Ceschi stood alone on the stage of the State House Thursday night, surrounded by another band’s gear.
“I’m from here, New Haven, Connecticut, and I’m here live at the State House,” he said.
The other band in question was the New Haven-based experimental neo-soul band Phat A$tronaut, as the two acts were splitting a bill, livestreamed from the State House, to help raise money for the Semilla Collective, an organization that has focused on getting food during the pandemic to migrant families in New Haven who need it.
Ceschi started off his set on electric guitar, energy bursting from the stage even as only the members of Phat A$tronaut were in attendance.
“We’ve been hiding our faces since before pandemics arrived,” he sang, in a opener that seemed to take the experiences of the past year and pack them into a powder keg, ready to explode. “We’ve been glorifying wealth and greed and sociopathy,” he continued. “Fed us our siblings’ meat and convinced us that it was healthy. Told us that we were born free. So much history manipulated by mythology.”
Dozens of people were tuned in from the start, and the comments section rapidly filled with hand claps and fire emoji.
“That’s a little 8‑minute song,” Ceschi said. “That’s a brand new one.” He explained that previous streams had been blocked if he played older songs of his due to perceived copyright violations, so he’d be trying out new material. “I’m a little nervous!” he said.
It didn’t show as soon as he started performing. His next song charged through friends in prison, young rappers dying, the all-too-often horrifying news feed this year, and the fact that we experienced so much of it through phones and screens. “None of it ever seems like it actually happens,” he rapped, and it connected, with the same energy he gave in the past in front of a live audience, the raw emotion as strong as ever. “How is anybody satisfied with anything that we’ve been sold?”
“Say Something,” about Ceschi’s time in prison for marijuana possession, acquired more resonance in the shutdown (“none of us know what freedom is, but we’ve certainly known lack of it,” he sang), as did “This Won’t Last Forever,” both from 2015.
“Is it weird to ask you to sing the chorus?” Ceschi asked the band assembled on the floor, off camera, in front of him. “I’m not used to being around people.”
Phat Astronaut sang the chorus and it was like a choir. “When the audience is all musicians,” a commenter said.
“Thank you State House for putting this on tonight. Hopefully next time it will be in real life,” Ceschi said.
Phat A$tronaut — Chad Browne-Springer on vocals, Mark Lyon on guitar, Stephen Gritz King on keys, Dylan McDonnell on flute and sax, Brendan Wolfe on bass, and Travis Hall on drums — kicked off its set with “Dancer Girl,” the sort of song that would fill a dance floor if there’d been a live audience, and surely will when there is, an irresistible beat and a guitar freak out for good measure. They moved seamlessly into the deep jam of “Rare Fruit,” which found the band breathing as one. That flowed into “I Wanna Know,” in which Browne-Springer dove headfirst into the introspection, swinging between honesty and humor, that characterizes their lyrics.“Have I spent an eternity just to waste my life?” he rapped. “Are my dreams too big? Are my thoughts too small?”
“I want to know what keeps you up at night. What are you holding on to?” they sang. “I want to know so maybe I can see things clearer.”
“Wish you could be in here with us,” someone from the State House commented.
Ceschi joined the band for “Summer’s Over,” a new song that melded the two acts’ styles so seamlessly that it was very easy to imagine they’d been playing together for years, and even more fun to imagine further collaborations (an album?) between them.
The band then headed into “Fuck My Life,” a song about anxiety that started off deceptively soothing. “People can be terrible,” Browne-Springer sang. “I know I am one of them.” All of a sudden the song switched gears, becoming huge and heavy, Browne-Springer’s voice arcing into a scream. The small crew of the State House cheered.
“Anxiety, right?” Browne-Springer said.
The band really hit its stride, the sound growing deeper and more expansive. Then Browne-Springer looked out at the empty venue. The dozens of audience members who had joined the livestream were still there. “That’s the end of the set, but I kind of want to do one more song,” Browne-Springer said. “Could we do one more song?” Everyone agreed the answer was yes.
“Thank you New Haven,” Browne-Springer said. “Life is crazy.” One encore turned into three.
