Karen Ponzio Photos
Songwriters and friends.
When musical acts play Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden they occasionally choose a movie to play in the background that suits their style. The four singer-songwriter friends of the aptly named Four Friends on a Night in June — a songwriters in the round event on Friday — chose the film On Golden Pond.
After much joking around about their ages and other individual traits, Best Video’s own Hank Hoffman put it on for them, and also dimmed and adjusted the lights until the movie was set in the darkness and the performers, sitting in a circle, were all bathed gently in the spotlights.
“You’re all covered in a golden glow” said Frank Critelli, who also acted gently and affably as unofficial emcee of the group that also included Shandy Lawson, Ponybird (a.k.a. Jen Dauphinais), and American Elm (a.k.a. Chris Bousquet).
This was the third annual event of this kind for these friends, Dauphinais said. Critelli let everyone know that this year they had added another friend, Lawson, who was in from New York City. The performers came with their guitars and also had an array of percussion instruments at their feet, including shakers and tambourines. The chairs were arranged so the audience was seated in a circular fashion all around them, creating an even more intimate setting in a venue already known for its easy and comfortable intimacy. Each of the four performers played a song after a few words, sometimes more than a few, and exchanged easily with each other and the audience, adding to the others’ songs sometimes spontaneously and sometimes by request.
Shandy Lawson and Frank Critelli.
The show began appropriately with Critelli’s “Goodbye, Hello,” which included the lines “tell me where we go from here / I don’t care, as long as we’re together.”
Lawson strummed along on his guitar, the first of many interactions the two had most of the night as Critelli told the audience that many of his songs were ones that he had written and recorded with Lawson years before. Critelli also shared “One” and another called “I’ll Be Your Number Three,” which he said was the first song he had ever recorded with Lawson in his living room. He told a story of how Lawson excused himself to the bathroom and while Critelli thought he was warming up he was actually being recorded.
“And that’s the best I ever played it,” Critelli joked. “I don’t know what you’re gonna get tonight.”
“Should we all go to the bathroom?” Bousquet said, to which they all responded with laughter.
Lawson spoke of how he tries to “write one song every ten years whether I want to or not” and played a song he called “Part One” first so he could play the new one, “Part Two,” at his next turn. He also joked that he had only practiced four songs and shouted out to a friend in the audience asking what to play next. He ended up with a song that epitomized his sharp and sweet storytelling ways, called “When I’m King,” a tongue-in-cheek tune that illuminated all the wonderful things that would happen to him, like selling out concerts and “eating gold-plated Snickers off gold-plated plates” when he became “King Shandy the Great.”
After he sang that line he stopped playing. “Don’t laugh,” he said. “Everybody laughs at that.” After which, of course, everyone laughed even more.
Bousquet joked as well, before and after his thoughtful and poetic pieces, saying that his wife’s favorite songwriter was Tom Petty before sharing “This Is Where Are We Going, Not Where Have We Been,” which includes an homage to Petty’s “American Girl” towards its finish. He also joked about playing a song “from his new rock opera about a kid who pays pinball,” but got a bit more serious as he played “Am I Waking Up,” which he said was about a “near near-death experience.” The others joined in on guitar and vocals, giving the already Zen-like vibe of the tune an even more harmonious feel.
Ponybird and American Elm
Ponybird elicited perhaps the most touching moment of the night when she invited up 16-year-old audience member Meggie Czepiel, also a singer-songwriter, whom Ponybird has been working with for the past year after meeting her and her family at Best Video.
“It’s only appropriate that I hand the guitar over to Meggie,” she said, and let Czepiel have her second turn, much to the delight of the audience. Critelli also mentioned that he had seen Czepiel at a local open mic and at the time had “recognized her as one of us.” After Czepiel was done and received a resounding response from the audience and other performers, Ponybird beamed and added, “that’s the stuff, passing it on.”
Ponybird also shared her own penetrating yet hopeful tunes, including “I Am With You,” which she said was the first song she ever wrote and which all of the others joined along with on guitar, the strings swelling but never overtaking the beauty of her lyrics. She shared another called “Ramblin’ Rose,” which she said was based on “taking that Grateful Dead character a step further.” In her writing process, she said she often takes the lead from other people’s stories and experiences rather than her own.
The songwriters went five trips around the circle. “Are we done?” Critelli asked the group. He looked at Bousquet and said “You got something?”
Bousquet answered by playing the opening of “Under the Milky Way” by The Church, the others recognizing it almost immediately and joining in with their own vocals and instrumentation.
When the show was over, and with echoes of another annual event — Hamden’s town fireworks – blasting off in the distance, Critelli asked a few members of the audience, many of them fellow musicians, artists, and friends who had lingered to chat long after the show ended, to take some group photos.
“I have intimate and loving feelings for these people,” Critelli said during the show.
