Cause of Joy and Light: Emma Langford at the Irish Center of Kansas City

From the auditorium stage of The Irish Center of Kansas City last Thursday, Emma Langford and crew served up a dizzying array of characters in story and song—a dear uncle who demanded a song days before his death (thereby inspiring both song and coda), a twelve-year-old Langford with vocal nodules maintaining silence so her older self could sing, climbing trees as characters born from the memories roaring through insomnia, and a suite of songs revolving around St. Abigail, a healer and a fighter who measures souls without judgment. Throughout, openess and compassion fueled the show.

Early in the set, the Limerick, Ireland native dedicated “Sailor’s Wife” to her mother, whom she’d promised (and forgotten) to tell when she landed in the U.S., a tour that took her on nightly dates from New York to St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee the week of the KC stop. Langford cast herself as the title character at sea, and she would carry this tension forward with “All You Want,” a song from her 2017 debut about a family trying to understand the risky and seemingly directionless life of a professional musician.

The opening line of that song voices the wide gulf between the artist’s sense of self and that of the audience, speaking the inconceivable: “There is nothing stunning about me.” Of course any listener can personally relate to that perspective. But stunning is just the word when she dismisses her “voice like velvet” as it floats “to the floor.”

What Langford means by that, I don’t quite know, but I damn well know she means it. As achingly beautiful as her voice is, such perfection can be problematic. Her technical strength must be matched by all the warmth and conviction it can carry. Otherwise, the technique might ring cold, float right past us rather than connect. As far as I can tell, Langford always connects.

And with that connection, rooted (as is all connection) in vulnerability, comes a good deal of humor. Inviting the audience to sing along with “Tug ‘O War,” a blues about wrestling with demons, she suggested ways the audience might do so to the point of giddy hilarity, offering up three possibilities in terms of harmonizing “ooohs.” Hell, the show ended with “Goodbye Hawaii,” Langford performing what can only be described as mouth trumpet, as if she were soloing on a horn rather than humming away with (just barely) puffed cheeks.

Langford’s not the only one who is funny: her core band—Alec Brown on cello and woodwinds as well as Hannah Nic Gearailt on keys—hold their own. That night Brown was happy to hint that he was the man caught in the menage a trois suggested by her song, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” And Nic Gearailt seemed to be the instigator of an ongoing gag—a la Pee Wee Herman—which asked the crowd to go wild whenever anyone uttered the “secret word” cork. Since the St. Abigail songs (about five if I have the right count) were all set in County Cork, the word came up a lot even if Nic Gearailt hadn’t found extra opportunities to work it in. 

It's a fine trio.

The show disarmed in countless ways, including a gorgeous rendition of Paul William’s (by way of Kermit) “Rainbow Connection,” a song Langford said she and Nic Gearailt played during so many fallow moments that it made Brown’s “ears bleed.” And Langford started the second set, just her and Nic Gearailt, with Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a song she explained was part of a project called Irish Women in Harmony and a fundraiser for the Aisling Project (a holistic after-school program for children https://www.aislingproject.ie/).

Joined onstage by Lawrence, Kansas’s Carswell & Hope, Langford and company reached numerous powerful crescendos, not least of which was the night’s performance of “Abigail,” an incredibly beautiful song I wrote about when I first saw Langford at Folk Alliance last year (https://takeemastheycome.blogspot.com/2023/02/folk-alliance-day-four-yearning-hearts.htm

Another highlight that night was the powerful “Birdsong,” rooted in a traditional Irish form of chant singing. You can see a clip of it, and get a feel for what she does, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ZkH1a-t1w   

At Kansas City’s Irish Center, Langford recruited three young dancers to stomp their way through the rallying cry, the effect almost too beautiful and moving to take. 

And that’s Langford in a nutshell, or perhaps an acorn husk—almost too beautiful and moving to bear, but the “almost” there is key. Langford uses her music—wrestling with the dark nights of her own soul—to help the rest of us bear the heavy loads we carry and find ways to keep going. The stop in Kansas City last Thursday night was nothing less than a vision of multi-colored paths forward, delivering new heights and promising even more just around the next corner.

To order "Abigail": https://emmalangfordmusic.bandcamp.com/track/abigail-tomhas-ghobnatan

For all things Langford: https://www.emmalangfordmusic.com/

Thank you Mike Warren and Ben Bielski.

Also, thank you to the Irish Center of Kansas City, who provided this Birdsong video: Birdsong in KC

Since You Really Matter, Lilli Lewis's "All Is Forgiven"

 

Perhaps rather than start with why and how I identify with this album more intensely than any multi-song progression I've heard in recent memory, I should talk about Lilli Lewis's voice. 

