Opener: Darren Smith Band
Venue: Youngstown Cultural Arts Center - Seattle
Date: August 3, 2006
The Scene
I have a couple of friends who went to school at Bates College in rural Maine in the mid-to-late 1990s. It was a small town, and an even smaller music scene around Bates, so concert promoters generally didn't have very far to look for an opening act when regionally touring singer/songwriters came to perform at the college.According to my friends, one of the only musicians ever available for these slots was Mark Erelli. It became somewhat of a running joke among their friend group – a given – that if you wanted to go see singer/songwriter X, who was performing anywhere in town, you'd have to get through Mark Erelli's set first.
Erelli has come a long way from Bates college and his ubiquitously persistent opening slot as the town troubadour. Since then, he's come to share a stage with some of the brightest, most respected songwriters in the contemporary folk scene: labelmates Kris Delmhorst and Jeffrey Foucault, as well as Tracy Grammer, Catie Curtis, and Erin McKeown, to name a few.
Tonight, at the end of a particularly lovely summer day in Seattle, he's managed to coax a large handful of locals into a cavernous back room at a West Seattle community arts center for a couple of hours to experience songs from his most recent Signature Sounds release, Hope and Other Casualties.
Darren Smith & Band
Local singer/songwriter Darren Smith is on hand to open the show tonight. Standing at a remarkably impressive height (I don't even want to guess - maybe 6'4"?), Smith looks an awful lot like film hunk Vince Vaughn. His songs, however, are rather somber, and deal mostly with a long-ago broken heart.With an incredible lap steel picker and mandolin player to back him up, his lovely, lonely tunes deeply endear the intimate crowd.
Mark Erelli
Smith's set is fairly brief, however, and Mark Erelli fills out the night by finally hitting the stage around 8:30. He opens his set with a new song that comments on just about everything, in a very charmingly Dylanesque way.From there, he slolems through tunes from previous records, songs from Hope and Other Casualties, and a few numbers so new, they're unavailable anywhere other than directly from Erelli.
Among the songs he pulls out from Hope... were "Snowed In," the nostalgic and conscientious "Imaginary Wars," and the quasi-political "Seeds of Peace."
Emotions must be incredibly difficult for Erelli to reckon with. Whether he's singing a love song like "Congress Street" or a scathing political rant like "Nothing Much Has Changed," his face wrinkles up tightly like each admission is at least difficult, if not painful overall.
In fact the newer numbers, "Nothing Much Has Changed" and "Seeds of Peace," are the biggest highlights of the evening. Erelli is, without question, at his best in a live setting, when his charming boy-next-door personality can punctuate his frank lyrics and memorable melodies.
"Is the nation still being run by fat old white guys who are determined to destroy everything," he asks after commenting about how out of touch he's managed to become in the three days he's just spent "off tour" in Seattle.
The audience responds with a resounding, half-laughing "Yes," and Erelli remarks, "Oh ok. See I wouldn't have known the difference. I'm that blissed out ... it'll take a lot of doing to work up the righteous indignation for those songs." Luckily for the crowd, it doesn't seem like he has to work that hard to get there. Even my friends from Bates are summarily impressed.
