Richard Shindell is awesome
After going to see him at Schuba’s last week, I’m gaining a new appreciation for Richard Shindell. I think I originally heard of him from his collaboration with Lucy Kaplansky and Dar Williams, Cry Cry Cry, because they did a good cover of Robert Earl Keen’s Shades Of Gray.
Anyway, I bought Richard’s live album, Courier, because it had a Springsteen cover on it, and found some good songs, like The Kenworth Of My Dreams and Arrowhead, and some completely great songs, like Are You Happy Now?, Fishing, and Transit. He does have a recognizable songwriting voice: his songs are often storyish, not terse, but with an extra-textual depth of detail. And I think he has an illegal poignancy lab in his kitchen. On a couple of songs, I’ve noticed that he can bring you low with some dark chord progressions, and then just blow everything wide open with a G chord that sounds like the spring sun breaking out from behind a cloud.
So, I went to the show to hear Are You Happy Now? and Transit, which he played, but he also did The Last Fare of the Day, which I had not heard before. Now, I find that the best way to enjoy a live show is to have heard most of the songs before, optimally a few times, including in the car on the way to the show. But that’s not always possible, and there are times when you hear a song for the first time live, and you think, damn, that’s a good song. So you go home and download it, or, you know, happen to own the CD but never listened to it. And you play it and you’re like, this is a good song. Then you read the lyrics and say, this is like the perfect song! That’s what happened to me with Fare. It also happened to me with Allison (Mrs. Steve Earle) Moorer’s All Aboard.
And speaking of the Earle family, Steve’s sister Stacey, and her husband Mark Stuart opened for Richard at Schuba’s. They did a cute little acoustic set, ending with an unamplified gospel song delivered as Stacey walked up and down the aisle of folding chairs. I like Schuba’s because it’s so tiny and doesn’t have a backstage or anything. The artists have to walk through the crowd to get on and off the stage. Unless they want to duck out the side door onto Belmont. Stacey was by the bar after their set, so when I went to get a beer, I stopped and told her how cool her voice is. She’s like the love child of Nanci Griffith and Alvin the Chipmunk. I didn’t tell her that part.
