JONATHAN RICHMAN with Grier Coppins at Revival, Wednesday, October 5. Rating: NNNN
Seeing Jonathan Richman perform live can be a transformative experience, and Wednesday night, though subdued by Richman standards, was no exception.
The audience sang, danced and clapped along to drummer Tommy Larkins’ beats as the 60-year old former Modern Lover picked up and put down his guitar, played sleigh bells, and hammed it up for the crowd. As he put it at one point, “the song ended long ago, we’re just doing stuff now.”
But don’t dismiss Richman as a quirky novelty act.
He’s also a serious and soulful writer, as evidenced by his two most recent albums, which he focused on throughout the set. He sang about the pull between individuality and being one with the universe, natural beauty, Vermeer’s art, and the necessity of experiencing pain as well as pleasure. He also talked about his parents during the intro to a new song called Bohemia, which looks back on his self-described bratty youthful obsession with the art world.
Gone was his playful flipping through different languages (the set was nearly monolingual) but present were a new version of Old World, fifties-inspired Fender Stratocaster and live staple Let Her Go Into The Darkness.
In what was simultaneously one of the best and worst moments of the night, Jojo told a story about running into two of the people behind I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar while someone went around telling people to stop filming it as they lifted their phones into the air. For a song about a less uptight place, it was a bit of a vibe killer.
Richman might have been tired – there was no encore – but what the set lacked in length it had in spirit. He’s in great form as a singer and a guitarist, and listening to him pull all sorts of old sounds out of a nylon string guitar is inspiring.
Opener Grier Coppins started the night pied piper fashion near the entrance, walking up to the stage playing bagpipes as his accompaniest Jim Bish played sax. An odd combo, but it worked some jazzy autumnal magic on the crowd.