Went to see Erin Mckeown with Joshua James at The Grey Eagle last night. It was a really great show. Joshua James has an excellent voice, sort of a husky Nick Cave, and he plays and writes really well. His stage persona is a little hard to get used to, though. He’s either the single most emotionally raw and vulnerable performer I’ve ever seen, or he’s the biggest ham. I thought he was gonna cry during every song. There was scenery chewing. It was a bit like watching someone have a breakdown on the street: you want to help, you want to not look at them to give them privacy, and you want them to get a room. Once I got used to it, though, it was actually very engaging. One song, about a friend whose father died when they were 13, brought me to tears in the first verse, them turned into a maudlin cover of “You are my sunshine.” That was really the only true mis-step that I saw.
Erin McKeown has mastered the art of adorable badassery. She’s gonna be 30 in 4 days. The first time I saw her was in The Elbow Room in Columbia, SC at a round robin of folkies arranged by Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls. Since I was 19, she must have been 20 or 21. Rose Polenzani invited her up on stage to do a couple of numbers. She bounced around with her electric guitar and totally brought down the house. She played “My Hips” and “Monday Morning Cold,” and the drunken lesbian crowd was glad to have all that energy, not to mention the sex and drugs references. Much like myself, Erin grew up. She’s given up her skaterboi infused stocking cap in favor of a wide pinstripe suit and fancy silk tie. She still has the awesomest hair going, though. Last night’s show was still infused with all that energy, and the still drunken, slightly straighter crowd still ate it up like snickers and coke. Her style of funky, folky, big band swing crosses so many musical boundaries that it should have a passport, but the catalogue still manages to fit nicely together onstage, with the faster, louder numbers yielding to the more contemplative songs.
So I had an awesome time. What is up with uber-drunk people at shows? Do they remember it afterward? Do they just pretend they remember so they can say it was awesome? Why do they try to talk to the performers while they’re singing?
