King’ of post-bluegrass tops singer-songwriter night

Blood, tears and homophobia swarm local stages

By STEVE LIBOWITZ — Nov. 20, 2009

I’ve got to be honest, even if it means mixing metaphors: Sings Like Hell has left me a bit cold recently. While with a few notable exceptions, the now 12-year-old music series at the Lobero Theatre has certainly featured worthy players, but the problem is, I’ve seen them too often before or, worse yet, for all their skills, by and large they don’t add a great deal to the existing lexicon of singer-songwriter and sub genres.

Truth is, while only illness kept me away from SLH shows in the first five years or so, lately I’ve found myself making other plans on those monthly Saturday nights more often than not. But tomorrow night’s headliner has got me convinced that either series creator/producer Peggie Jones has righted the ship, or I’m the one whose been out in left field (stir those metaphors slowly, add a pinch of salt).

The group in questions, King Wilkie, the one-time Charlotsville-based purveyor of pure bluegrass turned avant-garde/nostalgia pop-folk wunderkind, put out a concept album last April that might just be the CD of the year. If I’d listened to it before Tuesday afternoon, this space might’ve been filled with words from its creator rather than my own lame attempts to describe it. But that’s all we’ve got.

The CD, “The Wilkie Family Singers” (a fictional ensemble this is actually comprised of head Wilkie Reid Burgess and collaborators John McDonald and Steve Lewis, with such guests as Peter Rowan, David Bromberg, Abigail Washburn and Robyn Hitchcock, and a bunch of New York session musicians, ostensibly chronicles the psychotherapeutic journey of the family. But really, concept aside, this is the most ambitious acoustic album I’ve heard in ages.

Aching alt.country melodies are draped with generous dollops of pop hooks, the kind of thing Wilco used to do, although they don’t sound all that similar. The liberal use of low-register horns and loose parlor-ballad production evokes the Beatles’ “Sgt. Peppers,” the close harmonies and extended vowels on a number of tracks recall the great vocal acts of the ’50s and ’60s (Everly Brothers, the Association) and other songs bring up Broadway show tunes. Both “Hey Old Man” and “Take it Underground,” which begins with “Harvest Moon”-style harmonica, bring Neil Young to mind, while a song here and there (“Railroad Town”) actually uses real bluegrass as a backbone.

The CD goes from dreamy to Dixieland to the back porch and the Beach Boys – something virtually unimaginable in today’s market – yet remains instantly indelible, quite a feat.

I have no idea how Burgess and whoever he’s bringing with him will be able to recreate the magic, but if the show is anywhere near close to as gorgeous, timeless and evocative as the record, tomorrow show stands to be one of the true highlights of the year. And that’s not even counting that the great guitar-vocal chameleon Jonathan McEuen (from Ventura no less!) is opening the show.

Meanwhile, SOhO tomorrow has an early evening show (6 p.m., so you can still make it to the Lobero for most of McEuen’s set) with quirky female singer-songwriter Jill Sobule and Erin McKeown, both of whom have made their mark on the music. This one is well worth catching, too.

* * *

On stage

DV8 Physical Theatre’s makes its Santa Barbara debut with a controversial and confrontational multimedia performance piece called “To Be Straight With You,” a visceral and highly political dance theater piece featuring live performers, dance, text, animation and film. While inventive and often exhilerating, I found the piece far too one-dimensional in message and featuring too much talk and too little dance. But at the very least, it puts the current battle over social acceptance for gays in the state into perspective when confronted with the fact that homosexuals are being tortured and killed in Third World countries and elsewhere. The final performance takes place tonight at the Lobero.

**

The “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” isn’t for the faint of heart, nor for that matter the hard of hearing since the Irish dialects in Genesis West’s production of Martin McDonagh’s award-winning play can be thick and hard to decipher. But everyone else – especially those with an appreciation for social satire – should delight in McDonagh’s brilliant, bloody and darn funny allegory of senseless, self-perpetuating violence and strife, set in Ireland in 1993, during the height of “The Troubles.”

The play is full of clever twists and turns that serve not only to build the tension but also to make the comedy that much more of a relief, much as in McDonagh’s sharp Academy Award nominated script for the film “In Bruges.” The performances – led by Joe Jordan as the sociopath IRA-splinter group terrorist and Gen West regular Tom Hinshaw as his lackadaisical father, who with good reason fears his son as much as anyone else does – are nearly all first-rate. Catch it while you can at Center Stage Theatre through tomorrow night.

Also closing this weekend: “Rabbit Hole,” playwright David Lindsay-Abaire Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, which kicks off UCSB’s Department of Theatre and Dance 2009-10. A previously functional family deals with its grief and how to go on eight months after the sudden death of a child in the student-acted production that performs tonight and tomorrow at the school’s Performing Arts Theater.

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