Venue: Triple Door - Seattle, WA
Date: Friday, May 2, 2008
Opener: Liam Finn
Liam Finn
Live looping is hardly something new in the world of solo singer/songwriters. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's when an artist records an instrumental riff onstage. Then, using a pedal that plugs into another machine, they can play that riff back while playing another riff on top of it. Sometimes they'll record several riffs in order to make a song a multi-layered animal—the sort of thing that would be impossible to do without a backup band, if not for live looping technology.Liam Finn—guitarist, drummer, singer, songwriter, extarordinaire—employs live looping to an extreme. He brings with him a single accompanist (a keyboardist/percussionist/backup vocalist), but most of the work is done via live looping until the song gets to a size and depth that can only be grown further by his frantic, animalistic drumming.
One could hardly call it folk music, but it's incredibly musically impressive, nonetheless. Folks wishing to see headliner Laura Veirs because of her softspoken poetic folky songs will either love or hate Finn. On this particular night, his set was rather astounding, and the crowd who was there for Veirs was overwhelmingly impressed.
Laura Veirs...Solo
After Finn's large, looping-grown rock/experimental jazz songs, Veirs' presence onstage seems small and quiet—hardly to her detriment. She started this performance with the opening song from her most recent release, 2007's Saltbreakers. The song, "Pink Light" (purchase/download), translated easily to being performed solo, acoustic.As we settled in for what turned out to be a set made mostly of songs from Saltbreakers, it became more and more intriguing to see how Veirs—who, on the record, created a universe of sound with a large band of many instruments—would fare interpreting the songs with just her voice and acoustic guitar. She is, however, an impressively gifted guitarist; there were few moments when the band was truly missed.
"Wandering Kind" (purchase/download) was one song that, while fine without the other instruments, seemed to miss the added instrumentation. It was hardly a miss with the crowd, though, who was in Veirs' pocket from the first notes of the night. Indeed, she used to live in Seattle, so the crowd was no doubt peppered with old friends and acquaintances.
Old Timey Folk Songs
Her latest project is a collection of old timey folk songs—a CD available only at her concerts and on her Web site. As she noted during the performance, she and her boyfriend (producer and bandmate Tucker Martine) recorded it in just a few hours. One of the selections she performed from it was Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train." Another—"Cluck Old Hen"—was dedicated to one of her former banjo students. Both displayed the breadth of Veirs' musical dexterity—she is as adept at playing old school banjo tunes as she is experimenting with sounds, cultivating ways of blending her folk and country roots with her penchant for rocking out.
Don't Miss This Tour
Although Laura Veirs and her band have become somewhat of a magical symbiotic unit through the years, she's proven she's still capable of pulling off a magnificent night of music and entertainment all by her lonesome. Considering the Seattle show was only the second performance of what will be a month-long tour (swooping down the West Coast, across Texas, then up the East Coast to Canada), Veirs is bound to just get better and better as the journey goes on.Whether playing old timey folk ballads on her banjo; enlightening the crowd through her own experimentation with live looping; singing selections from her various albums; or delivering excellent solo versions of her alt-country narrative tunes; Laura Veirs is a talented artist and a gifted performer. You don't want to miss this tour when it comes through your town.
Laura Veirs is on tour now. Visit the Laura Veirs Web site for tour dates.
