Man about town

I'm happy to report that my slow week of blogging has been due largely to a busy week of evenings out. During nights when I wasn't preoccupied with venture capital and the Giants, I was at the Great American Music Hall watching Jesse DeNatale, Jonathan Richman and Iron & Wine.

DeNatale, who just finished a couple of tours with Richman, has added a handful of new songs and a Wurlitzer piano to his shows since I saw him last. His imagistic lyrics remain fairly lean, in that there's no wasted effort and no wasted words, though he's not afraid to spend six minutes on a thought if that's what it takes. He appears to have slowed down "Rosie" a touch too, allowing him to dwell a little longer on one of my favorites in his catalog.

Richman, who seems to prefer singing in Italian or French to English these days, was as loose a cannon as ever. I think if you see him more than once every six months he might get tiresome, but it's really hard to tell whether he's being spontaneous or whether his act is totally premeditated. Either way he's not afraid to let the drummer have some while he retunes his guitar away from the mic, mid-song. I kind of feel like he's beyond criticism in some ways -- if you're not having a good time, it's your fault, because he sure is.

Sam Beam performed alone, to uproarious applause from the first song to the last. The 450 or so people in the sold-out Music Hall were dead-silent during his performance (though they weren't for Jesse or Jonathan), which actually lent even more seriousness to the performance. Beam seems to sing about losing a parent quite a bit, and uses words like "God" and "came" and "gone" a lot. He's a great guitar picker. When I met him briefly, I heard just how much South Carolina he has in his speaking voice. My friend thought "Upward Over The Mountain" was corny, particularly the bit about the dog, but I think it's one of his best.

I've long felt that Beam has been wrongly pegged as some sort of Appalachian balladeer by lazy rock writers who can't think of anything better to say when they hear a banjo. (I admit that "The Rooster Moans" does remind me of 'Mountain Music of Kentucky.') It's become almost meaningless to compare someone to Nick Drake, but his guitar playing has a lot in common with Beam's. My other friend didn't go to the Iron & Wine show because she thought it'd be a "downer," but I actually find Beam's songs hopeful rather than distressing. They're like things you could say to yourself to make you feel better. Oh, and he covers "Mr. Soul" and "Love Vigilantes," too.