Less than a year old and student-run, Berklee College music venue Café 939 played host—on the Friday before Valentine’s Day—to a trio of artists bent on getting the most out of their respective personnel and accompanying equipment. Indeed, it was a night for singers, songwriters, singer-songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists.
Starting things off was solo singer-songwriter Dave Smallen, who managed to fill the long, skinny-ish, and sparsely populated room (he coaxed the dispersed crowd to get right up in front of the stage) with his vocals and acoustic guitar. Highlights of his half-hour set, which featured about six songs, were a tune written for, but rejected by a Crayola Crayons commercial contest—deemed “too dark” as Smallen explains, though including a catchy, cheeky refrain with the lyrics “Why oh why do I feel blue?” and a number about Smallen’s brother, entitled “They’re Not Like Us,” showcasing the true-voiced Oakland native’s upper range as well as his whistling skills.
Next up was Brooklyn-based Sydney Wayser, complete with a backing band of electric guitar, drums, upright bass, and a variety of novelty instruments, the latter played by a “little toy man” (Pat Spadine)—as she termed him at one point during the set. With such a set-up and with her lithe vocals, Ms. Wayser and co. construct lush soundscapes with overlaid, precious melodies. Her thick yet airy vocal timbre is evident on “Lullaby,” off her most recent release, The Colorful. For this track, Wayser plays the mini-xylophone and Spadine mans a toy drum and a noisemaker, producing a clown-like sound that, in its zaniness, imbued the song with tenderness. “Song for a Painter” contains ethereal guitars and the memorable line “melancholy drips down the floorboards.” The set really took flight about halfway through, on the retro-lauding “Drive In Not Drive Through,” in which Wayser entreats the listener to take her “back to 1953” and Zach Mangan’s drums come noticeably into play, expanding the song to a jam-rock epic. Later, a saw and chimes are bowed and things finish up with “La di da”—begun with a bass solo and ending with breathy vocals in near-silence. Overall, a delicate, yet confident slice of indie-folk that sounds like a slightly sparer Feist.
Headlining the night was Upstate (Saratoga Springs) New York’s Railbird, featuring Sarah Pedinotti—who has fronted a couple of different bands over the last few years—on vocals and several other instruments; guitarist Chris Kyle (who also played other instruments); a drummer (who also played guitar); and a bassist. The players shifted instruments regularly and started with “Coping Mechanism #1,” which, in its bluesy, rootsy feel, set the tone for the evening’s performance and saw Pedinotti flexing her vocal muscles by jumping up in register at a few choice moments. She put a blues seal on the song by laying down her acoustic and playing a few strains on the harmonica at its end, before picking up a tambourine on the next song—which saw the band’s drummer handle the kick-drum while playing the just-used guitar.
With her naturally dark-toned, wizened voice and Kyle’s heavy guitar, it’s easy to compare Pedinotti’s and the group’s sound on the whole to Bob Dylan’s—probably most à propos when talking about the rock icon’s grittier work. Pedinotti and her bandmates do add some light touches: she employing a toy piano on one song while the drummer/guitarist harmonizes with her, and he impressively sprinkling in some harmonica and beats from a djembe. It’s also worth noting that on occasion, Pedinotti sings into a voice distorter, to dazzling effect. “Ghost” is a haunting, deep blues tune off the new record which sees Pedinotti shake a necklace of what appeared to be stones against the dark, dub guitar-picking provided by Kyle.
About halfway through the set, the band launched into one of Pedinotti’s older selections—“a twisted little love song about two people with multiple personalities falling in love,” as she described it beforehand, and for which she strums a toy-size guitar, singing “Me and me and me and you and you and you,” to the delight of longtime fans in the room. After jamming on the title track of her previous album, City Bird, Kyle and Pedinotti combine to sing a duet on the guitarist’s own “Born on a Railroad” - a hardscrabble portrait of his time spent on train cars that served as a de facto anthem for this ragtag set of musicians. “Limousine” is a funky, blues-inflected tune that saw Pedinotti descending into the crowd and shakin’ her tailfeather with a few concertgoers during Kyle’s impressive guitar solo.
Railbird’s encore included jangly, muscular guitars and hand-clapping between band and audience, before segueing into a night-capping funked-out, roots-jam. The virtuosity displayed by Railbird went a long way towards spicing up the normal Americana, blues-rock lineup. All in all, Pedinotti and her able supporting cast purveyed a swaggering roots-rock blend, leaving one with the impression of hearing The Band jam with a long-lost female member (in past Pedinotti shows they’ve done a boisterous version of “Up On Cripple Creek,” though not this time); if the group continues coupling strong, searing songwriting with textured vocals and instrumental riffs, they’ll keep their ever-growing audiences clamoring for more.
--Andrew Palmacci [March 9, 2009]
