The War On Drugs’ Drugcember Rocked The Dickens Out Of This Town

TO BEGIN WITH, Marley was dead. Lennon was dead. Jerry was dead. Rock itself — dead! But people kept doing it anyway. Rock was built on cognitive dissonance — sacred/profane, high/low, alive/dead — but stroll downtown any night of the week, and there they are: People doing it. If that’s not alive, I don’t know what is. And since 2018, after the harvest and when the cold winds blow, Philadelphia often enjoys a thing known as Drugcember, a semi-annual series of concerts benefitting The Fund For The School District Of Philadelphia, hosted by and starring The War On Drugs. 

These concerts have become local tradition and hot ticket alike, and as the years go by, that feeling is compounded by the fact that they are right before the holidays. The series is formally known as “A Drugcember To Remember,” and what are memories if not ghosts? As befits the season, let us consider this year’s shows in a style you may know well. 

I: THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST aka FRIENDS & FAMILY NIGHT

Although their membership today is scattered across the country, The War On Drugs still consider themselves a Philadelphia band, and as such, playing their beloved hometown venue, specifically to their friends and family and home fan community, remains deeply important to them. One hitch: Johnny Brenda’s is small, and the Drugs have grown large. Each year they do this at JB’s, extra stage is brought in, a semi’s worth of amps and gear are meticulously stacked, and all kinds of bonsai-tree-like meticulousness is given over to creating a playing environment for the band. It’s like stuffing a shark inside a goldfish bowl in that a) it requires great care, and b) it’s a little absurd. 

Over the years, the band has learned to make it all work somehow; in addition to the square-footageness of it all, there are also more wrinkles: What about all the sound/light/film cues that need to happen? And how do we handle the guest list? The solution is friends and family night. Before each of these formal shows, there’s a night tagged on at the beginning for run-throughs — “It’s not a show!” was singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel’s comedic mantra at the last one — and catch-ups with friends. If you are of this highly specific subset of Philadelphians who came up with this venue and this band (raises hand), these shows are indeed Ghost of Christmas Past-y. Old friends, old bandmates, exes, they are all here, like in a melatonin dream hallway. It affects the music; it affects the pH of the room. 

Having been to one of these before this one, I can tell you: They’re delightful evenings all, but immediately this year, one could tell the difference — even during this casual run-though, there was a heightened intensity that by Friday night will be bordering on the spiritual. How? I think a lot of it is the power of drone.  The War On Drugs have harnessed the power of drone in tandem with the power of the big chord change in a form that’s Krautrock disguised as Americana. This was always in the recipe, but as the years have gone on, the Drugs have acquired more and more mastery. That’s the most notable during a 20-minute-plus (!) rendition of “Harmonia’s Dream,” where something is going on that is more than the sum of the Dead of it all. This is kirtan stuff, Alice Coltrane stuff; it’s soothing, it’s therapeutic but it’s also exciting. This will not be the last question for the Ghosts tonight: How does a band with this much Spacemen 3 influence speak to so many people? It must be God’s plan. 

“Harmonia” is the centerpiece of the night — a full album side, if you want to think of it that way — but remember: This is the rehearsal, sort of. The inside track is that the guests to come this week will be of great note, and between that and their own numbers, the band has been loading in new and old tunes to play as well. Covers are run through; a new one gets tried out. “I Don’t Wanna Wait” screams and also reminds you that there are several WOD songs that borrow hooks from absolute stone cold killer ‘80s Bonnie Raitt songs. “Under the Pressure” is massive, having accrued the weight of stadiums at this point. I look back to the Ghost: Is the Drugs’ logo an homage to the Vienna brand of sausages? 

II: THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT aka WHAT’S A SWEETHEART LIKE YOU DOING IN A DUMP LIKE THIS?

The present moment, I don’t need to tell you, is a lot. But when Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn opens the Friday, Dec. 19th show as solitary as an oyster, he’s somehow capable of speaking to it. Playing stripped down versions of songs from Always Been, his Granduciel-produced record from earlier this year, he’s doing two things at once: Truly engaging this audience in a loving, caring way, but also telling the story of this country as it exists now — blown-out, sad, confused, but even still a little hopeful. It’s a brilliant bit of setup, intentional or not, for the fire that’s about to take place on stage. At the end of  “People of Substance” (and honestly a whole bunch of songs tonight), both he and the band enjoy whooos of acknowledgement and understanding so instinctual that applause only comes later.

As for the Drugs proper, it goes like this: They opened with “Arms Like Boulders” and I shit you not, a bottle of Makers Mark fell off the wall of the upstairs bar. Just issued itself henceforth. The band will do the same; they are on fire. They are lean and mean. On “Red Eyes” and across everything tonight, Robbie Bennett’s got cascading piano like (pick your favorite Dead pianist) Brent or Bruce, and Granduciel rips solos like a desperate Newport. “They’re LOOSE, but they’re TIGHT!,” is what the guy next to me is saying, and he is not wrong. 

“An Ocean Inside The Waves” is stately, it carries like Joy Division’s Atmosphere with a hotter BPM and love in its heart; there’s an inner super-snappy soul clap in these fast Drugs tunes — try it at home, you’ll see. Finn returns at the end of set one for a full-band rendition of his tune “Bethany,” and a duet with Granduciel on Dylan’s “Sweetheart Like You” that I hope gets released someday. It feels good. It feels right. There are roars of applause in this room of a couple hundred tonight that are unlike I have ever heard at the corner of Frankford & Girard, and I was there when the Phillies won the 1980 world series. 

And that’s just set one. 

III: THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE aka IN THE CITY 

What Scrooge realized when he opened up his window on that fateful Christmas Day, dear reader, is what Joe Strummer always taught us. You can’t do it alone; without people, you’re nothing. And when you have community, you can do truly wonderful things. Across years of Drugcember concerts now, and the attendant merch and other promo partnerships, the Drugs have raised thousands upon thousands of dollars for the aforementioned Fund SDP. 

They also got the guy from the Eagles (the other Eagles, and the James Gang) to jam out with them. Onstage. At JBs!

All throughout the night, it felt like the ante was being raised. “Lost In The Dream” is somehow jubilant; another 20-minute banger of “Harmonia’s Dream” flowed like morning dew. “Strangest Thing”’s big Bonnie ballad energy gave way to a searing cover of Tom Petty’s “Love Is A Long Road.” At the musical level, I feel like these shows, by taking the Drugs back to their earliest roots, also put the way forward on display for what this band might do next. There’s still a place in the culture for a band that takes three years between albums but never really stops working. But there’s also an even bigger place for a band that continues to learn how to bring people together more and more as they go. That is exceedingly rare. 

And it sets up for what I can only describe as the moment of utter stupefaction when Joe Walsh walked out onto the stage. Cue even more stupefaction when dude rocks out the famous talk box bit on “Rocky Mountain Way,” and the pure elation of “In The City,” with Walsh, clearly having the time of his life, trading riffs with Granduciel as he and the rest of the band, and audience, casually left their bodies. I will remember this feeling; I will also remember this — it sounded amazing. 

Here was Drugcember… drugcembering. The unlikely-ness of it, the sublime energy, the shark-into-goldfish-bowl of it all, done in the service of a creative act rendered wild and extreme in the name of something righteous and good.  “It’s the greatest rock show I’ve ever seen in me fuckin’ life!” said local publican and sentimental mayor Fergus “Fergie” Carey. God bless us, every one! May you honour Drugcember in your heart, and try to keep it all the year.