It’s the 250th birthday of the United States of America here on the 4th of July, and music fans are gathering to celebrate the occasion with the Claypool Gold tour finale in the Blue Note Summer Sessions concert series at the Meritage Resort in Napa, California. There are some mixed emotions in the air about the country’s birthday, with the neo-fascist Trump regime waging a partisan war on what’s left of American democracy and liberty. Yet patriotic pride for American rock ‘n’ roll remains in play with Colonel Les Claypool.
It’s already been a big day for some music fans who caught a free show from Grahame Lesh & Friends at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco. The combo has some longtime fans flashing back to 25 years ago, when Colonel Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade opened for Phil Lesh & Friends at the Berkeley Greek Theater on the 1st of July in 2001. Claypool made an amusing comment that day as he often likes to do, noting how he’d also recently opened some shows for Ozzy Osborne and that the difference between opening for Ozzy and opening for Phil was really moving from playing minor third notes to major third notes.
The Meritage Resort’s courtyard provides solid sightlines, and the sound system is excellent. Yet even after several years of staging shows, the venue still seems unprepared for a big crowd. There’s a very long and very slow-moving line to get in as the 7:00 pm showtime nears, which necessitates either a photo pass or a Jedi mind trick to get in for the start of the show. Once inside, the bar lines are very long and slow as well. Yet a hack to the system can be found by going into the restaurant at the back of the courtyard and ordering a drink from the bar there.
Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade
The Claypool Gold tour features an opening 30-minute set from his Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, a side project Les Claypool put together around the turn of the millennium with more of a classic rock vibe than the freakier sound of Primus. The Frog Brigade reformed in 2023 and headlined here at Meritage on their “Summer of Green” tour, which featured a nightly performance of Pink Floyd‘s Animals album with Sean Ono Lennon in the band on lead guitar and Harry Waters (son of Roger) on keyboards. Claypool and Lennon have been close musical comrades ever since forming the Claypool Lennon Delirium in 2016, and it’s great to see them together again. The group also features ace percussionist Mike Dillon, Paulo Baldi on drums, and the incomparable Skerik on sax for high-level improvisation.
Claypool relates a tale about reading a story in the local newspaper years ago about a guy who tried to sneak into the infamous Bohemian Grove resort in Sonoma County, wanting to learn more about conspiratorial elements long rumored to take place among elite guests. He notes that the guy had a Phantom Patriot superhero outfit on when he was detained, thus inspiring the song “Phantom Patriot” from Les Claypool’s 2006 album Of Whales and Whoa. A recent live version was also issued on the Frog Brigade’s 2026 release Return of the Live Frogs: Volume 1 with Skerik crushing a big “Bastard Jazz” style sax solo as he does again here.
“Riddles Are Abound Tonight” dates back to a 1994 album from Claypool’s Sausage project, a heavy tune with some freaky guitar demonstrating how the Frog Brigade are always poised to go in any number of sonic directions. “David Makalaster” from 2002’s Purple Onion conjures a circus-type sonic vibe, which feels fitting here with how the Trump regime has turned American politics into something resembling a vaudeville show. Skerek is a jazzy force again on “One Better”, as the Frog Brigade portion of the show concludes in short but sweet fashion.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium
There’s only a break of about two minutes before the Claypool Lennon Delirium crank up their unique psychedelic freak show with the epic tune “Blood and Rockets: Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons – Movement II Too the Moon” from 2019’s brilliant South of Reality album. There’s a Beatle-esque flavor in Lennon’s vocals, with lyrics about the life of the enigmatic rocket scientist who died in a mysterious explosion in 1952. Parsons was also known as an adept of Aleister Crowley and collaborator with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard on mystical sex magick rituals that some accounts say ripped a hole in the space-time continuum in the late 1940s that inadvertently ushered in the modern UFO age.
There aren’t many groups in popular music writing songs about such mystical characters and hidden history, yet this is part of what makes the Claypool Lennon Delirium such a unique creative entity. “South of Reality” is a more hard-hitting rocker as the group digs into their bag of sonic tricks, before moving on to “Troll Bait” from their ambitious new concept album The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy. “WAP (What a Predicament)” is another new song that delves into how “trying to navigate through the internet is like swallowing poison”.
