Brian Slattery Photos
Outside the thick humidity broke into a pounding thunderstorm over New Haven, but Wednesday evening inside the Holberton School at District New Haven on James Street, Chris Bousquet — a.k.a. American Elm — made it warm and inviting for a live and livestreamed performance that pulled in a lifetime of music, from days on the beach to departed friends.
Before the music started, A.M. Bhatt, DAE’s director,announced that registration for summer programming starts today, June 9. The Holberton School will offer classes in coding, film, and other skills, as well as featuring cultural programs. The classes are open to high school students primarily in New Haven. “You’re going to walk out of here with serious skills,” Bhatt said. The classes will be free to 80 students. One of the instructors, who Bhatt introduced as Mo, started off as a student at Holberton. Mo expressed his excitement at joining the teachers at Holberton in passing along the skills he had learned there.
“This is the manifestation of why we’re here,” Bhatt said. “It’s about creating an ecosystem.”
“Good evening. It’s a pleasure to be here,” Bousquet said from the stage, and immediately settled into “Empty Island Houses,” a spacious song that filled the enormous room, drew in the audience that had assembled (spaced out) to hear him live, and pulled in listeners from the stream online. Bousquet, a veteran of the New Haven music scene, played for years as the leader of the five-piece band The High Lonesome Plains before embarking on the solo project American Elm, which also featured numerous collaborations for a song cycle called Year of the Horse. In short, Bousquet is a songwriter with decades of material to choose from, and on Wednesday evening, he leaned into material that was heartfelt and finely observed, deeply compassionate with a dash of wry humor.
He quietly said his second song was dedicated to Rob Nelson, a fixture of the southern Connecticut music scene who died at the end of May. Then, in introducing another song, he explained its source. “So, when you’re a parent, there are a whole bunch of songs that come along that are basically inspirational songs for children, though they don’t sound like it.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have told you that,” he added.
While tuning, he took the occasion to ruminate on the difference between playing for a live audience and playing for a stream. Tuning seemed more awkward for a stream, he said, because the silence seemed that much more deafening. What is the distant audience doing? “You forget that they have their whole entire houses. They can do anything. At a bar, you can get a drink” while the performer tunes. “At home, you can floss.”
He said he also realized he was approaching an important milestone, the 30th anniversary of his first gig. He was an adolescent, and the gig was a talent show for kids at the campground at Hammonasset State Park. The talent show was run like The Gong Show, where hitting a gong meant the performer’s act was cut short. He performed with a friend.
“A minute and a half in, they gonged us, and we thought, ‘man, we are doing that again,” he said, with a glimmer in his eye, recalling the excitement. “And I’ve been doing that for 30 years.”
His song “A Long Road to be Free” caused Scott Amore, sound engineer and friend of Bousquet’s, to remark “I love that song.” Bousquet replied that it was his dad’s favorite song. “I have no idea what my mom’s favorite song is. It’s probably an Everly Brothers song,” he said, “which is fine.”
As rain began to drum on the roof, Bousquet ended his set with perhaps his quietest song yet. Accompanying himself on a dulcitar, he sang a song that spoke to a city waking up from the past year, whether it was written recently or not.
“I want my life back, but some of it I don’t want back,” he sang. “I woke up in a ditch on the side of the road. Gather me together and take me home.”
