Triangles, Like Songs and Minor Keys

There was lots of music calling to me tonight.

I started at the Listening Room where the poet was handing out programs and lamenting her cold, a remnant of a debauched long weekend with another poet.

I didn't need to tell her we reap what we sow.

Dropping off the cookies I'd volunteered to bring, a discussion ensued about the six that had fallen off the cookie sheet onto my kitchen floor.

A musician insisted I should have brought them anyway while another guy told a story of a slice of pizza landing cheese down on carpet and asking whether or not that was fair game.

My grandmother always said if you were hungry enough you'd eat anything, I shared, and one girl said, "Even if it has a hair in it?" I left them to it.

It was time to stake my territory but, lo and behold, somebody large was in my seat.

Interloper.

The funny part was that three different people came up to me before the show started asking what in the hell that woman was doing in my seat.

Dunno, but she was too big for me to take on, so I took the nearest available and made do.

Emcee Chris started after 8:00, as usual ("I got a text and an arm tug telling me I was late"), saying, "I'm pleased to introduce a really neat collaboration. Who says neat? A really cool collaboration, JJ Burton."

The trio included two long-time favorites of mine, guitarist Scott Burton, whose ponytail is now halfway down his back, and trombonist/knobs/percussionist Reggie Pace, he of Bon Iver fame, along with drummer/keyboard player Devonne Harris.

Scott said the project began when he was writing his usual cinematic guitar pieces to which DJ Jneiro Jarel (hence the JJ part) added beats and that collaboration had morphed into this three-piece we were seeing.

It was their first time playing out, not that you could tell given what stellar musicians these guys are (at one point Reggie was playing trombone with one hand and twisting knobs with the other) and after their first prolonged piece, Scott looked up, smiling and nodding at the other two as if to acknowledge how well it had gone.

Sitting in the audience listening to the elaborate soundscapes they were creating, we already knew that.

Sound came from drumsticks on cymbals, triangles and Scott's flying fingers for a truly impressive new sound from some old favorites.

After the break we got Josh Small and Bonnie Staley, both Listening Room alums, with Laura singing back-up for a set of country-tinged songs.

They began with one of Josh's, "Grace Inez" about his 80-year old grandmother followed by a 1938 song, "Hello, Stranger," a song Bonnie had always loved before discovering Josh did too.

Their three voices melded beautifully, talent on top of talent.

Josh's "Tallest Tree" he described by saying, "Most of my songs are self-absorbed and depressing and this one is no different. It's not a love song but it's surely a like song."

Well, if you can't find love, I guess like will have to do.

More covers followed - Gillian Welch's "Red Clay Halo" and Loretta Lynn's "Honky Tonk Girl," which Bonnie described as, "A good song about being sad and young."

"The next song is an original," Josh said, "But don't worry, it's wildly derivative. It's called "Family Farm," but that's disingenuous because we never had a farm. I grew up in Falls Church, Virginia."

The James Taylor-inspired song may have been about an imagined life, but was a solid winner for the voices singing it.

They closed with what Josh called "my rap-iest" song but Bonnie corrected him to, "Your most R & B-est, maybe," a better assessment of a song that blended country and soul.

As Listening Rooms go, the program was easily one of the most diverse ever, making it a music-lover's dream, even if they couldn't sit in their own seat.

But I'm not complaining.

After the Listening Room ended, a bunch of us hurried over to Grace Street for a special edition of Live at Ipanema.

It was kind of a big deal because playing was Nashville guitarist William Tyler, so people kept on coming.

A friend and I ordered pumpkin spice cake to celebrate the season and found bar stools with a straight shot view of the playing area.

Dave Watkins got the crowd warmed up with his dulcitar playing (which Tyler later called "inspiring") and yet again, I watched as first timers went from casually listening to wondering how Dave was making so much sound, a couple eventually coming around to stand in front of him and watch him work his looping magic.

By the time Tyler picked up his 12-string guitar and started playing, Ipanema was mobbed, probably even unsafely so.

People were everywhere, kneeling, sitting and standing to watch him play his instrumental guitar music.

He started by saying that a girl had come up to him before the show and said, "I love the books you're reading," a reference to his song titles which reflect just that.

It turns out that since there are no lyrics, Tyler likes to explain every song, where it came from, how it was written, to set the scene before playing.

So with his idea of "light reading," we heard "Cadillac Desert" about water policy in the West, "Poets and Saints" which he called a "cathedral psychedelic song for a non-existent religion" and once he switched to six-string, "We Can't Go Home Again," which he'd begun writing in Nashville and finished in Dublin after visiting his girlfriend's parents unannounced.

It was funny, when he started playing, the guitarists in the room just stood there slack-jawed, but soon they all moved and congregated directly in front of Tyler where they had an unobstructed view to watch this wizard of the strings.