Whether someone is technically proficient or not, whether someone is a virtuoso or not, it's never about that, not really. Some of the greatest singers have terribly limited vocal ability, but they know how to use that limited range like no one else. Lewis is sort of the exception that lends insight to the rule. As she proves many times before the operatic lullaby, "Ciel Eternel," Lewis's abilities are singular and profound. If I say the opening three cuts move from a distinctly NOLA version of blues confrontation to an epic self defense that calls to mind the grandeur of "River Deep Mountain High" and then the kind of garage soul one might associate with Smokey Robinson sifted through Steve Van Zandt, this would be selling each song short simply because of Lewis's voice. This isn't about Lewis's voice being better than Tina Turner. It's about why such distinctions don't matter.

What matters is neither woman would entertain such a silly comparison because what makes them sisters is a vision as big as rock and soul itself. And that vision is why the three soaring piano ballads at the center of the album hit as hard as the rest. These songs ask the questions that are most central to the musical vision that waged a series of cultural revolutions. Lewis asks us to consider the weight of our convictions. If our one life matters, just what is indeed possible?

In the tumultuous currents of "Possible"--buffeting harp and piano crested by splashing cymbals--Lewis declares a fundamental conviction that is certainly core to why I have devoted my life to writing about this music despite the entire playing field and the role of writers themselves having changed in such quantitative ways that the work feels fundamentally different today than when I started--when rock and hip hop criticism played a prominent role in a series of great cultural upheavals. 

But the basic job hasn't changed. The community feels as alien to me, in many ways, as Lewis's old sense of community (the focus of so much of this album) feels alien to her. If you've been in the room with Lilli Lewis playing her organ and singing or if you are immersed in it on headphones the way I am right now, it's every bit as huge as those rock records that used to crack open the eternal sky as well as the punk and hip hop records that blew holes in that vision of the sky. 

All is forgiven here, for Lewis and for me, because we share an understanding that what matters is much bigger than our personal disappointments, our own failures, and the failures of our old communal homes. She says it plain as day in "Possible"--"I'll never be flattened by perfection/Best to expand by nature's laws." 

We're all trying just as hard every time we sit down to perform because we know in this act we learn, individually and together. And it's been there since people began to recognize something new was taking hold, asking Beethoven to roll right on over because that's alright mama, any thing you do.

It's no surprise then that Lewis closes this album with the epic rock guitar of "Firefly." One of the greatest voices I've ever heard asks the listener, asks the music itself, to "teach me to sing." Like writing itself, that will never be a fixed goal, not if you want, like Lewis, nothing less than "to light the dark quiet sky."

Firefly

"All Is Forgiven" at Bandcamp

"All Is Forgiven" at Righteous Babe

Endings Never Tell You Where to Start: Emily King's Truly "Special Occasion"

 

It's good to hear Emily King's "Special Occasion" (ATO Records) has received a Grammy nomination. The optimism in my cynicism suggests that means the record sold a few copies. But like so much of my 2023, it's been a quiet, sturdy companion that I assumed flew well under the cultural radar. 

"Small is the new big," a friend assured me at the dawn of the digital revolution in music over thirty years ago. That seemed then and even more now, truly prescient. The greatest music of our time hits small numbers hard, but it can't capture a mainstage now reserved for a handful of... royals. 

One of the strengths here is King understands that truth far better than (7 months into listening) I'm beginning to grasp. No doubt for practical reasons, but most clips of King present these songs live and paired down--her guitarist and drummer in accompaniment, the singer building out the beats with handclaps. Ironically, songs that on record have lush, soul grandeur and a funky technicolor punch may even gain a bit of drama offered as busking.

After all, these are finely crafted songs first, and the record couldn't be more intimate. After the bravado of three would-be hits--"This Year," "Special Occasion," and "Medal," all infectiously celebrating how we might seize the day, the painful recognition of "False Start" retreats into an explosion of electric guitar. 

Bravado helps, but alone doesn't cut it.

The gorgeously claustrophobic denial of "The Way that You Love Me" follows. Then come the delicate acoustic negotiations of "Home Now" and a new level of realization in the tender duet with Lukas Nelson, "Bad Memory." 

That honesty allows for the realism of "Waterfalls," the naked inquiry of "Who Wants My Love," "Easy," and "Closer to Morning." From the place of greatest self doubt, King finds a way to start a dialogue. That reach alone would be remarkable, nevermind (although it would be foolish to do so) King's evocative, propulsive vocals, the rich, precise arrangements, and the endless melodic hooks.

The album versions are perfect, but I can't resist ending with these two contrasting live takes:

Medal Live on Venice Beach

False Start Live in the Studio 

"Special Occasion" at Bandcamp

 "Special Occasion" at ATO

A Fully Formed Picture: Kelly Hunt's "Ozark Symphony" for 90.9 The Bridge

A Fully Formed Picture: Kelly Hunt's "Ozark Symphony"

https://youtu.be/4ZVaX-ij_xQ?si=0bloSIHWAivKGg34