Last night's show by Brooklyn's Sharon Van Etten and Chicago's Daniel Knox at the Cactus Club had everything I love in a gig.
The venue is small, allowing you to get up close and see and hear every nuance; it also allows you to chat with the performers before (or after) their sets.
Both Knox and Van Etten were honest, direct, powerful performers.
And Knox, especially -- since I was already familiar with Van Etten's work -- was a revelation. Knox has a couple discs out, none of which I've yet heard.
Sadly, the show -- set up by Muzzle of Bees' Ryan Matteson and WMSE's Ryan Schleicher -- wasn't especially well attended. My count was roughly 25 on a relatively warm, quiet Thursday night in the heart of the Milwaukee winter.
After talking music with Matteson at the bar and about baseball with both Ryans, we were happy to see Knox step up onto the stage at about 10.
Knox is a bit hard to describe. An adept pianist with a distinctive, ebullient voice, Knox is personable onstage but reserved and looking a bit uncomfortable. His unaccompanied songs -- part Tin Pan Alley, part Tom Waits, part Randy Newman, part kinda operatic -- are filled with dark humor and imagery. You may laugh one minute and gasp the next.
When he carefully picks up the kazoo in one song you're prepared to chuckle, but his tasteful use of this instrument that is often treated as a throwaway toy brings you back down to Earth to admire his skill once more.
After Knox's set, Matteson and I chatted with Van Etten about road trips, her tour stops, MapQuest journeys gone awry and porcelain sinks. Yes, porcelain sinks.
Confident and comfortable offstage, Van Etten looks a little nervous up there talking to the crowd between songs, grasping her stunning red Gibson ES 135.
But during her stark songs drawn from two CDs -- her debut full-length, "Because I Was In Love" and a self-titled disc of home recordings -- she looks like she's in the zone, gazing off as she sings familiar songs like "I Wish I Knew" and "For You," alongside new material. Her voice, when it wavers a bit -- as it sometimes does -- brings to mind Beth Orton's.
Van Etten's music -- like Knox's -- is unadorned and guileless. The result Thursday night were performances by two great voices from the underground.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
