Live at the Basement East

Back in July, my friend Reno Bo asked me to open his gig at the Basement East in Nashville, TN. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. Firstly, Reno is fabulous. Secondly, the Beast is one of my favourite venues in Nashville. Thirdly, I love singing live, and more often than not will jump at the chance to play. As a writer, I don’t think a song is finished until I’ve played it in front of people. It can be to an audience of 500 people. It can be to an audience of 1. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the song becomes a shared experience instead of something I’ve conjured up for my navel.

Over the past year or so, I’ve played close to 100 shows, and though I’m not nearly successful enough (or wealthy enough, yikes touring is expensive!) to play permanently with a full band, I am lucky enough to work with Rick Lollar, an incredibly talented, nimble Telecaster player. Next week, we’ve got a full band show in New York, a rare treat indeed. But in the meantime, here’s a few clips from our recent Nashville show, which we played in duo mode. As a singer, I like having the freedom to move about the melody, and to bend the phrasing according to how I’m feeling or the phase of the moon. Duo mode is good for that.

The Resurrection Game

“The Resurrection Game” is the title track from my most recent album. I’ve written about this before, about how it came about after I attended an experiential hippy therapy retreat in Northern California in one of my many, many attempts to do what spiritually minded folk might call “ancestral healing”. In the final episode of Mad Men, Don Draper attends a similar retreat and comes up with an iconic Coke commercial. I came up with a song that’s more or less a conversation with my dad’s ghost.

Beautiful Ruins

“Beautiful Ruins” is a companion track to “The Resurrection Game”, and it’s on the same album. This time, the song is set in Australia, in regional New South Wales, which is a strange and haunting parallel to Northern California, in that they both have hot, dry air, and vast fields of gold scattered with eucalyptus trees, and the sun hits my skin like a recurring dream.

Jealous Guy

“Jealous Guy” is a song I’ve always wanted to sing, and as Reno and his band were playing George Harrison songs that evening, I took it upon myself to through a little John Lennon into the mix. The blend of sadness and desire in this track is an irresistible to mix to me, and I enjoyed taking it for a test drive. I’m not sure if or when we’ll play it again, and that’s sometimes how covers go. But here it is for now.

Our full band show is at Berlin on Avenue A on August 29. It’s quite close to selling out, but if you’re in the area, limited tickets are available here.

The Resurrection Game album is streaming everywhere…

These clips were filmed by James Southard, and mixed by Reid Sorel.