overlap

Some gigs come with a certain amount of expectation, but now and then I find myself going to see someone new to me with only a limited amount of prior knowledge. This is the case with Steve Earle, who I know more by reputation than anything else. I know that I know Copperhead Road and Devil's Right Hand, and it turns out that I recognise a couple of more recent songs from a session I caught him doing on the radio for Johnny Walker last september. And of course I recognise Guitar Town, and Galway Girl as currently seen on that advert for whatever the advert's for. So far, so predictable. I'm now wondering if it's the venue itself, or the combination of circumstances and influences. I've checked, I've been to seven gigs there now, and of those maybe two were unqualified successes. And it's a great venue, an old school theatre for performers, but it may be there that the problem lies. Steve's audience is perhaps unlikely to be overrun with hip teenagers, but the evening is punctuated by the tiresome 'Ooh, I recognise this one!' clapping over the start of every other song that seems to be a feature of the more mature crowd, and a substantial overdose of 'whoo!' and 'yeah!', often at staggeringly inappropriate parts of the set. Add in a couple of equally unnecessary hecklers demanding he play their choice of song next and some incessant burbling about who the guy swapping guitar for banjo for guitar for mandolin for guitar between songs is, and it's a recipe for irritation at best. The evening started with the current Mrs Earle, Allison Moorer, running through a bunch of covers – Dancing Barefoot, Clouds and ending with A Change Is Gonna Come being notable highlights. The venue's fine acoustics suit her voice, and she sounds great. Steve's set is characterised by change – the endless parade of instruments, the "DJ" repeatedly walking on and off to do some computerised scratching, or hit a button to run a computerised backing track and stand there "grooving" along for the next four minutes, Allison comes back on for a couple of songs, and it all seems quite a bit more disjointed than it needs to be. I like Steve Earle and everything he stands for, but it's only when he starts talking about politics and war, and when he talks about his family, and particularly when he duets with Allison to powerful effect that he seems to become especially engaged in the show. I'm impressed with the Steve Earle story, and with everything he's lived through it's a near miracle he's still out there playing music, but as a whole this gig was just curiously unsatisfactory. Then again, the whole question of family is very much on my mind at the moment, and coincidentally or not that venue is also where I've seen, on different occasions, Loudon Wainwright do a great show and son Rufus do one of the worst gigs I've ever seen, Natalie Merchant spend a significant proportion of her set talking about her daughter, and I've seen a Richard Thompson show featuring son Teddy. I'm pleased to say the current family crisis that affects me shows signs of being sorted out, but it has inevitably stirred up the odd thing that's usually better left alone. Meanwhile, this gig will be worked out of my system soon enough, with an audience with true greatness just around the corner at a meeting back across the river.

Labels: Allison Moorer, gigs, Steve Earle