Christopher Paul Stelling has a story he’s gotten fond of telling. Just weeks after returning from a rambling, finger-picking, hoarse-voice-making tour of Europe, he did “what every musician in New York City would do”: he got a job bagging groceries at a store that sold upscale salami and designer cheeses alongside salted butter, organic yogurt, and four-dollar bottles of still water.
I may not be the greatest legacy
I may not be the greatest legacy
Then the big break happened. Sort of. A movie director walked into the store, looking for not only his nightly salami fix, but a song for a film he was working on. The theme, he told Stelling, was loosely fathers and sons.
Fathers and sons
holy mountains
Stelling pulled out a CD for him; one day later the director was back asking for more, and two days later he was back telling him that he fit the bill completely.
Wanderin’ free like homesick tributaries
Except that the film’s producer wanted a piece by über-polished hipster wet dream Bon Iver.
”So I put it on my CD,” Stelling laughed as he addressed a crowd of around 30 at Cafe Nine on Tuesday, when he and bandmates Matt Murphy and Kieran Ledwidge (pictured below) rolled in like another glorious musical storm.
Part Steve Earle and all high-alert tornado, Stelling awed during the show, lifting his guitar over his head while playing furiously, incorporating his entire body into the act of fingerpicking, unleashing varnished, folksy histories from his adorned guitar, and then turning around to make candid, casual banter with the audience, as if nothing had happened in between.
His instrumental technique and exquisite wail were not only the makings of a benevolent madman. They were also the kind of twister I grew up with in the Midwest, now hitting the New Haven soundscape at full impact. Deep green clouds rolled in at the mere mention of a setlist. Driving winds accompanied the first burst of notes. Each song spared no one in its path — though at the end of the night, listeners left better for it.
Credit here is also due to to Brian Dolzani and Elison Jackson/Peradams‘s Sam Perduta, Greg Perault, and Daniel Eugene, who primed audience members for what was to come with their folksy ease and lyrical witticisms. Cafe Nine’s signature blue backlight, low and crystalline against the stage, caught each of their faces, lighting up their eyes as fluid, unadulterated sound flowed from the stage.
People wholly possessed by their music looked back.
