Daniel Romano (The Weather Station)
The Dakota Tavern. Tuesday, April 5, 2011.
By some weird coincidence, it seems like every time I go to The Dakota, it's miserably cold out. This unseasonably frigid early-April night, cold wind cutting through me, was no exception. That was one more factor making it mildly surprising that I made it out at all for this, on a Tuesday night when I was feeling rather listless and ready to go to bed early.
But as it turned out, I dragged myself down, getting to Dundas and Ossington in time to grab myself a table up front, hoping to myself that it'd be a considerate crowd in a mood to listen to The Weather Station — all the more so once I realized that on this night that would mean a solo performance from Tamara Lindeman. Formerly associated with Entire Cities and sharing members of that group for live performance, it would turn out that Lindeman was shedding both her old sound and her old songs, presenting an entire set of new material. In the midst of recording what would become All of It Was Mine, the set ultimately contained all ten songs that would appear on that album.1
By starting with the full-on spareness of "Trying", Lindeman managed to pull the crowd in and quite quickly the room would be admirably quiet — and stay so for the whole set. After that, the banjo picking of "Everything I Saw" felt more expansive, but even that was still rather unadorned, with Lindeman daring to expose her voice and lyrics in the unfamiliar songs — but the audience was listening.
After that she picked up the guitar for the rest of the set, introducing the emotionally raw "Traveller" ("about a house where I happen to live, just down the street, 'round the corner."), exploring how emotional shock renders familiar things strange, turning one's own neighbourhood into a foreign landscape.
And after that the music became even more unadorned and spare. Apologizing for playing a "quiet song", "Running Around Asking", just had barely-strummed guitar and voice and the rattle of the ventilation fan in the background. And as if designed for a bit of catharsis, the set ended with "If I've Been Fooled", which projects resolve in the face of loss and confusion.
Truth be told, at the time I found Lindeman's songs to be lovely but nor highly affecting, though I think some of that could just be down to trying to absorb so much new material all at once. After a couple more doses of this, and spending some time with the songs in their recorded form, I've been won over a whole lot more.2
Listen to a song from this set here.
Though formally just billed as a solo show, this would in fact be the debut performance of Daniel Romano & the Trilliums, the kickdrum sporting a fresh-looking design with the band's name. Romano took to the stage in a yellow/gold suit decorated with trilliums (trillia?) in Nudie-esque glitter and and Misha Bower, his vocal foil, had a correspondingly trillium-ized dress.
That'd make for an appropriately Parsons-y vibe that was carried further with the hurtin' sounds of "Time Forgot (To Change My Heart)". I'd seen Romano playing in a couple different contexts before, but this was a welcome chance to hear him backed by a full, five-piece band, complete with matching jackets, celebrating the release of his second solo full-length Sleep Beneath the Willow (itself the follow-up to the very fine Workin' For the Music Man). I wouldn't have minded hearing some full-band versions of the older songs, but it would turn out that this set would start with basically presenting the new album, playing its first four songs in a row before the band (save for Bower) departed for a quieter acoustic portion.
The duo did take one look back with "She Was the World to Me", and chased that with a nice version of "Never a Forced Smile". The crowd's attention span for the quieter stuff started to wane a bit after a couple songs, and a cover ("Two Pillow Sleeper", was the title, though I couldn't catch who Romano said it was by) was a bit lost.
The crowd was similarly still a bit more chatty when the band returned to basically complete the run of the album, beginning with "Helen's Restaurant"3 and working up to "There Are Lines In My Face", which served as the big set-closer, stretched out to give a solo for everyone. The band was uniformly strong, but I'd single out Aaron Goldstein (Hamilton-based producer, and touring member with Cowboy Junkies and City and Colour), whose pedal steel work should be mentioned for bringing that old-fashioned tear-in-my-beer vibe. There were a couple rough spots that you'd expect from a band playing their first show, but the off-the-cuff quality generally served the material well.
After that, the crowd called for an encore. "We're out of material," Romano commented as the band returned, but they put their heads together to come up with what I presume was one more cover (called, perhaps, "When I Was Abroad"), dedicating it to Shotgun Jimmie who was taking in the proceedings from the side of the stage.
A fine set, and The Dakota was about the perfect environment for this sort of honky-tonkin' stuff. I've caught Romano again since this night, but not again with a band, so I'm glad that I didn't miss this one. Hopefully there'll be more chances in the future.
Listen to a song from this set here.
1 That album, like pretty much everything mentioned in this post, was issued by the fine folks at You've Changed Records, an imprint that you should very much be keeping your eyes on.
2 Though still staying true to the spare beauty of these songs, Lindeman's arrangements have gotten a bit more elaborate lately — the last time I saw her she was backed by Marine Dreams' Ian Kehoe. Regardless of who she's playing with, you'll want to get down The Great Hall early when The Weather Station openings things up for Night 3 of Wavelength's TWELVE Festival on Saturday, February 18, 2011.
3 That song depends on that old country music trick of leaving the obvious rhyme at the end of a line unspoken, and turning it somewhere unexpected at the beginning of the next — "she grabbed her man by his side / and stared right deep in his... wallet to get her fair share" and so on.
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