Sean Lennon sounds a lot like his dad again on this one, which is part of the appeal in providing a next-generation perspective for the music world. He’s certainly his own man though and remains an astute commentator on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, which only enhances the album’s theme of warning against the rise of Artificial Intelligence.
The Delirium go back to 2016’s Monolith of Phobos for mystical psyche-rocker “Cricket and the Genie” before returning to the new album for the existential pondering of “Meat Machines”. It’s an intriguing song that asks, “Are humans nothing more than meat machines? Or is there more to us? Too busy rewriting history, to see what tomorrow brings…” Harry Waters’ psychedelic synth lines enhance the song, as does guest percussion from Mike Dillon returning to the stage.
An inherently psychedelic jam on Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” finds Lennon shredding melty hot wah-wah riffs in a deep jam to close out the set (on a tune the Delirium recorded on 2017’s Lime & Limpid Green EP). It’s starting to get dark now, and watching Lennon tear it up over a fierce Claypool bassline on this seminal psych-rock jam under the psychedelic lights here on the 4th of July provides a truly sublime sensation. It’s a relatively short set from the Delirium that feels kind of like a tease, but the recent release of the group’s first new album since 2019 suggests a fall headlining tour to come.
A proper set break features footage from a documentary about Primus played on the stage screen. A scene that stands out features Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age commenting on how Primus were an important band in their early years to show the underground music scene to be yourself, that you could be yourself rather than having to chase trends. An alt-rock gal in the crowd who looks like she could have stepped right out of the 1990s seems to underscore the point, wearing black denim shorts over ripped black tights with an army green T-shirt and a beaver tail (representing Primus fan favorite “Wynonna’s Big Brown Beaver”).
Primus
Primus hit the stage around 8:30 pm with “Too Many Puppies” from 1990’s debut album Frizzle Fry. It’s a rocking blast from the past with Claypool and guitarist Larry LaLonde dueling on some heavy riffage. The energy level surges with “The Ol’ Grizz”, a fresh tune from the trio’s new EP A Handful of Nuggs. The song ignites with Les Claypool’s kinetic bass line generating what feels like a groovy sonic portal to a higher dimension. The new EP also features a killer cover of Dio’s “Holy Diver”, but Primus goes in another direction on the hard-rocking “Groundhog’s Day” with freaky guitar over a wicked bassline and lyrics that compare corn chex cereal to apple pie.
There’s an extra level of psychedelia in play after dark now, with the stage lights projecting geometric shapes off the Meritage resort building facades while trippy imagery is shown on the screen. New drummer John Hoffman propels “John the Fisherman” with a tight beat as Claypool and LaLonde riff it up. “The Ol’ Diamondback Surgeon” from 1993’s Pork Soda album ups the psychedelic rock jam factor with melodic riffs over a trancey beat, enhanced by extra percussion from Mike Dillon and saxophone from Skerik.
Les Claypool’s signature bass lines propel “My Name Is Mudd” and “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”, as the audience rocks out to the heavy grooves and dissonant guitar riffage. The energy level is surging in a big way into “Frizzle Fry”, which features a sick jam with Les and Ler tearing it up for a climactic end to the set. Claypool opens the encore by teasing some of “The Star Spangled Banner”, a prelude to “American Life” from 1991’s Sailing the Seas of Cheese. It’s another one of those weird Primus songs with misfit characters and dissonant melodies that wouldn’t work for most bands, but are bread and butter for Les Claypool.
A big jam on the [English] Beat‘s ska punk classic “Mirror in the Bathroom” with all of the Frog Brigade back onstage provides a raucous climax to the evening’s festivities, with Skerik back in action on sax adding an essential element to the song. Summer fun for the holiday occasion has been had, yet it still feels like there’s a lot more to dig into on the Claypool Lennon Delirium’s new album. Fans are now left to wait for a fall tour announcement, similar to basketball fans waiting to hear where free agent LeBron James is going to play this coming season. A tour featuring a complete nightly performance of The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy could be quite a spectacle indeed.
