Finding The Fringe: Bird Courage at The Bluebird and the Human Experience

Down below Edinburgh’s swift moving clouds sits a small café on a residential street. Up the hill, on the famous Royal Mile, tens of thousands of visitors are here for The Fringe. Edinburgh’s marquee event is the largest arts festival in the world: there 3,193 shows scheduled for 2014, with tens of thousands of actors, comedians and one-man/woman shows lining the streets, armed with glossy fliers that will soon muddy beneath their feet. With stagy smiles fit for a musical and an imploring sense of personal space, they approach anyone foolish enough to make eye contact with, “Hello! How are you! Are you interested in watching me?” And while this festival is what it is because of its eccentric sense of flare, it can also be crowded and exhausting at its epicenter. And so, as the festival’s name beseeches, it’s best to head to the outskirts, where artistry is more about a shared moment than hoping to be seen.

It takes me thirty minutes to get there as I traverse gradually emptying streets. The sun hasn’t set yet. The cobblestone is glistening with orange rain. Few tourists venture here, but perhaps they wouldn’t want to: souvenirs can’t be bought here, only experienced. After getting lost in a quaint Scottish neighborhood, I finally arrive at The Bluebird Café and ask for a beer. It’s BYOB, Kylie says (she’s the tattooed owner of the place), but she’s happy to point me to The Beerhive, a craft-beer store just down the street. After buying two tall boys of Scottish ale, I look left and then right, realize my mistake, look right and then left and cross the street. When I return to The Bluebird I hang outside for a minute, standing awkwardly around Bird Courage, tonight’s invited guest. I feel like the guy at the party invited by a friend who’s going to be late; but once I stop pretending to seem at ease (the result of being around actors all week), a few niceties are exchanged, I crack open a beer, and make my way inside to look for a seat.

It isn’t hard to find a chair. There are exactly three still empty. At first I can’t help but feel like I’m intruding: fourteen eyes are staring at me, two women merrily sipping their glasses of wine; another couple whose smiles say, “Is he sure he’s in the right place?”; a third couple who greets me as if this were a dinner party; and a man sitting by himself with an expensive camera on the table, next to a bottle of red wine that would be more fitting if it were whiskey. I creak into my wooden chair, not six inches away from where the bassist is standing. I bring my knees in close because I feel I’m taking up too much space. I’m not so much uncomfortable as unaccustomed to the intimate setting: The Bluebird feels less like a café and more like a living room, which is of course what most coffee shops only wish they could be. But after a couple sips of beer, having spent a week on the Royal Mile, it’s refreshing to be in a place where soft voices and whispers are the assumed manner of speech.

The reason I’m here is to see Bird Courage, a talented band that emerged from NYC’s subway system. Their harmonies are tight, their lyrics wise beyond their years, but trying to describe their sound stops at the comparisons: delicate finger picking reminiscent of Nick Drake, harmonies à la Fleet Foxes or Iron & Wine. The stand-up bassist wears bells and wooden beads on his ankles; he thumps his feet on the floorboards like a Native American. The lead guitarist closes his eyes when he plays; the emotion he sings with can’t help but escape through his hands (he made a comment about being lucky not to break any strings). The third member, another multi-talented instrumentalist (a bass drum covered with a white sheet, a xylophone, a melodica, his voice) executes each harmony perfectly with crisp, pronounced lyrics. Bird Courage exudes an aura that makes you want to be quiet and listen, perhaps because they began below the streets of Manhattan. Their granular, breathless quality feels like it’s escaping, as if they’re not playing to entertain as much as they need it.

This is a memorable evening others will wish they had seen. Everyone is at ease. If feels like a laid-back dinner party. Kylie is a kind, welcoming host who loves folk music. She has never been to New Orleans, but has seen Tennessee. Her friend, a gentle man with a firm handshake (he’s sitting next to his wife, an aspiring American novelist from Michigan) used to play in a band with the bassist in New York City. He will be in Paris in the coming weeks, but for now is housing the band for their Scottish stint.

Far down the hill from the 49,497 performances officially scheduled this month, Bird Courage at The Bluebird provides a true Fringe experience. The musicians chat with everyone and exude unpretentious amicability, rare among talented artists who could easily go on and on about the hipness of the Brooklyn scene. There is no pretense, no affectation, and most importantly no fliers. As we sink deeper into our chairs to serene finger picking, three-part harmonies and deep drumming like a stampede, the lead singer describes a dream that inspired “May Shower,” from the 2014 album Maia Manu, funded by Kickstarter and Bird Courage’s community:

I am waiting in a warehouse. Everyone is waiting in line to go somewhere. Their bags are packed. All of us are getting antsy. Maybe it’s an airport terminal, or a collection point for a voyage out to sea. Anyway, I know there’s a dog with me because I can feel him, and I’m afraid that he’s going to run away. At the end of the line (or what British people call a queue), there’s a tall white door, beckoning forwards. You can guess by now that the dog runs through it; and when I follow I find myself on a peaceful beach. The waves are crashing and the skies are blue, but directly above us is a cloud filled with rain. The dog shape shifts into a human form: “Quick, we have to save them,” he entreats. When I look up, dolphins begin to fall into a bathtub in front of me. My companion says we have to get them into the sea, and so we carry these creatures that came from the sky and put them in the water so they can breach. It’s our responsibility to help the dolphins find other shores, my companion says. And maybe that’s what art is all about. Maybe that’s what we’re all here for.

For their final song, the band asks a few guests to call each other’s cell phones, creating pulsating sounds of otherworldly crickets. These final moments are an ethereal experience. With two empty tall boys and their latest EP in a plastic bag, I tell Bird Courage I look forward to seeing them in Paris, say goodbye to Kylie and shake the hands of the other guests. As I return towards the Royal Mile I climb the hill with ease. Thanks to Bird Courage at The Bluebird, I have found The Fringe, a festival whose authenticity lies in the human experience.