This Way Over Yonder festival was the last taste of summer, It was over 90ºF in Santa Monica, something which doesn’t even happen in July, and I was waiting in the pit for the headliner of the night, the adored Conor Oberst. I said adored because the young women around me seemed to be so excited to see him that I found this very cute and refreshing. ‘Do you know him?’ one of them asked me, ‘he is wonderful’, ‘Oh I know!’ I replied. She had driven from Mexico just to be there… was she related to Conor’s wife who, I have heard is also from Mexico? I didn’t ask but she was very pretty and her big eyes were wide opened during the whole set. Another woman, who was very drunk, got shushed a lot because she was singing all the songs very loudly, shamelessly covering Conor’s voice… and since she totally couldn’t shut up, I had the feeling some people were ready to do some killing.
Conor Oberst came on stage backed up by the Felice Brothers, who had played their own set earlier, and, later on, he called on stage his Bright Eyes companions, Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis, with the two First Aid Kit sisters. Needless to say that it was a big ensemble, giving us peaceful and beautiful harmonies as well as some dynamic-tempestuous moments. My view was splendid, I was literally at Conor’s feet, the best spot of the night, and I am sure I received a few of his postilions,… what do you want, he has a lot of words to say in these songs and he articulates quite a lot; at one point, he even bent over the woman next to me to apologize, as he may have realized it. But she was not complaining!
Jay Sweet, the organizer of the Newport Folk Festival, who has decided to bring the West Coast version of the festival on the Santa Monica Pier because ‘it’s an iconic place that’s not a traditional music venue’, had warned Conor, ‘no rock songs, only folk ones!’ Conor certainly followed the rules, and played lots of his most touching tunes, getting some help on the harmonies by First Aid Kit’s Johanna and Klara. ‘That’s was beautiful’, he said after a tender and superb version of ‘Lua’ as if he was commenting the end of a song on a Bright Eyes album. And that was very true, if you are able to find two persons who can harmonize better than these two women, just let me know!
The two last times I saw him, he was touring with Bright Eyes for their last album ‘The People’s Key’, then he was doing a solo set at Royce Hall, sitting down the whole time. But this time was a very different set, with no ‘Shell Games’ or ‘Jejune Stars’, and certainly no sitting down, just a relaxed Conor, wearing t-shirt and stage-tapping shoes, playing his most well-known songs and some lesser known ones such as ‘Moab’ and ‘Milk Thistle’ off his 2008 self-titled album, with an equal passion and energy. As close as I was, I could see every detail, and you know what, he still looks like a young kid at 33, aww I understand all these wide-eyed front-row girls screaming ‘I love you Conor’. By the way, I don’t know what was the matter but Conor said a lot of ‘Merci’, in French, for no other apparent reason that I was attending the show?
But with such a body of work, how does he pick his songs for a set like this? Sure there were the usual suspects, ‘We Are Nowhere’, ‘Poison Oak’, ‘Lua’, but also some unexpected ones – he opened with ‘Napoleon’s Hat’? I had never heard this song — actually a piece he recorded with Jenny Lewis for a Katrina Hurricane Benefit 2006 compilation in 2006. Being so close, I could see how difficult it was to sing these songs, with all these words that don’t go on repeat very much, ‘Napoleon’s Hat’ getting the phenomenal-lyrical-feat first prize. Who can actually sing a song with so many words? ‘Doctor Oppenheimer winced when he felt the broken piece of his pacemaker/Unbuttoned his shirt on a subway platform, clutching his chest while his vision blurred’. But I was surrounded by die-hard fans who knew all the complicated lyrics of all the songs, and the cute Mexican girl kept asking for this ‘White Shoes’ song all evening long. He didn’t play it but instead played lots of Bright Eyes tunes brushing his huge catalogue with quite a few off ‘Cassadaga’ and what may be my favorite Bright Eyes’ album, ‘I’m wide awake, it’s morning’, even touching a bit of his adventure with the Mystic Valley Band, and covering a Felice Brothers’ song whom he seems to appreciate so much.
Conor said he was amazed by the crowd, I couldn’t see the end of it from where I was, and he added he was glad he couldn’t see the ocean because, you know what, Conor hates the ocean! At least he said so, but beside this, he was in a good mood, commenting a bit some songs before playing them, even giving large smiles when turning toward his musicians,… unusual because Conor is not exactly the smiling one, he naturally cultivates this umbrageous look that fits him, his emotionally disturbed songs and acerb social commentaries so well.
The whole band left the stage after playing a devilish-epic version of ‘Travelin’ Song’ (a personal favorite of mine) with the special help of the Felice Brothers’ accordion and violin, and saying that this festival seemed to be a good idea… yeah, would they renew it next year? With Conor again? I would definitively go back! He came back for an encore, touched a few hands of the first row people and did a quiet acoustic version of ‘Milk Thistle’, off his 2008 self-titled album, backed up with only one guitarist, and this was probably the most vulnerable moment of the night.
‘And I’m not pretending that it’s all OK/Just let me have my coffee before you take away the day’ sang Conor with his very recognizable voice, it was a set for Bright Eyes’ lovers with its right balance of rare tracks and classics, of intimate and riotous numbers, embracing Oberst’s multi-facets, summing up an already long career, which never seems to end as he will be soon touring with his other project Desaparecidos! Isn’t he really wonderful? Sure, I ended up taking a million pictures, totally taken by the moment and not letting anyone to take away the day.
