The best kind of music makes you take stock of your own life. Kevin Morby is a man currently taking stock, and his fans are right along for the ride. Morby’s latest album Little Wide Open (REVIEW) finds the ever-evolving songwriter and rocker reflecting on love, death, rebirth, a sense of place, and plenty of ponderous pit stops in between. Perhaps this is what happens to a man as he creeps towards 40, finds love, and examines the roads that have gotten him to where he is. It’s also something that tends to resonate with fans across multiple generations, as was evident by the sold-out crowd that filled Portland, Oregon’s Revolution Hall on Tuesday, May 19th, to catch this veteran indie rocker as he continues to ascend.
Fresh off releasing one of the better albums you will hear in recent years, Liam Kazar took the stage for a quick opening set. The young singer-songwriter – who also lends his guitar prowess to both Morby and Jeff Tweedy’s bands these days – has a penchant for crafting breezy and occasionally soulful folk-rock. Kazar stuck to the songs off Pilot Light for the most part while mixing in a few older tunes and left-field picks. Highlights included “Shoes Too Tight,” with its easygoing lyrics and a brief, blistering guitar solo, and the mellow, nostalgic-sounding “Day Off,” in which Kazar tapped into a lovely cross between Lou Reed and Jackson Browne.
Kevin Morby seems obsessed with life and death these days, and you can hear it all over the songs on Little Wide Open, which finds him working with A-list producer Aaron Dessner to conjure more of a quieter yet no less powerful Americana sound. The sunflowers that adorned the stage and also feature prominently on the album cover captured the album’s themes of growth. Dressed head to toe in flower-covered denim, Morby took the stage and launched into a version of “Natural Disaster” that built momentum like a Velvet Underground tune. New songs made up a healthy chunk of the set, and this seemed to be just fine with the audience, who watched in enraptured silence on songs like the fiddle-accented folk-rock ode to risky living and wild youth “Die Young” and the soaring, infectious “Javelin.” In the live setting, the warm and reflective tone – despite the sometimes-grim reflections – came through even stronger than the recording. “100,000” switched gears for a grungier sound, with Kazar’s bright guitar slicing through. The death musings of “All Sinners” and “Badlands” felt like companion pieces, both somehow mournful and exuberant, with the latter enhanced by fiddle and bursts of harmonies.
After a nice run of new tunes, Morby switched into his older material, with songs like the defiant rocker “This Is A Photograph,” a version of “Five Easy Pieces” that found him dropping his guitar to go into crooner mode while Cochemea Gastelum and Camellia Hartman layered in gorgeous flute and fiddle. “Wander” was one of the highlights of the night with ferocious guitar work and a strong groove, and Morby was smitten when he invited out local celebrity Carrie Brownstein to the stage to lead the band on Sleater-Kinney’s folksy “Modern Girl.” Morby was in full frontman mode as he stirred up his bandmates and the audience on the stomping and humorous garage rocker “Rock Bottom,” the jangly, psyched-out mostly instrumental tune “City Music” with duel guitar soloing, audience sing-alongs, and some impressive tambourine.
With a set filled with high points, Morby brought things back to earth with a calming run of “I Have Been To The Mountain,” the soothing “Destroyer” that saw him taking over the keys, and the title track off Little Wide Open. It was this final tune that gave the performance a full-circle moment. It was cathartic and cleansing, as if Morby had taken the fans on a journey of his life and his psyche and emerged on the other side. By the time the band returned for a handful of encores, they had traversed the musical evolution and versatility that has made Morby the kind of artist who continues to surprise, excite, and inspire his fans. Maybe everyone needs to take this kind of stock of their life.
All photos by Greg Homolka
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