Broken Songs

I heard there were some movie awards or something on Sunday, but for my household it was Howe Gelb Day, with a brief in-store at Soundscapes & then later a full show at the Horseshoe.

Both sets were in solo mode (which meant, sadly, little sense of what’s in store for us on the about-to-be-released ’Sno Angel Like You, recorded with a gospel choir in Ottawa). At Soundscapes he played five songs on a beautiful old acoustic, and at the ’shoe he alternated between the guitar and a Yamaha keyboard set to “piano.”

Gelb tends to nod & noodle at the best of times; let’s just say he seems easily distracted (see previous post). But at Soundscapes a mistrust of momentum seemed built into his very writing & playing style. The songs were full of tiny fissures & stops-and-starts, little pauses for especially meaningful hazy-crooned lines or shards of guitar twang or perhaps just a split-second reorientation. None of this is a criticism: it was a far cry from the shaggy majesty of the best Giant Sand records, but it had an earthy appeal of its own, a sonic homage to the dried-out, sun-cracked Arizona desert.

He really went wild – gloriously so – at the Horseshoe show, which was the last night of his tour & felt like it, finding him happily punch-drunk & even less interested in showbiz proprieties than usual. He ran through long mashups at the keyboard, his fingers hopping around all eccentric & Monklike, cramming ragtime runs next to standards next to nursery songs. He did jokeless comedy routines, asides & rambling mini-anecdotes that had me laughing even if I can’t remember them a day later. He threw shamelessly hammed-up snippets of “Helpless” and “Tower of Song” into “Felonious.” At one point he abruptly stopped playing “Shiver,” took a seat at the keyboard, and launched into “Moon River” with not a word of segue.

Weird thing is, it was always immensely entertaining & it never felt like Gelb was being churlish or unduly self-indulgent. Just willing to follow the stream of his consciousness wherever it led him, & confident that the rest of us would come too. And I think I speak for the majority of folks there when I say we were happy to meander along with him. (Though S for one confesses that she wished for “a little more structure.”)

In fact, it took Gelb a bit of doing to close the set. “Just keep playing,” someone cried when he first made to exit the stage, so he shrugged & did. Finally he pled fatigue and an early flight, threw a stack of tour-only promo CDs into his guitar case, and told us to help ourselves for $10 per. And then he sat at the keyboard and played “Over the Rainbow” while fans rooted through the booty, and then he left the stage. Left the guitar case out there, too, still full of CDs & banknotes – first time I’ve ever seen a merch sale run on the honour system.

And now, a Gelbfest. I’ll keep these up for a week at the most, I think.

• Howe Gelb, “Felonious” (from The Listener)
• Howe Gelb, “My Grandfather’s Clock” (from the new John Fahey tribute comp I Am the Resurrection, in which the ever-contrary Gelb brings a piano to the fingerpickin’ guitarist’s belated wake)
• Giant Sand, “Shiver” (from Chore of Enchantment; he played this at both Soundscapes and the ’shoe)
• Howe Gelb, “Jam Ache; Ahhh!” (Howe goes dub; from that tour-only CD, officially called (Upside) Down Home 2004: Year of the Monkey)
• Arizona Amp and Alternator, “AAAA 2” (from yet another recent Gelb-led project; he played this one at both Sunday sets too, and the record holds no less than four versions)