here i go again

Oftentimes, just as the grind is beginning to wear down the sharp edges, you get a chance to brake the machine and enjoy moments of complete simplicity. What you really want to do is not have sharp edges to begin with, to not worry about the grind, and merely be one of those that let life wash around you – more rider than driver. Riding is perfectly nice. I’ve always sensed that there are two equally interesting camps that deal with being a rider in this world, and I can marry both to a lyric in a Radney Foster song “I belong in honky-tonk barrooms…”; the first is that I don’t want to worry about what’s outside, I just want to listen to the music. The second is that I want to be just like the artist that's works, tours, enjoys, and his happy with his world of music. Tons of performers in venues across the world fill one of those ideals for me, a lot fill parts of each, but few fully complete both. Of course, it would be untrue to say that if I were offered the talent and place in the business that Lyle Lovett holds, that I’d pass. It’s also difficult to imagine that I wouldn’t want to be up on a beer-soaked stage every night like Brent Best, blasting out great song after great song. It would be very easy to say that as an everyman performer, songwriter, and entertainer I’d love to be Todd Snider; right now, as he was last night. I certainly wouldn’t want to have been through the life, the peaks and valleys, that gave us what appear to be a very comfortable person and artist.

His show at the Birchmere last night was acoustic, which perfectly suited the venue. He’s a performer who starts the show, band or no band, in a deferential manner, like he just wandered in as part of a string of performers. He plays a few songs to open and then gives you an idea of how his shows flow: singing, storytelling, laughing, serious songs, beer songs, politically-charged songs, and more laughing. Whether he’s telling or singing the story is irrelevant. He can disarm you by merely passing along, in his inimitable way, that the songs aren’t written as political songs but written, as they are, simply because they rhyme. He’ll tell you that he’s not up there to preach and convert anyone but to just tell the stories that interest him. Both approaches work for him, and I think he believes that both are true to some extent, but there’s little doubt where he stands politically and on the issues of the day. The beauty of his style is that the power of his songwriting is cut by his ability to deliver the message in way that is impossible not to enjoy. His self-deprecating manner and stories (you’ll never hear a funnier story the includes NASCAR star Bill Elliot, stage monitor speakers, and ranch dip) give insight into just how easy it is wander through life as a pretty smart guy and still end up on the short end of goings on. His guitar playing, which can be overlooked when the full band is on stage, was excellent last night (he let us know that he’d been practicing). His voice was strong and the sound in the venue perfectly set so that even if you didn’t know the lyrics you could easily follow along. Taking all of that into account, what makes him great as a performer is something that X pointed out on the way home: there’s isn’t any point during his performance when you feel you’re simply riding out a slow portion in order to get to back to something that grabs you. Even with artists that I love I find myself mystified at some point during their shows trying to decide exactly why they determined that we wanted to hear three or four, ten-minute jam sessions. As he wrapped up and headed off the stage, the crowd gave what was truly a rousing ovation for an outstanding performance – and we stayed for the encore, go figure.

Dan Bern opened the show which I found interesting because I owned his self-titled album long before I ever got turned on to Todd Snider. I listened to that album a lot over the years and always meant to catch a show but it never seemed to work out. It was always easy to see how he got pigeon-holed into the ‘dylan’ box early in his career. His voice, though better than Dylan’s, is similar, but his songs are of a different tone. Dan Bern writes songs that leave subtlety sitting off in a corner, mock so much of what’s wrong in this world, and often make you laugh out loud. Anyone who writes a song that declares themselves, because we are all waiting, as the Messiah has my vote. Dan doesn’t even like to wait for the bus let alone the second coming.

Back to the idea of braking the grind. Last night’s show gave us a few hours of simply sitting in a nice club and enjoying a great show. No cubicle or commute for me to worry about, no papers or exams for X to plan. Though it was more than that for me. I sat there listening, laughing, smooching on occasion, and remembering just how cool life is when you sift out the boring, mundane things and just think about the cool stuff. Man, I’d love to be Todd. Oh wait.

Dig what you do.

T