Eilen Jewell and Jerry Miller
Eilen
Jewell and Jerry Miller
Club Passim
August 25, 2006-8:00 p.m.
By Jinevra Howard
Tonight Eilen
Jewell is playing her first duo gig with Jerry Miller-just Eilen's voice and
acoustic guitar, and Jerry backing her up on electric guitar. The bass player
and drummer of Eilen's backing band, which plays every Saturday evening at
Tír na nÓg, are in the audience tonight, well aware of the possibilities
in store.
Her lyrics are stunning, the vocals are ethereal and earthy all at once, and Jerry Miller generates such wondrous landscapes with the electric guitar that Eilen's songs travel through dreamily, like co-creations.
Eilen
starts off the set with "Going Back to Dallas." If you weren't looking
at her you might not imagine her looking the way she does: she's young, pixie
small, fair-skinned, and blonde. Other reviewers have already mentioned how
stunning Eilen's vocals and lyrics are: "Though only 25, the Idaho native
sounds like she's been writing songs for at least a couple of centuries."
She's an old soul. When the song is over, everyone claps, awestruck.
Eilen's speaking voice is clear, friendly, sometimes twangy, and her stage
presence is low-key and charming. She's not just a sweet girl from Idaho,
though; her songs, lyrics, and vocals reveal pluck, fearlessness, and humor
with an edge.
She uses a harmonica headpiece on the next tune, and she blows on the harp and then transitions to singing with hardly a pause, so smooth Bob Dylan would blush. "Who am I but a lonely rambler girl?" she sings, and it's actually believable. There is a lot of wandering in her songs, in her voice, and you get the sense that she's at ease on the road, that she likes to travel.
The next song, "Mess Around," is based on "4th Street Mess Around" by the Memphis Jug Band. Eilen sings: "Feel like messing up, cutting my teeth/ On stolen candy, chewing on something sweet/ I don't know what, what I came here for/ Stumbling down these streets, trying to find your door." She sings with resolve and courage and looks like she's having fun, like she is so one with the music that she doesn't notice the bright light in her eyes and the darkish pond of Cambridge intellectuals gazing up at her. Jerry Miller is a good companion for her up on that little stage-behind aviator shades he seems oblivious of any audience and merges with the sounds too, works his magic. The audience is very receptive and breaks into applause after each song, wanting more.
The next song is "Boundary County," about a mythical place in northern Idaho-it's also the title track of her new CD. She sings in the voice of someone older, "I don't get around as much as I did in my younger days" and "I took too hard to the whiskey and wandered away from there." Jerry's electric backup has become some kind of air and breeze and perfect weather system for Eilen's voice and lyrics. I'm not the only one in the audience hoping they will record a duo album!
"Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" is next-choosing to cover a song Billy Holiday has already nailed is another example of Eilen's confidence and verve. Eilen sings it raunchy and sweet, switching right into a bluesy, jazzy style and backed up to exquisite perfection by Jerry Miller, likely the best jazz guitar player anyone in this room will ever see play. Eilen's voice sounds sincere, and it's easy to imagine her appreciating her privacy; lyrics like hers don't come out of partying, but of time alone, on the road, in a room, listening to people, places, the elements.
They close with a Sleepy John Estes song, "Drop Down Mamma" (Eilen changes it to "Drop Down Daddy") that they got used to playing on the band's recent U.S. tour: "My momma don't allow me to fool around late at night."
Passim is not my favorite venue, what with the smell of warm spinach and feta wafting in from Veggie Planet, their no-alcohol policy, and having to stay seated and quiet during the performance. But by the end of the show I'm glad that the audience isn't full of loud drunks who don't listen to the band. It was even worth the $15, and if I wasn't so hungry for something besides vegan pizza, I might stick around. But it's off to Border Café for me-for meat and margaritas!
For
more information about Eilen Jewell, visit her website: www.eilenjewell.com.
You
can catch her every Saturday from 5:30 - 8:00pm at Tír na nÓg
in Union Square, Somerville, where she plays with her full band (Jason Beek
on drums, Johnny Sciascia on bass, Dan Kellar on fiddle, and sometimes a special
guest).
