Considering that Vashti Bunyan had to wait almost 40 years since recording her first album until now to release another one and embark upon a world tour, I probably shouldn't be too upset that her concert started about an hour and a half later than it was supposed to.
Last night, a hundred or so aging hippies, young hipsters, curiosity seekers and I gathered... and waited... and waited... to witness Vashti's Chicago stop on this unlikeliest of "comeback tours" at the Lakeshore Theater, a small but cozy movie theater converted into a concert venue.
The opening act was prolific local singer/songwriter (and cartoonist) Archer Prewitt, who eventually wandered on stage with his guitar and harmonica at around 8:20pm, along with his electric bass player Mark Greenberg and a setlist on a scrap of white paper.
The duo somewhat resembled a clean-cut, humorless version of Tenacious D, performing several tunes from Prewitt's recent albums (especially Wilderness and Gerroa Songs) and a few new ones, all revealing his knack for stringing interesting chords together in appealing ways and setting an introspective, serious mood.
The occasional false starts, false endings ("that was getting too precious anyway"), deadpan stage patter and swigs of beer between tunes lent an informal, two-guys-playing-in-a-garage feel to the set — which thankfully ended just as the songs started sounding a little too similar to each other.
After a brief intermission, a quintet of musicians slowly filed in. They would soon be accompanying Vashti Bunyan's vocals and guitar on cello, violin (or was that a viola?), acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, Roland synthesizer (a barely serviceable piano substitute), flute, and even thumb piano and concertina. Vashti repeatedly referred to these relative youngsters as "real musicians" — and indeed they looked a little like a group of recent music school graduates.
She introduced each song with a short description of its history and meaning in a lilting speaking voice that hovered barely above a whisper (and once joked that all her songs seem to be about either "standing next to a horse or getting my heart broken.")
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