It's been 24 hours since I saw Tom Russell's third annual concert to Las Cruces' Rio Grande Theater and I'm still thinking about just how funny, poignant and good it was.
Russell is a folk singer and songwriter who's very well known and respected in his circles, numbering the likes of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Ian Tyson and Gretchen Peters among his friends and collaborators. He's not so-well known in his adopted hometown of El Paso, where he rarely performs. He's been making this pilgrimage to Cruces in part because it's a college town and guys like him are more appreciated there, in part because he stands to get a bigger crowd.
But that crowd can be a bit sedate, as was it was Saturday, forcing Russell out of his original game plan, which was to play virtually everything on his acclaimed new album "Blood and Candle Smoke." It's getting some of the best reviews of his career.
He did play more than half the dozen new songs, mostly in the 2-hour show's livelier first half, opening the show with four straight songs from the new album, sprinkling others in later.
He relied on older material and even a few requests in the more subdued second half, saying after the show that he changed things up because he didn't think the crowd was as into the new stuff.
Maybe they just didn't know it. Artists like Russell don't, for all their repute, enjoy the kind of radio play and publicity commensurate with their talent, exposure that would help get the music out there. I'd wager most of the people in the audience of about 300 hadn't even heard the new album going in.
But the new stuff holds up very well live, especially with all that tasteful six-string embroidery guitarist Thad Beckman, whom Russell first saw at Ardovino's Desert Crossing within the past year, brought to the table. "Guadalupe" is the most emotionally resonant of the bunch, turning Russell's visit to the Mexico City shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe into a moving account of faith and faithlessness.
"Finding You," a beautiful ballad inspired by his lovely wife Nadine, "a miracle of miracles, the one that saved my life."
He had a bit of fun with "Criminology," a song about an experience he he had teaching the subject in Niger. When Russell, who sings it in a higher, more nasal voice than normal, had a little trouble getting the crowd to sing the word "criminology" on the chorus, he cracked: "Weird sing-along, huh?"
It was. When he didn't quite get the reaction for which he had hoped, Russell punctuated his audience call-response with a some well-timed jokes. "You are getting sleepy," he teased the mild crowd as it tepidly sang along, "read for your wallet, throw them onstage."
He closed out the first set on a humorous note with "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?," a tongue-in-cheek paean to the irony of having illegal nationals build the very wall designed to keep them out.
The second act was more low-key but even more funny as he made cracks about his early days with Cowboy music, which he traced back to the "Urban Cowboy scare" of the early '80s. One song later, he asked if friend and supporter Robert Ardovino was in the house, but no one responded. "OK, screw him," joked Russell, who has been known to hang out at Ardovino's (and who has a painting hanging there).
He did a few more new songs in the second set before digging into older material, including "Don't Look Down," about his experiences working at a carnival in Puerto Rico.
With older songs like "Veterans Day" and "Navajo Rug," Ian Tyson's affecting look at a love gone MIA, Russell seemed to strike a chord with a crowd obviously more familiar with those songs and others, like the Pancho Villa-inspired "Tonight We Ride" and "California Snow," which focuses the immigration issue on one Border Patrol agent's conflicted conscience.
In between and even during songs, the smart alecky Russell regaled the audience with stories ranging from the Rolling Stones' 2006 show at the Sun Bowl (inspired by a request to play Marty Robbins' "El Paso," which he doesn't know) to the joys of irrigating his nearly three acres of farm land in Canutillo. When he returned for an encore, he joked it was courtesy of "cheapencores.com."
And he closed out with "Gallo del Cielo," a song about a heroic rooster that Russell and Beckman hadn't played on this tour, which started a month ago. But that's what you do when an audience isn't responding as enthusiastically to your new songs.
It helped that the performance was lively, punctuated by Beckman's colorful guitar work and Russell's dry, sometimes charmingly goofy wit.
It's too bad he felt the need to shift gears. There's so much good material from the new album that he could have devoted an entire act to it. But he didn't and by delving into old songs he managed to get the crowd on its feet by show's end.
He gave you a shout out too, Doug. Everybody would have been happy to hear him play the same thing ten times. It was just that kind of crowd.
Posted by: 2myeye | November 11, 2009 at 07:05 PM