Allison Hadley Photos
Burnet.
A single chair, illuminated on the stage, defined the night as three songwriters — normally leaders of bands in their own right — took the State House on a deeply intimate journey through what it meant for each of them to have a solo set.
Local indie rock mainstay Alex Burnet (Laundry Day, the Proud Flesh) who curated the show, called the following acts “some of my favorite songwriters working right now, and they are working.” Bookending Emi Night of the Philadelphia-based act Strawberry Runners and Eric Gagne of the New Hampshire-based act Footings with two sets of his own music, Burnet took the audience on a journey through his own songwriting, peppering each song with temporal context, listing with whom he recorded the song. None of the energy of a full band was lost as Burnet expertly maintained power and filled the stage, using tempo and volume changes adeptly to keep all eyes glued to him, often alternating from a quiet song with pregnant pauses to a brightly toned driving stomper.
Night.
Night was the only musician playing an acoustic guitar; she punctuated sweet songs and sometimes sad songs — all as yet unreleased and brand new — with a small chuckle to herself at the end of each piece.
“We’re just having our own fun up here,” she smiled, as she invited a bandmate to harmonize on the last two songs of her set. Night is on tour with Gagne, and there was an air of camaraderie and friendship that permeated not just the musicians, but also the small, very attentive Sunday night audience, giving the space an aura of a living room. Night was unafraid to break out her brand new material, taking a moment to find the starting chord and not seeming to mind the essential risks that go with that.
“Sometimes I’m playing up here trying to transcend the space by playing a song, but also you have to burp sometimes,” she said.
Gagne packed as many songs and sonic vignettes into his set as he could, taking time only to inform the audience of this plan and to cite a Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg cover; he exuded both a concentrated energy and a need to sonically get something off his chest, alternating between finger picking and intense strumming, at one point leaning back from the mic and releasing a wail into the space. There was something compelling about the lack of context for the songs he chose. He forced the audience to listen to each transition from song to song, even if it was only a note of silence before a different chord and a different key.
Burnet returned to play a few more songs and took a moment to mention a former collaborator of his — Thomas Boettner, a.k.a. Fire Island, Ak — whose song Burnet covered but never recorded. And so, Burnet wryly noted, he would be added to the folk canon with this performance. It seemed a perfect way to end a night of songwriters who took the single chair on stage in very different directions.
