It's not easy being a songwriting "folk artist" around here. For most who aspire it's a depressing lesson in pride swallowing. Nobody cares much (so it seems), there aren't many venues where the artform is really appropriate, your target audience is usually unwilling to stay out late enough to hear you in a bar, and most people who frequent bars don't like to listen to tunes they don't recognize for very long, anyway. If you do play a bar, you usually struggle to be heard over noisy partiers only to end up feeling bad when your buzz-killingly brilliant songs start thoroughly depressing people. The search for a proper songwriter's performance arena continues, but a core group of hipsters stumbled on a fix... our leige, king brady The story goes that the "King of My Living Room" session spontaneously birthed itself at the tail end of one of Brady Earnhart's parties, when things slowed down and the collected songwriters (snack-table-remnant-scrounging party cling-ons, every one of them) were reduced to passing the guitar around to trade some of their most untouted tunes. When the rubble cleared and the booze wore off, they realized they had the makings of a show on their hands. Plans were made to take it to the Live Arts Lab, where they would reassemble a facsimile of Brady's living room, make space for 60 or so guests and swap tunes out in the open where people could pay to see. On Saturday, June 10th, people did just that: the Live Arts Lab filled to capacity and a homey twist on an old-fashioned songwriting showcase ensued. First up was Brady Earnhart with his brotherly epic "King of My Living Room," an intimate musical depiction of a songwriter's surrender to the likely fate of famelessness. There's a healthy dose of sweet irony in the tune's sadly anthemic assertions: "I'd rather sing from a futon/ than be old Wayne Newton/ I'll stay the king of my living room." Lovely harmonies seeped out of the assembled cast-members who lounged around on large cushions and comfy chairs. double nickels The ball was passed to the frenetic Lance Brenner, most Naked of the Puritans, delivering a tight acousti-pop tale of several wicked women in this wild world before handing off to Stratton Salidis. (You might recall the passionate Salidis as the man who at one point during his recent run for City Council was repeatedly rejected from the Dogwood Festival Parade for carrying a cardboard road and ranting about the proposed Meadowcreek Parkway. "Anybody wanna buy a road? --Only $40 million-- name it after a creek!") He entertained us with a tune written by him and "corporate America," a bitter collection of advertising slogans pieced together in a desparate protest. (Sort of an angry-treehugger variation on Tom Waits' "Step Right Up.") After him came Jan Smith whose lovely spectre of a voice, all backwoods-lonesome and almost cracking, shares something with the harmonic wash of the great Gillian Welsh. Danny Schmidt was right on time, everybody's underdog hero, fingerpicking with his eyes closed, an icon to oddball integrity in this gathering of the almost unsung. After him, Nickeltown's Browning Porter and Jeff Romano closed out the round with a lovely oddity of their own and it was back to Brady. This pattern continued and there was much merry-making. the next dave matthews I pushed on to Trax to witness the spectacle of ATO Records' first newborn superhero, David Gray as he swung through Charlottesville (his only "secondary" market stop) to support the release of his new (homemade) disc, White Ladder. Gray, whose live band was reinforced by computer sequenced rhythm, synthesizer and backup vocal tracks, possesses a beautiful raspy British-Isles voice and writes a simpler, slightly folkier version of the future pop that DMB has so elegantly wielded upon the masses. But as I stood there, somewhat amazed at the large turn-out for this guy whose greatest asset right now is that Dave Matthews says he's cool, I couldn't help thinking that Gray himself only constitutes half of the story. No, to a creationist such as myself, this was really a story about Coran Capshaw.... In the beginning, there was Coran. And Coran was strange. But he could get you Dead tickets. On the first day Coran was already bored and so he said "let there be Van Ripers," and suddenly Van Riper's lake grew a semi-annual rock festival. On the second day, he got thirsty, and so he said "let there be nightclubs," and Richmond's Floodzone and Charlottesville's Trax were pumped with the most mighty's cash and powerful connections. On the third day he got lonely and so he said "let there be a superhero," and the Dave Matthews Band was born. In the next few days, Coran built himself a fortress in the middle of the music industry, still keeping his cards very close to the vest. When, somewhere around the fifth day, he said "let there be Agents," his angels thought he meant F.B.I. agents, and record stores were ramsacked for bootleg CD's while the Agents of Good Roots petered out of pop possibility. Now, on the sixth day, Coran has pronounced "let there be David Gray," and behold: there is. Gray is good, even golden at moments, but the way his songs stick in my head makes me wonder what the secret ingredient really is: backwards masking? Satan? It's gotta be Coran. -Cripsy Duck cripsyduck@mindspring.com TOP - LAST - NEXT - INDEX