Old World Romance at Fitzgerald’s
Sea Wolf’s Alex Church Brown performs with opener Chase Hamblin
Dead silence isn’t something you usually want to hear at a concert, but last night at Fitzgerald’s was something special. Around me, young couples held each other and swayed in their seats as Sea Wolf’s Alex Church Brown regaled them with songs that ruminate gently on love and longing. I’ve seen a number of quiet, “stripped-down” shows at Fitzgerald’s, from Kentucky cellist Ben Sollee to Oregon’s Blind Pilot. Typically, artists are lucky to get a break in the noise, especially at Fitz’s downstairs stage, where the rambling interior sometimes encourages concertgoers to get loud. One particularly memorable attendee had the nerve to reply to Maine’s Rayland Baxter (who was opening for Laura Gibson) with “THIS IS A BAR” when asked to take his conversation outside. So believe me when I say that it was wonderful not to hear from the audience last night. In a charming departure from the usual standing-room disarray, the downstairs stage was set up with fifty or so chairs in neat rows, which as I entered at the beginning of Chase Hamblin’s opening set were full of eager fans.
Accompanied only by his guitar, Hamblin acquitted himself well as a troubadour and journeyman. His set put me in mind of a well-developed open-mic night (which may be due to Hamblin’s association with Avant Garden’s standing Tuesday night session): the intimate setting, seated audience, and solo nature of the performance gave a dusky coffee-shop air to the night. Songs like “Can You See The Beast?” and “A Fine Time” translated well to their simpler arrangements, bubbling with energy and enthusiasm. Beneath the playfully archaic stylistic trappings of his music with the Roustabouts, Hamblin illustrates a fact that is often lost in the fray of performance with all its modern bombast: someone had to live these songs. With genres like “dubstep” (whatever that is) and EDM surging in popularity over the last several years, many shows are all about lights, movement, feeling — the transduction of emotion through sheer physical presence. But there’s a subtler art which once was more prevalent, and toward which performers like Chase Hamblin reach.
He seemed to started out nervous — and who wouldn’t? A silent, seated crowd is intimidating. But Hamblin’s a seasoned performer and he held right to the rudder. Every time the crowd noise started to bubble over, a well-placed chorus put them back in their places. He apologized several times for performing “downers,” excusing the depressive focus of his music as an effort to focus on “folkier” material for his solo performance. How anyone could come away from his set sad though is beyond me. The ability to channel individual experience into simple, thematically interlinked observations and set them to accessible melodies is impressive enough by itself. But it’s a great — and incredibly brave — thing to stand up in front of an audience who isn’t even there to see you and bare yourself. In performing alone in such a venue, Chase Hamblin reminds us that the desire to speak earnestly in song is the grounding of a powerful songwriting tradition that still has a lot to teach us.
By the time Alex Church Brown took the stage, the crowd was warmed up and ready to show their love. He immediately set the tone by opening with “Young Bodies” from his forthcoming album, creating an intimacy through the stark admissions therein (“I don’t love her like you loved her”) and by stepping out on a song that was unfamiliar ground for artist and audience alike.
Throughout his 16-song set, Brown retained a relatable affability, managing to mess up the lines of second song “Black Leaf Falls” several times and laugh off his mistake without trying his fans’ patience. If anything, moments like this helped to further build the rapport that the setting encouraged — between songs as he mused on such thrilling topics as Houston’s humidity and the attentiveness of the audience, people shouted replies back to him as though the invisible barrier between stage and floor that so often springs up at concerts simply wasn’t there on this night. Those lowered defenses worked to his advantage — as Sea Wolf, Brown writes songs that are melodramatic and extremely personal. “Wicked Blood” and “Blue Stockings” stood out in particular for the passion with which they express the alternately burning and delicate connection between lovers. By the time he reached “Leaves In The River” — the first song he ever wrote as Sea Wolf — those lucky enough to attend with someone they loved were wrapped up in each other as much as they were the music.
The pin-drop silence between songs was left behind when Brown took up set-closer “You’re A Wolf” from his 2007 EP Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low. Although I’d not been acquainted with Sea Wolf’s following before last night, it’s safe to say that this song is responsible for much of the enthusiasm I saw. The song rumbles with self-indictment and lost hope and had the crowd cheering from its first notes.
A short encore break was followed by a two-song coda (which pointedly did not include the requested “Freebird.” Yeah, someone was that guy.) that included “Whirlpool” from Old World Romance and another crowd favorite, “Middle-Distance Runner” from debut album Leaves In The River. Although the song professes its narrator to be worthy of affection only in the short term, the lengthy line at the merch table after the show illustrated that, seven years into his career as Sea Wolf, Alex Church Brown is still keeping pace with the pack.
Nights like this one are a wonderful reminder of the diversity of experience that’s available in musical performance. One night’s kitchen-sink bombast can segue perfectly into taciturn and thoughtful intonation the next. By pairing Chase Hamblin and Alex Church Brown on last night’s show, Fitzgerald’s gave Houston a chance to experience a kind of intimacy that is often drowned out by the profusion of noises that get made in a city as large as this one — and to discover at least one man who’s making his own right here in our hometown.
