Gig Diary: Too Hip For This Room

In the duo context, the division of labor was pretty mutable—our roles were, for the most part, not ironclad. While I acted mostly as the engine, motoring the songs forward with strums while Dan provided color and ornament, that equation could easily flip from song to song; while Dan was the primary theorist, shaping the sound around our strengths and limitations, I brought my share of arrangement ideas to the mix. There was one clear line of demarcation, though; Dan was a populist, while I was ever an obscurantist.

That's not to say that Dan pushed us to pander to the lowest common denominator—far from it, his disdain for what he dismisses as "Happy Hour stuff" is still sharp (we took it as a point of pride, for instance, that we never did a Jimmy Buffett song). But it was nearly as important to him that our material be accessible as that it be quality—accessible while shying away from the obvious. If we were to do a Dylan song, for instance, we'd steer away from war-horses like "Hard Rain" or "Mr. Tambourine Man" or "Like A Rolling Stone" and towards things like "Positively 4th Street"—songs that would bring a pleasant shock of recognition, not the rolled eyes of "Oh, God, that again."

But neither would it be "This is cool—what is this?" So no "Political World," no "Cold Irons Bound," no "Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll." And certainly no Nick Cave, no Suzanne Vega, no John Wesley Harding, no Sixteen Horsepower...

Does it sound like I'm complaining? I'm not. My brother is and was the most supportive and adventurous musical partner I could ever ask for, and we brought our powers to bear on a dizzying range of material, all of it chosen and worked up in a spirit of equality and fairness, with no diktats, no quotas, and remarkably little ego. We were a democracy of two; in such a system, compromise is inevitable.

In my infrequent solo shows, I was uncompromising to a fault, indulging my taste for quirks and obscurities even when inappropriate. I remember one show I did in a community hall, a show that was taped for broadcast on local cable TV; there's a moment on the tape when I'm pounding my way through John Cale's "Dying On The Vine," spitting out the lyric Meet me when all the shooting's over... as the camera pans away from the stage over to a group of happy babies crawling on the floor. That about sums it up, right there.

During the break in that show, as I went out onto the fire escape for a smoke (I still smoked, then), the sound engineer came up to tell me how much he, personally, was enjoying the show: that's quite a set list, he said, some real buried treasures. Then he looked at me thoughtfully and said, "Maybe too hip for this room, though, y'know?"

SET I

Winter Song (Lindisfarne)
These Days (Browne)
Man Of Constant Sorrow (traditional)
What Is Life (Geo. Harrison)
All The Diamonds In The World (Cockburn)
Seven Steps (Miles, Cassandra Wilson)
After The Axe (J. Fear)
Wall Of Death (Thompson)
All God's Children (Simon Bonney)
One Way (Levellers)
Hallelujah (Cohen)
Heartbeats (The Knife by way of José Gonzáles)
Orphan Boy (Gillian Welch)
Ring Of Fire (Cash)

SET II

Sweet Thing (Van Morrison)
My Baby Just Cares For Me (Nina)
Tracks Of My Tears (Smokey)
Downtown (Petula)
Can't Help Falling In Love (Elvis)
Every Little Kiss (Hornsby)
Earn Enough For Us (XTC)
The Walking Song (J. Fear)
There She Goes (The La's)
God Bless' The Child (Lady)
Angel Of Harlem (U2)
Looking For Jack (Colin Hay)
Join Together (The Who)
The Maker (Daniel Lanois)

Everything in context: a coffeehouse isn't the family concert at the town green or the community center. There's a little more leeway to be dark or odd. At summer concerts and Happy Hours, the audience expects (and fairly so) to know every song by heart, or at least to recognize them all; in a coffeehouse setting, they'll accept a song that's new to them—usually assuming that I wrote it myself, unless I tell 'em otherwise.

The One Way Café, where I'm playing tonight, is a different kind of gigging experience for me; although it's not an explicitly Christian-identified establishment, its owners are Christian; there's a rack of Christian literature by the door; the usual ambiance is CCM—Christian Contemporary music. I'm their first "secular" booking—the first artist the owners have booked whom they didn't know from their church. I would like to make a good impression, and perhaps be invited back. I do not want to offend. I do not want to shock. I do not want to be too hip for the room.

Now, you might think this would be an easy gig for me, given my extensive background in church music—but that experience is of little help here. My expertise is in liturgical music, rather than (for lack of a better term) Christian entertainment; these are not songs to listen to, they are songs to pray.

CCM has its own conventions—as the joke goes, it's easy to write a CCM hit; just write a pop song, then every time the word "baby" appears in the lyrics, cross it out and write in "Jesus" instead—and its own audience, with its own tastes; if you try singing "Abide With Me" to this crowd, you're gonna get laughed out of the room. Whatever you think of CCM (and I can't stand most of the stuff, myself—to me it all sounds like jingles for house paint), its fans are vociferous and don't cotton to fakers. So I'm sidestepping the issue entirely, and sticking with my usual mix of pop, jazz, and postpunk rock—albeit with a spiritual kick.

A higher proportion than usual of new material this time around, much of it added at the last minute—maybe a bit reckless, given the disastrous consequences of under-rehearsal in recent shows. But many of these are songs I've been playing around the house for years, but have never taken live. The one I'm most worried about, though, is "Heartbeats": I first heard the acoustic version of this song just a few days ago, courtesy of Matthew's blog, and (as you can tell from the Comments section to that post) I've been debating ever since whether or not I should include it in the set. It's exactly the sort of thing that can lead to accusations of being too hip for the room—but in the end, it's too beautiful to not play.

And, there, if anywhere, is a clear line of demarcation.