"Geography of Nowhere" was born out of a 20-hour train ride where the same Turkish folk song played endlessly, "full of minor key melody," he explained.

When he got home, he tried to replicate elements of the song as best he could, making for an evocative piece.

After that, Tyler instructed us, "Everyone needs to sit down," and those who could, did, including himself.

Seated, he played "Missionary Ridge," but only after explaining that the name is that of a mountain range near a Civil War battlefield, one that continued, he said, to have a sense of being haunted.

The music was much the same.

After his set, people flocked to the back to buy his records and rave about the solo guitar they'd just heard.

Up front, people lingered and I chatted for a while with a girlfriend I hadn't seen in weeks before getting up to leave.

"Thanks for coming, Karen," one of the organizers called to me.

What idiot wouldn't take advantage of such excellent free music on a random Tuesday night?

Even seat-stealers couldn't resist.

Now Please Return to Your Seats

The way I see it, sometimes you just have to take the light switch into your own hands.

Of course, it may have been the pre-show wine that gave me the courage to do so.

I met a friend for an overdue happy hour at Six Burner, where the featured red was South African, so there was little chance of me resisting it.

The Left Bank was a full-bodied Western Cape blend with lovely soft tannins and an unlikely name.

Like I care what they call it.

Wisely, before we got down to the business of the past five weeks, we ordered sustenance for the storytelling that was to come.

The salmon rilettes with clementine, olives and toasted bread was a creamy ode to salmon, more of a terrine than a true rilette, but beautifully flavored.

The lamb chili came with a layer of creme fraiche, cheddar and chives, but it was the two hushpuppies floating on top that got our immediate attention.

I'm a big fan of chili and this had a pleasing depth of flavor and variety of beans that would have made it a perfect meal on a cold night.

Despite tonight's temperate air, we all but licked the bowl of every bit of lamb.

My friend told me of her pain-in-the-ass boss and her husband's attentiveness while the best I could do was CDs and head scratching.

We channeled our frustrations into a chocolate terrine with dried cherries, pistachio crumble and a clementine syrup that was one of the best desserts I've ever had at Six Burner.

Chocoholics, take note.

We took so long with dessert and the last of the wine that I barely made it to the Listening Room on time.

As it was, the man-about-town was in my seat (a fact my friend noted and said he thought, "Karen's not going to be happy about that") and my usual LR buddy was M.I.A.

The scientist was kind enough to offer me the seat next to him and ply me with dark chocolate throughout the first act.

I took it to be polite.

Nelly Kate walked onto the stage barefoot and began to do to the first-timers what she'd first done to me last June.

That would be knock my socks off.

Sharing that ever since she'd moved to Richmond she'd aspired to play the Listening Room, she began singing in her clear, little girl voice while looping guitar, hand claps, cooing, whatever she wanted.

"My loop station is a nice way for me to travel alone," she explained. It's true; it allows her to layer her dense sound and hypnotize an audience with her overdubs.

The audience reacted like they'd seen something amazing, which they had.

Afterwards, the break allowed the large crowd to mingle as if it were a party. Since this is the last Listening Room for two months, there was a special energy in the air, it seemed.

Even so, after a while it was time to sit down and hear some music and nothing was happening.

That's when I took things into my own hands and walked over to the light switch and started flicking it.

Intermission is over, kids. Sit down.

And they did, surprisingly quickly, and Bonnie Staley (of the Girtles) and Cliff Boyd (of Sport Bar) started their set with two back-up singers, Julie and Maya.

I'd like to read into the record that all three girls in the band had on dresses. Being the dress lover myself, I was impressed.

Their bass-heavy sound was complemented by girl-group vocals that would have been at home in the sixties.

In fact, the song "Samby" was, Bonnie said, part hers and partly the Beach Boys'. Seems her Dad used to sing "Wendy" to her nephew Sam and she assumed it was his song and riffed on that.

They also did a song of Julie's, about which she said, "I'm not going to explain it because I hate when people do that."

The song explained itself beautifully.

During the next break I ran into a guy I'd met at the Camel when he'd come up and introduced himself, telling me he saw me at shows everywhere.

Tonight, his first Listening Room, he referred to me as a scenester. I set him straight, welcomed him to the LR and then flicked the lights.

Somebody's got to take charge of misconceptions and intermissions.

James Wallace of Richmond via Nashville played last, acknowledging, "A lot of this equipment I don't know how to use yet so we're just going to work around it."

Their sound of guitar, upright bass, keyboard and James' voice made for a pleasantly poppy take on the singer/songwriter genre with just enough of a vintage sound (and maybe a dash of alt- country) to make it clear how talented this guy is.

But of course everyone who plays the Listening  Room is talented. Okay, there was one exception once, but every one else.

That's why I can't believe there are still people who haven't been.

Come, be a scenester. Just pay attention to the flickering light.