Brian Slattery Photos
Kath Bloom.
“It’s a perfect night for this,” said Best Video executive director Hank Hoffman, in introducing Thursday evening’s double bill of music from New Haven folk legend Kath Bloom, with Steve Hartlett opening. The weather on the patio in front of the film and cultural center on Whitney Avenue in Hamden was warm and crisp, the setting sun dappled with clouds, a bucolic setting for music that was all about acceptance.
Steve Hartlett.
Steve Hartlett started the evening singing a set of originals, accompanying himself on electric guitar. He played with gentle, sardonic charm. “It’s really an honor,” he said of opening for Bloom. “I had my parents come to act as the Muppets in the balcony.” With a plaintive voice, left-of-center song structures, and easy, self-deprecating humor, Hartlett quickly got the crowd on his side.
“This is only my fourth show without alcohol, and I’m nervous,” he said.
“You can do it!” someone in the crowd yelled. That voice was joined by another, and he was cheered on through the rest of his set, which sometimes employed a drum machine (“thank you for letting me try that,” he said). At the end of his last song he held his pick aloft like a rock god, drawing appreciative laughter.
Kath Bloom, flanked by David Shapiro on guitar and Flo Ness on vocals percussion, quickly got down to the business of creating a warm, enveloping vibe for the darkening evening. The trio had real synergy, as Bloom’s and Ness’s voices intermingled with Shapiro’s melodic guitar phrasing and Bloom’s and Ness’s rhythms mixed and merged. Front and center as always, though, were Bloom’s lyrics, delivered in her lush, wavering voice.
Halfway through the set, Bloom sometimes interjected banter between the songs, dedicating the tune “The Open Road” to Ness and introducing the song “How Do You Survive?” with the wry suggestion of “let’s stick with the cheerier stuff.” For the most part, no banter was needed; Bloom’s songs did all the talking for her. As she pulled from her extensive, decades-spanning catalog, the band got ever more expansive, creating a mood that filtered through the air well beyond the Best Video parking lot (Bloom recorded this sound this summer with the trio for the album Bye Bye These Are The Days).
Her songs balanced joy and sadness, permanence and fleetingness, distilling them all into a sense of hard-earned wisdom, full of humor and tears. The dozens of Kath Bloom faithful who gathered to hear her were silent during each song, drinking it in, then erupted in fervent applause and cheering afterward. She announced her last song with a finality that made it seem like there could be no argument about it, but afterward, the audience demanded another anyway. She obliged, with a song called “Bye Bye.”
She remarked that it had been so good to play again for an audience, after a long stretch of no shows thanks to the pandemic. But, she remarked, “music has been through much worse.” Like so many of her songs, it was a statement that sounded true, clear-eyed, and ultimately hopeful.
