Karen Ponzio Photo
Split Silver.
“This is the problem with having two married couples on stage,” said Erika Simonian with a laugh after Katelyn Russell asked her husband Jay Russell if his guitar was tuned yet, while Simonian’s husband Steve Curtis looked on and laughed himself. It was one of many charming and cheerful interactions between the two couples — the Russells from the band The Split Coils and Curtis and Simonian from the band Little Silver — who joined up Thursday night at Best Video to form a new band called Split Silver. The band would play a few songs together, some by their bands and some covers, in between each couple playing songs from their own bands as duos.
“We concocted this idea looking for a good reason to hang out together,” Curtis told the audience just before the music began.
“I didn’t sign off on the name though,” Jay responded with a smile.
“We didn’t explore ‘Little Coils,’” added Curtis.
The show began with the four playing a cover of Elise Weinberg’s “Houses” with Jay and Curtis on guitar, Katelyn on drums and Simonian on bass. The band members ended up trading instruments throughout the show, and each band member took a turn with lead and harmonizing vocals.
The first duo to play was the Russells, who performed “100 Churches,” a song Jay explained was about the stretch of highway between Waterbury and Shelton and “all the church steeples you see in the Valley.” He also noted it was about family, and proceeded to perform this touching tribute to his father made more poignant by Jay’s lone guitar and the harmonizing vocals of the two.
“Your song was about a dad gone, and our song starts with a dad,” said Curtis as he and Simonian returned to the stage to perform “Longest Day of the Year” from the band’s 2017 album Somewhere You Found My Name. This duo would also offer other selections from that record, including the title track, but they also performed a new song that Curtis noted they finished “at about 5:45 this evening.” It was about one of their daughters; they added that they had already named a song (and an album) after their other daughter. They performed both singles from their 2018 release There is Always Something I Miss: the title track — before which Simonian jokingly said, “I think we’re just playing this one because its fast” — and “The Secrets in the Conversation,” which Curtis said was “straight up non-fiction” about the couple trying to dance to Del McCoury and not being too successful. Each song was played with guitar only, and, not unlike with the Russells, the harmonies of the two made each lyrically rich tune sound even sweeter.
The Russells had their turn again as a duo playing “Wandering Wild” from their latest release Earth and Dust (the title track of which the four would play together), giving that song a new tenderness in its more stripped-down form. The two also played a song with the lyrics, “I’ll be there for you, will you be there for me?” An audience member asked the name of that song so he could buy it.
“That doesn’t exist,” answered Jay, “but I can get it to you.”
There were a number of these friendly exchanges with audience members throughout the show, including Jay dedicating the band’s cover of Loudon Wainwright’s “Swimming” to his friend Brad in the front of the room. The four also covered the Everly Brothers and The Rolling Stones, closing the night with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which in the hands and hearts of these two couples became a more folky and flowing version of the typically harder tune.
The couples also acknowledged their love of each other’s songs throughout the night, especially when they came together as a group to cover the Split Coils’ “My Real True Love,” which Curtis noted was “my very favorite song in the whole world.” When they came back together later to cover a Little Silver song, Jay said, “now this is my favorite song.”
“I woke up with it stuck in my head,” Katelyn added. The two bands merged as one band easily with both instruments and harmonies, joking often throughout the show about their switch offs from duo to four-piece and back to duo, but it only added to the charm of it all and the friendly, comfortable vibe of the music and mood. The audience responded to it all.
“Well, this is a lot of fun. Thanks for doing this,” said Jay.
“Thanks to Best Video, the meeting spot of the state,” added Simonian.
