Doe Paoro's Soft Power Tackles the Endlessly Unexpected Everything

Pictured lifted from @theknockturnal

 After a two month hiatus, sitting on half a dozen blogs that I need to publish before the new year. Let me start here. Doe Paoro plays her last tour gig at the Larimer Lounge in Denver tonight. Having been introduced to her by the previous show in Kansas City, I feel the urgent need to get this out there.

It was one of those rare nights when I had to come home and write immediately. This is what came out:

Doe Paoro, 12/18/18, The Riot Room, KC

I greatly appreciate the opening act at tonight's Riot Room Show, Denver's Sarah Slaton (of Edison) with vocalist/keyboardist Sarah Joelle. They did a gem of a set, but the thing that Slaton said that I don't hear often enough was the reminder that mattered. Slaton called out, "Buy their merch (referring to headliner Doe Paoro)! Support touring bands!"

Support touring bands! If we could reconcile "Support Local Music" with "Support Touring Bands" nationwide, we'd be on our way to a level of political unity this country's never yet seen. (Akin in my other line of work to support students first and teachers also--adjunct, full-time, K-12, community college, vo-tech and university.)

They were great, but I came for Doe Paoro (aka Sonia Kreitzer), who I only knew out of curiosity and watching a few videos, most notably "Over," which you should check out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPNO-i7ApZo), but you might start with the video for "Cage of Habits" because of its tight focus on this remarkable singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roghEYr_MHU&fbclid=IwAR3-vgBqoTXpstVxOw4MVH77kvs8KauVYg4Fs84cv2jkcdpzi_S2C5ahRwA.

Picture lifted from @theknockturnal

It's in many ways useless to compare artists to other artists, but sometimes it's useful to suggest a spectrum. If you watch the "Cage of Habits" video, Fiona Apple might come to mind. She didn't, really, during the show. Watching and listening to Doe Paoro live, I felt like I was traveling a spectrum that ranged from Carole King (very present in Paoro's presence and eclecticism) to Rickie Lee Jones back to Eddie Cochran and through Amy Winehouse and Adele to whatever comes next. I found myself thinking about Carole King's supremely talented daughter, Louise Goffin, and burgeoning artists like Charlie Faye and Alysha Brilla, Brilla a young woman who captures the world of music in what seems a simple pop song (the way Paoro does again and again, overtly on the Indian-influenced "Born Whole" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyfrDMA69Jo). Free of past prejudices, there's a brand new territory for all young pop singers.

Paoro owns it. In her first show in Kansas City (she's from Syracuse via LA, and this was her 20th night on a cross-country tour), she didn't say this but approached the set like "you wanna real show, right, not a style or a pose or a fragment of what rock and soul have to offer"? She made her case. Her songs dealt, precisely and eloquently with the vagaries of struggling through and overcoming relationships. Her songs tackled how we live and how we grow.

That's key, because the music went deep. I wish everyone I know experienced the power of this performance. As is true of most touring bands (like local bands) night after night after night, the crowd was not big enough, period. Not big enough to support a local band, not big enough to quite justify the drive to, in this case, KC.

But what all but a couple of dozen of us missed in KC tonight was a powerful band working uncharted territory. The show rocked hard and...I wanna say, graciously, but also kept finding its way back to a meditative hard focus that threw everything else into relief.

L-R, Aeb Byrne, Doe Paoro, Leanne Bowes, Sheldon Reed

 Brief description of this band, a touring band of LA musicians, but such a great fit you hope they're not done working together anytime soon. Sheldon Reed anchored everything with his sharp and splashy drums. Then there were these two tall, formidable women, dressed in black like Paoro but sentries to her vulnerable dancing centerpiece, flanking her, framing her--a dramatic tableau that sends me scrambling through rock history for comparisons. Bassist Leanne Bowes, classically stoic (like almost all the great bassists) made sure the rhythm was not only popping but surprisingly provocative. Then there was keyboard player (and secret weapon) Aeb Byrne, who kept everything multicolored and three-dimensional....before, before, she stepped out and delivered a transcendental (think Traffic or War) flute solo that, well, exploded the boundaries of "Cruelty of Nature."

I just bought the albums at the merch table, so I'm sure I'll have more to say over time, but tonight, I want to say I saw three heroic women and one heroic man transform the local rock stage into something truly liberating, delivering nothing short of grace.

Watch for Doe Paoro, and don't forget the names Sheldon Reed, Leanne Bowes and Aeb Byrne. They're all the future and very, very present. This is the place where we find our way forward, as Paoro sings, we "Walk Through the Fire," and we arrive at musical and social and political horizons inconceivable in music before this moment.

At one point Paoro commented, "I need to get over this 'growth is hard thing' I keep writing about because I should have learned that by now." My thought was, no, not really, because growth is everything, and you never quite learn that. Growth is the endlessly unexpected everything.

As was tonight's set. 

Playlist--   

Loose Plans (from Soft Power)         
Cage of Habit (from Soft Power)

Born Whole (from Slow to Love)

Over (from Soft Power)

Cruelty of Nature (from Soft Power)

Silver Springs (Fleetwood Mac) 

Second Door (from Soft Power) 

Together Apart (from Soft Power)

Walk Through the Fire (from Soft Power)

Fading Into Black (from Soft Power)