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| December 13, 2004 - The Iron Horse - Northampton, MA - Henning Solo - with: Evan Dando | |
| Henning says: Last night I played at The Iron Horse here in Northampton. I was opening for Evan Dando. It was a cool gig to get because I like Evan Dando's songs quite a bit. I have for years. He's been a staple of college rock / alternative / indie for years (see? all three of those terms almost mean the same thing and he was around to be filed under all of them). When I first got the gig, I imagined that the club would be pretty much full. Then gradually, as I had more and more trouble selling tickets to the show, my hopes dwindled somewhat. As it turns out, only about 50 people showed up. I met Evan while sound checking and he was very nice and enthusiastic. He was having some trouble with his guitars and Jim (the sound man) and I tried to help. As it turned out later, I was the one who had issues with my instrument. All day long, I had been thinking that I was going to break a string (it's something that I do very rarely) and each time that it came to mind I would then think, "Stop thinking about it, you are going to jinx yourself." Then I'd say, "Too late, I thought about it." I even mentioned to Lesa that I should have a pick-up installed in my Martin so that I could bring two guitars to acoustic gigs. I started my show with "Uncomfortable" and one verse into it my guitar went silent. I fiddled with the cable a bit and it came back on, but just as fast, it went out again. I looked down and saw that my shoulder strap had wrapped itself around the cable and was pulling it out. That was easy enough to fix and I turned it into a little joke, by repeating the words "uncomfortable....uncomfortable". Four songs or so into my set I played "Disgruntled Lover" (I mostly just play that to break the spell of the midtempo songs) right at the end, sure enough, POP!, my D string snaps. All I could think was, "I knew it!". Luckily I had packed a set of strings and I replaced it in record time. What the audience lacked in quantity, they made up for in quality. As I played, they were pretty much silent. It was almost unsettling. I could hear the echo of the harmonics in "Save My Place" bouncing off the back wall. Later when I was watching Dando from the back of the room, I could see all of these people in their seats and, I swear, not one of them so much as moved an inch during the whole set. It was like a cryogenics chamber in there, 'cept hotter. The people didn't move but the applause was always warm and loud. Strange crowd. Strange but nice. I played a 35 minute set, I had barely just warmed up by the time it was over. Speaking of over, because of the delay from the great string mishap, I skipped the song "Overs". The hardest part of gigs like this is walking off the stage and back into the audience. One feels very vulnerable and conspicuous after being in the bright, bright lights when returning to a table in the middle of all the people who had just been clapping. It's very strange and uncomfortable. I sat down with Brian, Lesa, and Jeff and a man came over and said I reminded him of the singer for Supersonic ("It's Closing Time"). Ok. Dando took the stage with no ceremony and preceeded to plough through a 50 minute set of songs. Each song immediately followed the last and left no time for applause. There was no rhythm to his performance and hardly any acknowledgement of the audience. You got the impression that you were just watching him quickly try and run through his set as a practice for a real show. He has great songs and part of their appeal is how understated they are but the way that translated to stage, I think, left people sort of cold. The Iron Horse has potential to provide magical musical moments and I have experience many there in the past. There was nothing magical about this set, though. It started, it continued, and then it ended. Still, it was nice to hear these songs and the fact that he played so many, meant that your odds of hearing your favorites were pretty good. Although, he didn't play my ultimate favorites. His set ended as abruptly and plainly as it began. He thanked the crowd and stopped playing. And that was that. Another Iron Horse show (despite my mishaps and tom-foolery, this was still one of my favorite solo gigs of the year, I love playing that room) was over. Afterwards, Brian,
Lesa, and I went over to Packards and had hamburgers and stuff. Happy
anniversary Brian and Andrea.
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