Last weekend I took a little roadtrip to see Silver Jews play in Ann Arbor, and to visit Doug at Cranbrook. It was about a five hour drive, so it was nice to have some time to think and watch the landscape unfold.
The Silver Jews show was all I hoped for and more. (although no Steve Malkmus) The performance, not unlike David Berman's songs and poems themselves, was full of surprises. David himself seemed to be a complete mess. Upon mounting the stage, he attempted to explain the necessity of the music stand and reading light in front him, mentioning that not only were his eyes bad, but his memory was going too. He wore thick, yellow-lensed glasses and squinted through them at the music stand as the songs transpired, periodically halting his strum to push the glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Without fail, his glasses would fall off completely toward the end of each song, and he would nearly knock over the music stand as he clumsily bent down to retrieve them. Instead of being distracting or aggravating, these incidents were endearing and charmingly honest, perfectly in tune with his writing style. As for the music itself, it sounded great, and they ran an impressive spectrum of songs from all five albums. His gorgeous wife played guitar and sang backup, and took the reins and sang lead for the song she wrote on the latest album, "Tanglewood Numbers". (its no "let's humor my wife and let her sing a song" situation either, she's very good and is obviously a mean little songwriter herself) So the show was great, and I'm so glad I got the rare privilege of seeing them.
After the show, Doug and I stopped at a bar and drank a couple beers, shooting the shit about a range of topics. Then we went back to his studio space at Cranbrook and tried out the CrotchChair first hand. It was AWESOME. Worked like a charm.
So now its Saturday night, and I'm lying on this here couch typing this up for you. The Alfred Sparrow show last night went beautifully. I was nervous and worried that I'd forget guitar parts, since it was my first time playing them live and I had a few beers, but it all came together very nicely. Everyone in the bar became very focused on us and sounded thier approval warmly after each song. So that was a good feeling. Hope we can keep this band stuff up, I really think there's a lot of potential there. I'll get more detailed about the show in the next entry and I'll try to post some pictures of the performance.
Bye Bye for now!
