A girl, a boy and a band

Last night reinforced my belief that sometimes, the best concert venues are small intimate clubs rather than huge stadium-like arenas. We watched the Hem concert at Ann Arbor's very own The Ark, a non-profit theatre and apparently one of the country's best-kept performance venue secrets. It was a wonderfully cozy and warm, and the audience made up of your typical college town folks: liberal leaning grad students, Whole Foods-embracing middle class parents, baby-boomer professors whose teenage idol was, and continues to be Bob Dylan, and your oddball hippie who probably graduated with a PhD in classical Greek twenty years ago and never brought himself to leave this place... All in all, a cool bunch.

Hem was ok I guess- they sound like the music of Karen Carpenter meets Emmylou Harris meets Jane Siberry. What's most fascinating about them is that they're from Brooklyn but sound as if they came straight out from south of the Mason-Dixon line. We're talking as close to bluegrass as possible without actually being bluegrass. Folksy Americana- if that actually means anything... The band sounds great on CD- lead vocalist Sally Ellyson has one of the most ethereal voices I've ever heard, and they use the glockenspiel, mandolin and pedal steel guitar to such enchanting effect. But as a live band, their opening acts stole their show last night.

Dawn Landes and David Mead opened for Hem and they were wonderful. Landes sings back-up for Hem, but on her own, she was sublime. It wasn't even that she has the strongest vocals; in fact, I think it's because her voice was a little timorous at times that made her singing so appealing for me. So there are people who sing from the lungs, and those who sing from the diaphragm; Dawn Landes sings from the heart, her heart. It's like listening to your best friend singing to you in your own living room. And she was so sweet, and polite, and... grateful almost for the attention and applause. It was absolutely refreshing listening to someone who seemed to believe that it was an honor- not a right- to be on stage.

David Mead was a blast too. Jude thinks he's a cross between David Gray and Rufus Wainwright. I think the way he plays the keyboards reminds me a little of Ben Folds too. He was funny- somewhat bawdy songs written to melodies only (in his own words) "a struggling solo singer-songwriter" can. In fact, his opening track was "A Bucket of Girls", splendidly written as a prayer to the Lord for, yup, a bucket of girls...

I guess what I liked about both Landes and Mead was their lack of guile. They were simply two people who happened to enjoy singing, are blessedly good at it, and just happy to be sharing their craft with a bunch of coffee-drinking, beer-sipping people who appreciate them. Their music made me happy last night, the kind of happy that makes you think of hot chocolate, sunflowers and freshly laundered sheets. It was nice, very nice...