BERN FOLLOWS HIS MUSE

(written by and apologies to Stan Hall, altered by JBJ)

Giving people exactly what they want is not Dan Bern’s style.

The Iowa-born, New Mexico-assimilated Independent Music Award-Winner could easily, and justifiably, rest on his laurels: dozens of classic songs spread over a 20-year career, a reputation as one of the greatest and most distinctive vibrato vocalists, a huge influence on multiple generations of musicians — and crank out an obligatory album every few years between lucrative greatest-hits tours.

But fulfilling expectations is anathema to Bern, so the artist’s sold-out concert Monday night at Doug Fir Lounge was devoid of many of his best-known songs. Instead, he offered a set featuring an inspired mix of the popular and obscure, the straightforward and esoteric, adding up to a two-hour performance that left the audience — many of whom paid ticket prices well over $20 — deeply appreciative and often mesmerized.

Touring behind the newly released “Breathe”, his first album in nearly six years to feature stylistic variations instead of sticking to one genre, Bern fittingly divided the show into solo acoustic and full-band electric sets. The acoustic half was an archival treasure trove for the kind of devoted fans who pine for great “lost” albums, such as the original “Burbank Tapes”, that the mercurial Bern compiled but decided not to release.

The first knockout of the night was “Mother Teresa”, a hallucinatory, wryly humorous folk epic from 1996. Bern gave one of his greatest compositions a hushed treatment, with crystalline guitar and harmonica accompanying a voice plumbing the lowest depths of its range. Bern followed this with a string of surprises: such ’90s-era unreleased gems as “One More Light”, “Birds,” and the gorgeous, fragmentary piano ballad “Fascist In Me”; a wrenching “Rollerblades” played on an Omnichord; and “Bright Lights,” which Bern is playing on this tour for the first time since 2003.

The latter song is alternately described as overblown, sexist tripe and a complex, poetic portrait of male ego and isolation. Bern played it on a psychedelically painted orange-and-brown piano, alternating between it and a djembe meant to evoke the Hanuman Trio’s accompaniment on the original recording. The switching didn’t really work that well, but it was interesting, and Bern gave his best vocal performance of the evening.

Bern’s deadpan humor was on display during the acoustic set. A running joke had to do with his replies to the numerous shouted song requests that he had no intention of fulfilling: “We should get a spinning wheel of chance for those, like Elvis Costello did in the mid-eighties” was a typical response. Finally, he whipped out a perfunctory “Marilyn”, much to the relief of casual fans likely confused by the relatively few familiar tunes.

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So yeah, the original article (from The Oregonian) continues a bit more, but I’ve since lost the hardcopy of the article, and the satirical blood has stopped pumping for this post. But you get the gist, I think. There are many Dan Berns that we know: the Rocker we hear on the studio albums, the Troubador we watch at the live shows, and then there is a Dan Bern that I think we used to see more of: the guy that played for himself. I’d like to see more of that guy. I’d like setlists like the one Stan Hall mentions in his article (about Neil Young, by the way). This year Dan has taken to releasing songs himself via his MySpace page, and I see it as a good move; the less filters his music has to get through to finally make it to us, the better. I guess I’m saying that I prefer the Dan that doesn’t speak till eight o’clock at night — the Holy Man.

As mentioned last week at IndieFolkForever, Dan’s star is rising once again. But I won’t be pumping both fists in the air till I see him playing on one of the late-night talk shows. That time is coming. I know it.

Dan has posted a new entry on his myspace blog.

I just joined a Dan Bern fangroup on FaceBook. It is not-so-cryptically titled “People Who Love Dan Bern”. If you are on FaceBook, check it out.

Dan Bern - Smart And Final (one of my favorite songs that he posted to his MySpace page earlier in the year)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 1:05 pm and is filed under dan bern, dream, elvis costello, live music, neil young, obscure songs, requests, weird setlists, wish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.