Eric Bachmann ie Crooked Fingers the new improved Tom Waits?

Finally got to see Eric Bachmann & his group Crooked Fingers last night at the Cat’s Cradle nightclub in nearby Chapel Hill after months of waiting, and the wait was definitely worth it.

For those of you unfamiliar with Messer Bachmann, he is a true star in-waiting for critical mass in his career to ascend. He is, without any exaggeration or hyperbole, a true Master poet, lyricist, composer, arranger, musician and consummate showman. His lyrical sensibilities and sense of creation of place within his songs is something that harkens back to the best of prior great singer-songwriters across all genres which I won’t give names to because it would be unfair to Eric who is definitely his own very unique person and persona.

His lyric style while sometimes dark and usually introspective is also reflective of his own heart, as exampled by the totally funny but heart-felt presentation he did last night of a new piece that not I nor most members of the packed house of loyal fan base had ever heard of before, a song called “Veronica”.

His showmanship and craftsmanship as a master musician showed itself like a diamond under a blue laser spotlight with “Veronica”. In a move I can’t recall any other performer doing in my years of going to and listening to live music in clubs, he went one step further than merely being acoustic when he walked out onto the short peninsula of stagefront and into the audience up close and personal, away from the amplification and security of the microphones and sound system and simply played his Martin guitar for all it was worth sans the tiniest bit of technology, impro-jamming to “Veronica”, sending the stunned audience into fits of “Wow!!!” with his highwire act of somehow throwing difficult lyrical bridges into space and catching them within the almost jazz uptempo harpsichordish flaying of his guitar strings, all the while playfully but respectfully toying with the crowd, wowing them, embracing them, inviting him into the mind and reality of his musical universe.

When he went back to the necessary safety of the stage and went electric for a couple of songs, his mastery of his Fender guitar being so perfect that not a single missed note was never heard and his timing also similarly perfect, that his rendition of “You Can Never Leave” literally sent chills down my spine and up to the hair of the back of my neck, that feeling being last felt quite like that when I saw Neal Young at Walnut Creek Amphitheatre some years ago do a jam on his classic “Hurricane”.

Article Author: H. Kent Craig

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