LIVE: CLAYPOOL GOLD – Charlotte, NC, USA – June 16, 2026

Venue: TD Amp Ballantyne

City: Charlotte, NC

Date: June 16, 2026

Review and Photographs by: James Zambon (https://jameszambon.com)

Les Claypool has been a fixture in modern rock for so long that it’s easy to forget how strange the whole enterprise still is, which makes the Claypool Gold tour a well-timed reminder. The three bands took over the TD Amp Ballantyne with Les Claypool on a Tuesday night and turned a humid Charlotte evening into a night of gloriously deranged musicianship. The format is simple and clever: the six-piece Frog Brigade first, then the four-piece Claypool Lennon Delirium, then the Primus trio, with the Les’ restless imagination threading through all three. The Frog Brigade opened the evening as the night’s loosest, jazziest expression of Claypool’s sprawl, working through “Up on the Roof,” “Lust Stings,” and “Precipitation” (a song about, of all things, rain and its corrosive effect on the mind) before closing their half-hour with “David Makalaster.” This is the band where Mike Dillon’s vibraphone and the horn-forward arrangements pull Claypool furthest from rock and deepest into something that swings, the matter-of-fact storytelling reeling out into absurdist epics. Thirty minutes wasn’t nearly enough, but it set the table beautifully. The Claypool Lennon Delirium took the stage next and pivoted hard into cosmic psychedelia, Sean Ono Lennon’s guitar and vocals lending the set a more composed, intentional shape than the Brigade’s freewheeling jazzy wanderings. They opened with the thrashing “South of Reality” and pulled three from the new concept record (the morality-fable “WAP (What a Predicament),” “Troll Bait,” and “Meat Machines”) before the gorgeous title piece “The Golden Egg of Empathy.” Which I believe Lennon played with a guitar that Les kept calling the “golden sperm”. They closed by reaching back to the architects of psych rock with Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine,” a fitting nod given that Delirium keyboardist Harry Waters is the son of Roger Waters. It was the most structured, mind-bending stretch of the night, and a smart contrast before Primus came out swinging.

Primus opened with “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers,” a statement of intent if there ever was one, then ran straight through “Fisticuffs,” “Groundhog’s Day,” and “The Ol’ Grizz” before anyone in the crowd had quite recalibrated to Primus time. This is a band that operates on its own physics, and the early set made clear the trio had no interest in easing the room into it. Worth noting who that trio is these days. Claypool and Larry “Ler” LaLonde have been twisting up this music together since 1989, and drummer John Hoffman, who joined about a year ago following the departure of longtime drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander, has slotted into that distinctive, immediately recognizable sound without sanding off any of its edges. The three of them traffic in knotty tension-and-release passages, the kind that open up room for exploratory jams while never once losing the driving groove underneath. I don’t know why or how Les and LaLonde’s playing fits together technically but its sure sounds right. It’s high-minded playing wrapped in lowbrow humor, which has always been the Primus trick. Les, at one point during the Primus set, started conjuring those familiar synth-bass swells with his foot pedals, the unmistakable opening texture of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer.” He’d apparently been talking up Rush all evening (the band is heading to Texas to catch them, though as Les joked, Ler is sitting that one out because “Ler doesn’t like that kinda music,” which is a very Ler position to hold). They led into a short tribute: a hillbilly “Tom Sawyer,” all twang and grin, Geddy Lee filtered through a screen door and a jug of moonshine. It should not have worked. It absolutely did.

Ler, billed by Les somewhere mid-set as the “godfather of death metal” with a promise that he’d play so hard you’d best hang onto your britches, spent the evening doing what he does best: saying almost nothing and saying the most bizarre musical phrasing that shouldn’t make sense but somehow does, through the fretboard. Lalonde’s playing on “My Name Is Mud” and “Spegetti Western” was all angular menace, the kind of playing that sounds casual until you try to figure out what scale he’s even in. “Harold of the Rocks” got a sly “A Passage to Bangkok” tease woven into it, another Rush wink for anyone paying attention, and the deeper cuts (“Jilly’s on Smack,” the tour-debuting Residents cover “Hello Skinny,” “Welcome to This World”) gave the set a loose, anything-goes shape that rewarded the faithful. Then the encore turned into something special. Rather than the trio simply returning for a victory lap, Les brought the entire Frog Brigade band back out to join in for “Southbound Pachyderm,” swelling the stage and the sound from the expanse that it already is into something far more immersive than you would ever expect at an outdoor concert. Les taking center stage with his disco-ball helmet while the extra hands opened the arrangement up, and offered a unique xylophone solo (yep, Dillon on xylophone, with Lalonde and Lennon on guitars trading bizarre musical phrasing back and forth) that drifted across the pachyderm’s slow migration across the stage’s screen. That collaborative reach is the real point of Claypool Gold: the bassist’s name is on the marquee, but the night never felt like an ego trip. This night was an unhinged, generous, and deeply weird show that was both a Primus set and a Claypool variety hour that didn’t miss a single beat. If you’re catching this tour at any of the remaining dates, hang onto your britches. Ler wasn’t kidding.

Setlist – Primus: Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers – Fisticuffs – Groundhog’s Day – The Ol’ Grizz – Jilly’s on Smack – Over the Falls – Hello Skinny – Welcome to This World – My Name Is Mud – Spegetti Western – Harold of the Rocks – Southbound Pachyderm

Setlist – The Claypool Lennon Delirium: South of Reality – WAP (What a Predicament) – Troll Bait – Meat Machines – The Golden Egg of Empathy – Astronomy Domine

Setlist – Les Claypool Frog Bridgade: Up on the Roof – Lust Stings – Precipitation – David Makalaster

[Show as slideshow]

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Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries