The Washington Squares at City Winery

Lauren Agnelli, Tom Goodkind

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tom Goodkind was playing bass in a garage-rock band, U.S. Ape, and booking music acts at popular New York City new wave venues. His musical tastes started moving in a new direction and he started collaborating with Bruce Jay Paskow, formerly the lead guitarist in the Invaders. In 1983, they brainstormed with Lauren Agnelli, who played in Nervus Rex, wrote about the music scene for a local newspaper, and waitressed in a popular rock club. Fueled by Agnelli's free drinks, they committed to revive the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s and named the venture the Washington Squares after the area's emblematic park. They had little knowledge of folk so they bought old records, resourced veteran folksingers, and sent Goodkind to research folk music at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Washington Squares released two albums in the 1980s, but split when Paskow died in 1994. Previously unreleased recordings are planned for release, the most current being 2018's pending Monsters of Folk Vol. 2 Sessions 1985 - 1987.

Not counting a little-publicized set at Sidewalk in February 2017,  the Washington Squares tonight performed the band's first official concert in 25 years at City Winery, this time featuring Goodkind, Agnelli, bassist Mike Fornatale and drummer Billy Ficca. The Washington Squares was an ironic band in the 1980s, and perhaps even more so now. Still wearing matching beatnik-era striped shirts and black berets, the Washington Squares played a style evocative of the folk artists of the Kennedy era, but updated twice with the band's original Reagan-era grievances and now newly-charged Trump-era discontent. The Washington Squares opened with a mirror of Peter, Paul & Mary's "Samson and Delilah" and ended with a mirror of the Kingston Trio's "Greenback Dollar," but with jangling guitars and soaring harmonies throughout, the set ended up sounding more like electrified 1960s pop than folk. Although born of rough times, the Washington Squares delivered the songs in a rather light-hearted manner. Even the band's original social commentary, "You Can't Kill Me," inspired by the assassination of gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, now seemed to have an uptempo twist. For the encore, the band brought on stage musicians Peter Yarrow, Michelle Shocked, and Richard Barone, along with poet Anne Waldman, for a rousing revival of Pete Seeger songs. In today's political and social turmoil, perhaps it is as appropriate a time as ever for the satirical follies of the Washington Squares.

Visit the Washington Squares at www.washingtonsquares.com.

Setlist:

Set 1:

1. Samson and Delilah ([traditional] cover)
2. Can't Stop the Rain
3. You Are Not Alone
4. Lay Down Your Arms
5. You Can't Kill Me (>) Gospel Plow ([traditional] cover) (>) You Can't Kill Me

Set 2:

1. Daylight
2. Fourth Day of July ([traditional] cover)
3. Charcoal (including "Riches" (William Blake poem))
4. He Was a Friend of Mine ([traditional] cover)
5. Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen cover)
6. New Generation
7. Greenback Dollar (Hoyt Axton cover)

Encore:

1. Sweet Jane (The Velvet Underground cover, with Michelle Shocked, Richard Barone, and Anne Waldman)
2. If I Had a Hammer (The Weavers cover, with Peter Yarrow, Michelle Shocked, Richard Barone, and Anne Waldman)
3. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Pete Seeger cover, with Peter Yarrow, Michelle Shocked, Richard Barone, and Anne Waldman)
4. This Land Is Your Land (Pete Seeger cover, with Peter Yarrow, Michelle Shocked, Richard Barone, and Anne Waldman)