on the record on songs like “Cover Up The Moon” or “Garden” like reverb and multitracking, hearing them stripped down to their barest of elements with just vocals and guitar showed a different side of these songs, with “Garden” especially sounding different being stripped down from the more psychedelic-tinged version on the album.
After performing “Garden,” the show came to an end, and I couldn’t have been happier. Previous headlining shows of theirs that I had seen usually only lasted about forty minutes with none seeing Zeo play more than nine or ten songs, but this night in Oakland they played fifteen songs over the course of ninety minutes. It felt like this was the show that I had been waiting years to see, and it felt natural to be back in the crowd at a Zeo Boekbinder show. If you take COVID-19 seriously and have a penchant for well-crafted songs that sweet but feel like a punch to the gut, then I urge you to see them, as they’re announcing more tour dates soon. I know that I won’t be waiting another thirteen years to see them again.
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