This Salon Music Night at the Bootleg Theater was an intimate affair with many LA musicians and songwriters doing what very few musicians dare to do: singing some of their songs and covers totally acoustically, with their bare voice and guitar or piano and absolutely no micor amp. Yes it is tough, risky and a weird situation these days and ages where everything is about electronics and computers.
It was a pure and organic experience which obligatory forced me to concentrate on the lyrics and the simple beauty of the notes, something we rarely do these days, aren’t the concerts always too loud anyway? Very often I simply can’t understand the lyrics at all.
This was happening in the Bootleg gallery, not on the stage where the concerts are usually occurring, and every one attending seemed to be a friend of someone performing; it was not only very intimate, but a little like an amicable reunion on a Saturday night, even with a giant screen projecting movies.
In front of the screen, in a semi darkness, Spoons and Daisies, which introduced themselves as a Guns n’ Roses tribute band, played ‘Don’t cry’ and ‘Patience’ in the most lo-fi fashion you can imagine, with just a guitar, girl-boy harmonizing voices, a pretty good whistling, andthe Slash-wig-wearing guitarist’s funny high voice at the end of the song.
Sometimes performers were introducing themselves, like Adam Traub from The Burning of Rome who was next,sometimes they were not, and I was left a little clueless about who was there, but as I said, it was a friend party, and I was probably the only one not recognizing the singer.
Adam sang an upbeat tune of his own which was talking about Catholic mothers, drunk sailors and champagne, then two covers with the help of his harmonica. If the folk song ‘Plastic Jesus’ (also covered by the Flaming Lips) was appropriate for the circumstance, Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here" was another challenge, but it was interesting to see what someone can do with a rock-arena song under such lo-fi conditions.
During the next number, Adam took the cello to accompany Shadow Shadow Shade's Claire McKeown on piano, and it was a beautiful lyrical moment especially with Claire’s operatic voice. The old piano was deliciously making the thing ‘old school’, and you could even hear the chairs crack or the slightest move and breathing of the audience.
Someone, who had the nicest voice, played two melancholic songs on guitar thatI had never heard, but were reminiscent of these kinds of quiet pieces that softly talk about heartbreaks and loneliness, then Gabe Hart from Jail Weddings and his strong and expressive voice took his guitar and played a few songs. It was weird to see him alone without his large band, but his determined and dramatic tenor tone was more than enough too ccupy the large space when he played for example ‘I Thought You Were Someone That I Knew" or the nostalgic-western-ambiance ‘The Good Book', which is a new song.
Without any introduction, a guy moved to the piano and played some melancholic instrumental and a song with a falsetto vocals going to some strong and broken tone, then Jordan Hudock from the band Marvelous Toy, decided to move the piano (may be to feel more comfortable?) and shook up the ambiance with some passionate and violent use of the keys, and when he announced 'The rest will only be Billy Joel’s covers,… I was kidding’, people took it seriously, as he was actually quite the type to pay justice to the piano man. He was tapping his foot on the floor, moving while singing ‘There’s A Red Light Above Me", and his Joel’s style meets Springsteen’s enraged delivery put the room on fire.
The whole thing was very loose and became even more laid back when the Siara brothers, from the Henry Clay People, took the non-existent stage. Jordan Hudock was called back at the piano and Claire McKeown came back for the vocals to delicately cover ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, and what else can you ask when you hear this Velvet Underground's cover? But there also was a soulful Gram Parsons’ cover, ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’, and the Siara brothers of course played ‘California Wildfire’, followed by another cover, Billy Bragg’s ‘New England’.
The Bootleg Theater wanted to try something different, and it was. I am just wondering if this will continue and restore the 19th century genre in our modern world. Why not? We could all go without the earplugs once amonth.
But they will have to turn up the lights a little, my videos are so dark!