Brian Slattery Photos
Burnet.
Guitar in hand, Alex Burnet beamed at the crowd of about 70 people assembled — in a distanced yet communal way — in the parking lot of Best Video, on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. “Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful Saturday,” Burnet said. “If you’re vaxxed, let me be the first to say congratulations. It’s a real privilege to be able to share music with people in this time.”
Burnet was the first of three performers to grace Best Video’s patio stage on Saturday, when warm and dry weather brought out a healthy audience of fellow musicians, music fans and neighbors, who listened with great attention and offered fervent applause at the end of every song.
Signs of climbing vaccination rates were everywhere, as friends greeted each other by first keeping their distance, then stating that they were vaccinated, and then sharing hugs. For some in the crowd, it was a reunion with people whom they hadn’t seen each other in person in months, perhaps a year. For others, it was a way to support friends. In a year when the music scene struggled with closed venues and an economy first in free fall and still staggering onto its feet, the three performers — Burnet, S.G. Carlson, and Pat Dalton — had kept active from the beginning. Among them, they started a virtual record label, kept up with studio work, ran sound for livestreams, and released original music.
Burnet ambled her way through a set of originals, including the arresting “You’re Okay,” which Burnet said she wrote at the very beginning of the pandemic. It was a response to her own fears about what the disease and the shutdown had in store for her. Now, over a year later, the song — with its mantra of “hey / it’s okay / you’ll be fine / you got time / just relax / let it pass” already hit differently, offering the sense of a promise at least half-fulfilled. The crowd was completely silent while she sang it, then broke into rapturous applause.
By the time she got to the end of her set, the crowd had gotten even bigger. Some had brought lawn chairs. Others brought blankets, settling in for the duration.
Carlson.
“It’s kind of weird to be here,” S.G. Carlson said at the beginning of his set. “It’s the most normal thing we’ve done all year.” Carlson’s songs are usually fleshed out with a band, whether on his studio recordings in which he plays nearly all the instruments, or live with the Tines, which include a lead guitarist and additional singer as well as a full rhythm section. Playing the songs solo with an acoustic guitar changed their qualities, but also brought out the cleverness and emotion of the lyrics, as well as giving listeners a chance to appreciate that the songs didn’t rely solely on the sound of a band to work. The musical bones of the songs — the surprising yet comforting turns of melody, the unfurling verses and choruses — were enough.
Dalton.
The sky clouded over during Carlson’s set, and he worried that it might rain (weather reports varied from rain being imminent to it starting sometime the next day, which is what happened). So he cut his set slightly short to make sure to give time for Patrick Dalton to play, giving the still robust crowd a collection of his songs, featuring streams of wordplay, an aesthetic steeped in folk blues, and his raspy voice more than capable of delivering the message.
“I asked my wife what I should play, and she told me to play the hits. The problem is, we don’t have any hits,” he joked. But the songs, as with those of his predecessors, shone in this context. “Fanfare for the Pathetic Loser,” written on the eve of Trump’s election in 2016, already sounded pleasantly like a document of a historical era rather than something we were still currently living through. Toward the end of the set, Burnet and Carlson joined Dalton to play a Proud Flesh song. Dalton and Burnet matched their guitars. Carlson, without a drum kit, improvised on a guitar case. All three sang.
Thick waves of applause broke out again when the song was over. The sky darkened a bit more and the temperature began to drop. No one left.
Check out Best Video’s website for information about upcoming shows.
