CAKE present as the ideal band: nearly thirty years on from their debut LP Motorcade of Generosity, the band have standout singles that endure in cultural memory, but beyond that seekers will find a discography with plenty of intricacy to reward listeners who dive in deep. The band’s unique sound, anchored by skillful use of John McCrea’s deadpan vocal, almost effortlessly epitomized the balancing act between existing as an approachable rock act, while also possessing a peculiar style that has remained inimitable ever since. As part of their ‘Evening with CAKE’ tour of 2023, the band have come together for a run of two-part nights that showcase their delightful eccentricity both in the form of music and – surprisingly to the uninitiated – trees.
Following a postponement due to some flood-inducing thunderstorms, the band were luckily able to reschedule their Maine concert at Thompson’s Point for the very next day before heading on to Boston. On this decidedly-nicer evening crowds funnel in, and around 7:30 the five members of CAKE greet them with waves underneath a sizable disco ball that reflects the crowd in chunky real-life pixels from above. They begin with ‘Frank Sinatra’, itself a scene-setting song that highlights McCrea’s ability to establish a sense of atmosphere. But variety is the name of the game across CAKE’s discography, and the next tune, ‘Sheep Go to Heaven’, begins with a scratchily-distorted acoustic guitar from McCrea before uniting it with squelched electric signals from Xan McCurdy and the muted trumpet of Vince DiFiore – and, of course, some crowd participation in the chorus. McCrea leaps into the air at the song’s conclusion before beginning ‘Ruby Sees All’. The band rotates through a host of instruments throughout the night, DiFiore’s maracas and McCrea’s trusty vibraslap often augmenting the percussion of drummer Todd Roper.
In between songs, McCrea says, “We don’t have a setlist… how unprofessional is that?” to laughs both onstage and off, but the lack of an explicit structure save for a mid-set intermission is beneficial to this style of concert where there’s only one band on the bill. Before said intermission, McCrea says he’s going to leave the audience with “a negative song” that turns out to be ‘Sick of You’ from the band’s most recent LP, Showroom of Compassion. He divides the crowd in two, one tasked with singing the “escapist side” of the chorus with the other fielding the “angry side”, and they come together harmoniously as the red sun sinks behind the treeline to the west, its faint orange glow dissipating as the band recoups for the second half of the show.
Before any music is played, the band has an ecological matter to cover to begin the next phase of the show. In a tradition that spans most of CAKE’s shows, McCrea comes back to his microphone next to a small tree in a planter, a sprout that will soon be finding a new home. For those unfamiliar with the practice, he outlines: every chance they get, they give away a tree that should flourish in the local environment as a way to make an impact on each place they visit, and in addition, they ask that whoever receives the tree send regular updates including pictures of both recipient and tree. McCrea says it’s like a promise, that even as we all age we chronicle our progression alongside the trees, and on the band’s website one can see a map of trees the world over, including oddities like a tree given in the Netherlands that ultimately found its home in Suriname. The lucky winner, who correctly identifies the sapling as an apple tree, is named Brenda, who comes to the stage as the crowd chants her name and then departs with the infant tree, its planter cradled in her arms.
Part two of the show begins in earnest afterward with the country-fied ode to clinginess ‘Stickshifts and Safetybelts’, and before ‘Meanwhile, Rick James…’ McCrea recounts an awkward meeting with the titular star, though the tale ends with James ending up liking the song for which his name was borrowed. Brandishing a large metal cannon, he fires out a t-shirt deep into the crowd and declares, “This is why I became a musician!” After ‘Jolene’ and ‘Never There’, the crowd cheers for the arrival of a pair of CAKE’s most beloved tracks, the first ‘Short Skirt/Long Jacket’. Like ‘Stickshifts’, the song is an exercise in committing to the bit, presenting the absurd scenario of its lyrics in sincere rock accoutrements, complete with group vocals echoing every segment of the narrator’s fantasies of upwardly-mobile romance, including a decidedly well-defined “accidental” meeting at Citibank, a corporate entity whose name must be so syllabically pleasing that it seems to crop up in song more than most.
The main event ends with the eternal classic ‘The Distance’, but even having gone the distance themselves over the course of the evening, the band return to offer two more songs as an encore: ‘Haze of Love’ and their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’. That last one, from Fashion Nugget, always impresses, as even though McCrea’s delivery seems at odds with the song’s legacy, the band’s transformation of the tune brings it home in their unique style. Also on display in their cover of ‘Sad Songs and Waltzes’ by Willie Nelson, the band’s ability to rethink and alchemize their influences is one of the essential qualities that now places them in their own right as a touchstone for so many bands decades later, including fellow loquacious Californian standouts like Cheekface. For everyone who first heard CAKE over a radio in the 90s or 2000s, perhaps in an old car with a single long seat, the appeal was clear from the get-go, and it’s hardly a surprise that the magic has persisted for such a long time – just ask the sold-out crowd, paddle-boarders watching from the Fore River, or a spritely apple tree in a car being chauffeured to its new home.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
