CARRIE ELKIN, Danny Schmidt, Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham 6/6/17

Published:

It’s all about family with the anti Bonnie and Clyde 

What is great songwriting if it isn’t to challenge, to provoke, to make you think? That is a view that Danny Schmidt certainly subscribes to. Whatever else you could call the Austin, Texas based singer-songwriter, you most certainly couldn’t call him easy listening. Lyrically at least. Beginning with “The Too Shall Pass” a song which explicitly deals with cancer, his work also takes in miscarriage (a subject close to him and his wife Carrie Elkin – who provides harmonies on most of his half an hour), the environment, and myriad other things that you wouldn’t expect. And yet, such are the brilliance of the lyrics and the skill in the guitar playing that everyone is simply swept along on the emotional wave he creates. His last song “Stained Glass” is a tale worthy of Dylan at his best, and is played solo. Schmidt is an award winner and it’s easy to see why, half an hour isn’t really long enough.

But that’s all he is getting here, because roles are reversed a little while later. Schmidt is the one (literally) playing right hand man as Carrie Elkin becomes the star.

Earlier this spring Elkin released the brilliant “The Penny Collector” record. An album born out of intense pain (the death of her father, who she describes here as “her favourite human being on the planet) and intense joy (the birth of her daughter Maisie, who is on tour here at eight months old).

Appropriately considering all that, the theme of family is never far away in these songs. After beginning with an older number “Echo In The Hills”, she is delving into “…Collector” with all the attention such a record deserves.

The stories behind the songs are lovingly told, one about depositing her father’s collection of 600, 000 pennies (the album title is homage to it) is particularly superb (“we were like the anti-Bonnie And Clyde”, she jokes), but the music takes on a new dimension here as the they played entirely acoustically. “New Mexico” is widescreen and evocative, “And Then The Birds Came” is highly charged and “Tilt A Whirl” is a gorgeous piece of reminiscence.

The one cover on the album is played too, with Paul Simon’s “American Tune” taking on a fragile, poignant quality given recent world events, and as “Company Of Friends” a cover of one of her husband’s songs ends things on an upbeat note, there is a reflection that maybe everything will be alright after all.

There is one more, with one of the highlights on the record “Always On The Run” becoming one of the highlights here too, and if you couldn’t call it a conventional encore, you couldn’t call this a conventional tour either.

It is a fact that Schmidt – who’s mother is on the road performing babysitting duties – is happy to acknowledge, laughing “it reminds me of one of those early Stones tours, you know where Keith Richards mom was on the road with them!” But if it might not be one of rock’s wildest nights, it does possess a rare warmth, which came shining through tonight.

More From Author

spot_img

Popular Posts

Latest Gig Reviews

Latest Music Reviews

spot_img

Band Of The Day