It's a Beaux Arts Fall

by walter tunis — Contributing Music Writer

Posted: 12:00am on Oct 30, 2009; Modified: 8:12am on Oct 30, 2009

  • The week that was

    Joe Henry at the 930 Art Center in Louisville: Confessing that he normally doesn't perform in an unaccompanied setting, Joe Henry promised at the onset of this solo acoustic performance to play songs of love, sex and death "almost all in minor key." But even with only two worn Gibson acoustic guitars, an upright piano and nine strategically placed lamps as onstage allies, the evocative nature of Henry's music was in no way shortchanged.

    Sure, half the beauty of his recordings are the fortresses — the ambient arrangements, the trip-hop grooves — that surround his more atmospheric songs. But the pin-drop quiet of the 930 audience and the intimate clarity that resulted brought out two often-overlooked attributes of Henry's music.

    The first, of course, was the lyrics. Disparaging, mysterious and, in more than a few instances, strangely lusty — the narratives were all pushed to the forefront. No song sounded more involving than the title tune to 2001's Scar. Served as a show-closing encore, the confessional grace in this hesitant but hopeful love song simply glowed, with only a lone acoustic-guitar melody as a backdrop.

    The performance's other great rediscovery was Henry's singing. Instead of the purposely corrosive vocals that surface on his recordings, a crisp, patiently paced folk/pop voice liberated self-described "opaque" songs like Channel, one of five tunes pulled from the new Blood From Stars album. "Every fuzzy word I send returns a finer blade," Henry sang before quoting the title to one of Van Morrison's most mercurial songs, You Don't Pull No Punches But You Don't Push the River.

    Insightful as the performance was, it didn't defuse the wonder of Henry's works, from the revolution-from-a-child's-eye slant of This Afternoon to the romantic inscrutability of Progress of Love. Nor did it make apologies for past successes. Henry summed up the differences between his Scar song Stop and the version that sister-in-law Madonna took to the Top 5 (as the retitled Don't Tell Me) with little regret. "I recorded my version as a tango. She recorded her version as a hit." With that, Henry let loose with the tango in all its solo, unplugged glory.

The Fall Ball

8:30 p.m. Oct. 31 at Buster's Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St. $20. Call (859) 368-8871.

What single evening event in Lexington could contain more spectacle than the Beaux Arts Ball?

A second Beaux Arts event might if it were staged, say, on Halloween.

On a Saturday, perhaps.

On the night we lose daylight-saving time and gain another hour of revelry.

Yep, party fortunes are in alliance this weekend as Bullhorn and the Beaux Arts Foundation debut The Fall Ball at Buster's. It's a fitting locale: The venue hosted the 2007 and 2009 Beaux Arts Balls in its previous incarnation as Old Tarr Distillery.

This "halfway to the Beaux Arts Ball" ball is designed as a somewhat smaller event than the springtime bash, but there will a veritable army of performers, led by Philadelphia's Man Man.

A heralded performance troupe among indie-pop fans, Man Man is sort of a modern realization of Oingo Boingo but with less emphasis on brass and operatic vocals. Melodies are bright but maddening, tempos are car-chase speed, and the singing sounds like a cross between Tom Waits and Yosemite Sam. Oh, and the abundance of mallet percussion and synths gives everything a Frank Zappa-like circus air.

All of those ingredients boil over on Man Man's 2008 album Rabbit Habbits.

Of course, Man Man is merely the headliner. The Fall Ball also will feature The Hood Internet, Dinosaurs and Disasters, The Ford Theatre Reunion, The Seedy Seeds and The March Madness Marching Band. Of course, if the event even closely resembles the Beaux Arts Ball, there will more pageantry in the crowd than onstage.

Erin all around

Erin McKeown has been making wonderfully animated — almost cartoonlike — albums for a decade. That's not to say she doesn't like to get her hands dirty occasionally. On 28, one the more stirring tunes from her new Hundreds of Lions album, she paints a weathered portrait of fleeting youth. "You never know what you miss 'til you have it," she sings against chiming keyboards. "You never know what you miss 'til you've had it." But chances are McKeown's alert ways with pop melodies and the arresting colors of strings and winds with which she paints them will grab you as quickly as the deeper poetics of her lyrics.

Either way, you have numerous opportunities to sample McKeown's sublime folk/pop cabaret music this weekend as she all but sets up camp in Kentucky. She will play Friday at Jim Porter's, 2345 Lexington Road, Louisville (7 p.m., $10). On Sunday, she will head to Al's Bar, Sixth and North Limestone (9 p.m., $4). McKeown ends with a Monday on-air performance at WUKY-FM 91.3 (scheduled for about 12:15 p.m.) and a set that night for WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main, which will include country music veteran Billy Dean (7 p.m., $10).

Call (502) 452-9531 for info on the Louisville concert, (859) 309-2901 for the Al's outing and (859) 252-8888 for WoodSongs reservations.

Texas in the Bluegrass

Just a reminder: longtime Lone Star songwriting pals Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen are bringing a taste of Texas to Central Kentucky during the next week. Lovett and his Large Band perform Friday at the Norton Center for the Arts at Centre College in Danville (8:30 p.m.; $60-$125), and Keen headlines a Thursday bill at the Opera House that also features Todd Snider and Bruce Robison (7 p.m.; $22.50, $32.50).

In Sunday's Arts + Life, Keen discusses his brand of Texas song wrangling with some help from his buddy Lyle.

For information about Lovett's performance, call 1-877-448-7469. For the Keen concert, call (859) 233-3535 or Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000.

Order a reprint

Top Jobs

View All Top Jobs

Find a Home

Open Houses Home Buying Guide

Find a Car

Search New Cars
New Car Buying Guide Green Guide Sell Your Car
Ads by Yahoo!