The David Wax Museum warms up Joe’s Pub

The David Wax Museum – Joe’s Pub – February 9th

Due largely to their intimate house shows and recent coverage on NPR Music (see the video below), The David Wax Museum played to a sold-out crowd last night at Joe’s Pub.

Before the group even made it to the stage, the audience was feeling the love – so much love, in fact, that one man actually jumped up on the empty stage and proposed to his girlfriend. (She said yes.) I’ve always been wary of overly-public proposals, but if it works for them, well alright.

The David Was Museum is just two people at its core (David Wax and Suz Slezak), but seven well-dressed musicians walked onstage for the first song, including a horn section. With their huge smiles and intense energy, Slezak and Wax are a magnetic force on stage.

The David Wax Museum performing at Newport Folk Festival (Photo Jess Hodge)

Apparently, NPR recently dubbed them as “cheerfully aggressive,” a descriptor they weren’t necessarily thrilled with, but it’s not hard to see where the phrase came from. They make the kind of earnest music you might expect to hear on a back porch, deep in the mountains: hearty, impassioned, and yes, a bit rough around the edges at times. But that’s the beauty of it. Sometimes lyrics just need to be hollered and mics, discarded.

Mid set, Wax decided to change things up a bit. He welcomed three members of the band Radio Jarocho to join them for a couple of Mexican-style folk songs, and everyone unplugged their instruments, hopped off the stage, and marched to the back of the room. It was all quite charming.

Radio Jarocho (Photo Sergio R. Reyes)

The David Wax Museum’s latest album, Carpenter Bird, just dropped on Tuesday.
But to get the full flavor of their music, be sure to check them out live.

Hear one of the two songs performed with Radio Jarocha:

Check out The David Wax Museum’s Tiny Desk show at NPR:

New songs and fantastical stories from The Blow

The Blow – Joe’s Pub – July 9th

On Friday night, I had the pleasure of seeing The Blow again. (Post on Brooklyn Vegan) Though I reported on her recent show at Glasslands recently, I went into Joe’s Pub with the advantage of having my recorder, so I thought I’d let you hear some excerpts from Khaela’s (most-likely untrue but wildly entertaining) banter. Khaela is definitely a performance artist, after all. Her dancing is mesmerizingly awkward and wonderful and the stories she tells between songs are wildly entertaining. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture her dancing, but I was able to log some sound.

Khaela of The Blow (Photo Devyn Manibo)

Here’s an intro to the evening in which Khaela introduces the meme of the unnamed celebrity that will carry through the evening and sings a new song:

Khaela goes on to explain why it would have been such a big deal to have had these new songs come out the unnamed celeb’s never-to-be-released album and launches into another new song (the ‘you’ she refers to is the unnamed celeb):

And finally, here’s a good chunk from the old favorite “True Affection” at the end of the evening:

At the end of the night, the veracity of Khaela’s celeb story was still in question, but true or not, it certainly made for quite an entertaining evening.

The sound of a one-man village

Villagers – Joe’s Pub – June 23rd

The stage at Joe’s Pub was set up simply for Wednesday’s set. Just a couple of spotlights coming together to make one beam and a single mic stand. Irish singer-songwriter Conor O’Brien wordlessly took the stage, picked up his acoustic guitar, and began to play “To Be Counted Among Men,” the last track on his debut album Becoming a Jackal. It was a bit of a slow start for the evening, but appropriately so. Though his album is recorded with a fuller range of instruments, his show at Joe’s pub was solo. Conor’s music lends itself well to an unassuming delivery. This way, his poetic lyrics ring out clearly, demanding to be not only heard but thoughtfully considered.

Conor O'Brien of Villagers (Photo Richard Gilligan)

Seeing Villagers was a nice conclusion to a double-feature of singer-songwriter types. Earlier in the evening, I caught Sam Amidon over at the Mercury Lounge. Hopefully, my review will go up on Brooklyn Vegan soon, but suffice it to say that it was a great show. Amidon’s songs took us on a trip through the mountains, revealed the story of a woman waiting for her husband to return from war, and paraded us past girls with rosy-red lips. (Then there were the homicidal vegetarian robots and the little people walking on rubber band bridges… but we won’t get into all that now.)

Back over at Joe’s Pub, the sound was excellent. Of course, if you’ve been to the space, you’ll know that ‘pub’ is a bit of a misnomer. Instead of grime, clinking steins, ill-prepared seafood, and burly men, this pub is more of a lounge or a speak easy. Small tables and booths fill the space, people are quiet and respectful, and there are candles sprinkled throughout the place. There may not have been percussion, but the you could feel the gentle rumble of the 6 train going by under the venue, and surprisingly, the effect was kind of nice.

After playing a handful of songs on the guitar (including the excellent title track), O’Brien hopped over to the piano. I’m going to give this a go. O’Brien proceeded to warn us that he didn’t really know how to play the piano, but the piece didn’t seem all that rudimentary, and eerie lyrics were quite compelling. I’m going to write more songs for the piano. That was really fun, he admitted after switching back to the guitar.

O’Brien concluded his set with a nice little encore, featuring two songs not found on the album, “Cecilia and Her Selfhood” and “On a Sunlit Stage.”