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JONATHAN RICHMAN/VIC CHESNUTT
Stage Door Theatre (Madison, WI)
March 13, 2008

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- "I don't know what it means, either," Jonathan Richman confessed after singing his encore a cappella -- a joyful ditty in Spanish, Italian and gibberish. Then he waved goodbye to the audience, smiling in the wistful way a child does before leaving his parents for summer camp. All of a sudden he turned around and came back to the mike.

"If you see me in the lobby I may not speak to you but don't be alarmed. My doctor tells me to save my voice because of a vocal condition. I don't talk so I can save it for singing. I gesture but I'm not practicing to be Marcel Marceau! Goodbye!"

His comment caught me off-guard because I had been thinking of the great French mime earlier in Richman's show. Richman writes more and more in French, Spanish and Italian. Yet it doesn't matter if you don't understand what he says because, as with all great artists, you understand what he means. He puts it over with his tone, his facial expressions, his posture. You know how he feels because you've been there, too. Rejected by a lover. Reaching for a rebound.

On this night, dressed in a form-fitting black suit, shirt unbuttoned to reveal a black-and-white striped gondolier shirt, Richman played the audience like he plays his music: as though one needed the other. When he sang "Les Printemps", you didn't have to understand French to smell the streets of Paris.

A large part of Richman's upbeat emotional drive is due to Tommy Larkin, one of the most musical drummers working. He may have well been playing vibes. His break during "My Baby Loves Me" didn't merely keep the song on temporal track, it reshaped the melody. Richman pranced and shook bells to the delight of the swaying twentysomethings parked shoulder-to-shoulder at his feet. (The Farrelly Brothers movies have introduced Richman and his musical benevolence to a whole new generation, and his beguiling performance of "I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar" had the young hipsters reeling.)

You often hear fans describe a performer's intimacy by saying, "It felt like he was singing directly to me." But Richman actually does give whole verses to just one person in the crowd. He seems to feed off the contact, as though it makes the music more real to him. The rest of the hall reaps the benefit of the synergy.

Richman seems to get more authentic as he gets older, and he seems to get younger with each new song he writes. The show peaked when he descended to one knee, strumming the nylon strings of his Spanish guitar, and belted out the title song of his new record, "Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild". The song distills love to its foundation: how every time is the first time when your heart is pure.

Taken back-to-back, Richman and opener Vic Chesnutt, with all their literary muscle, could have been promoted as the "Glass Half-Full/Glass Half-Empty Tour."

"I'm a pessimist," wailed Chesnutt by way of introduction; "Jonathan Richman is an optimist." He could not have summarized the evening's pairing more efficiently. Both are accomplished, emotive writers and performers. And it wouldn't be fair to write off Chesnutt as simply a cynic, because he's a cynic in the important way that Jonathan Swift was. Yet the contrast he drew between himself and the headliner was spot on.

"Jonathan Richman steps into an alley, smells piss, and says, 'Look what the world has shown us,'" Chestnut sang. "I step into the alley, smell piss, and say, 'Oh god damn, get these molecules out of my nostrils!'"

I didn't see Richman in the lobby on my way out. But as I made my way home, I thought about what he said at the end of his show. I thought about how the words "discipline" and "art" are often used together. And I thought about a guy who doesn't talk...so that he may sing.

-- ANDY MOORE
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Andy Moore.
-- (Photograph by Margaret A. Moore)
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Margaret A. Moore.