Gig Review: Songs From Dreams, Pages From Past Lives, Kristin Hersh’s Viper Sway, Intricate Picking and Huge Heart will Catch You in Their Way

Bringing back gig reviews, one gig at a time. Jon Muq (Uganda) opens for Kristin Hersh (America). We hear them both in a beautiful church, they each give of their souls

Kristin Hersh & Jon Muq

Sunday, March 23

Old St Paul’s, Wellington

Jon Muq was born and raised in Uganda, finding the guitar at 16 and deciding he wanted to dedicate his life to music, he sang for the children, he sang for the homeless, he sang on a cruise ship after uploading early videos to Facebook, and then a cover of a Beatles song caught the eye of Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys. Next thing, Muq is signed to Auerbach’s label, and the Black Key frontman produces the debut album — which is absolutely worth your time. A lovely set of songs:

Residing in Austin, Texas, and revelling in the incongruity of that, Muq’s gentle, deceptively simple songs encompass his huge heart and storytelling, they have melody, they have soul, but maybe the real value of it all — particularly in seeing him as opening act for Hersh, a surprise to many no doubt, a bonus, an added value they might not even have fully been expecting (despite posters) was in hearing his banter, in watching his manner. For Muq is his music — and maybe that’s the best comparison between he and Hersh, in very different ways, they have not only lived their song experiences, and live to tell the tale in the live setting, they are the embodiment of their songs, their songs, at least for while they are on stage, are them.

Muq was charming and almost spellbindingly earnest — a word that’s sometimes used detrimentally when describing music, but I mean it here only in the extremely positive. His smile that ended each song, his hope that we might enjoy the music after each story-introduction, all of it reminding what this job is: The Live Performer, and the contract between live performer and audience.

The church felt like the right space to see and hear and feel this sort of performance too. It’s such a beautiful venue — and Muq made the most of the hushed reverence that is folded into a gig at Old St Paul’s.

Photo by Graham Chaplow

After a short break, Kristin Hersh took the stage, sitting, her guitar always seemed so huge in front of her, three books she’s authored to the side on a table.

“Bet you didn’t think you were gonna get read at” she rasp-laughed as she took to the pages of her book about Vic Chesnutt, and then performed a cover of his song Panic Pure.

Hersh was and still is the leader of the band Throwing Muses. And the songs — whether released on her solo albums or with the band — are all hers. But they transform for the stage. Her voice and delicate guitar work set up twisted ballads like Flooding. If she moves to belting, and her hand switches to furious strumming, we are sometimes getting a Throwing Muses song, but it’s still in a slightly new shape. Tonight we heard City of the Dead and Kay Catherine early on, and then Sunray Venus and Slippershell back to back later in the set. There was also Bywater, and these are all Muses songs, but tonight they are Kristin Hersh songs, and not just in name, but in spirit, in performance. They sit as if sharing the table at a family reunion with songs that have the same chin. The gospel urges of her own song Gazebo Tree now preamble into Bywater. And then, midset, the simple strum of Your Ghost announces her biggest solo hit, but in the middle of a set of songs, and without fanfare, this is just another Hersh performance, the song resplendent, always, but also just another offering. No need for introductions.

I love the way Kristin Hersh takes the material and simply (and not so simply) gives it to us in this way.

There were more readings — a ghost story from one book, and so a ‘ghost story’ of a song to follow. A reading about making art from her latest slim volume about the future of songwriting, and a “lullaby” to send us home in support of that.

And then a return to the stage for one song as encore. Your Dirty Answer was yet another example of how a song transforms from band version (this one solo, but with instrumentation on the record) to solo rendition. It’s almost as if we get to hear the demos, or what might resemble them, after the polished version has been released. In that way, a Hersh performance has a way of returning the songs to their roots, and of taking the audience to new places along with the songs.

She was here less than two years ago:

— and essentially she is still touring behind the same solo album, and so some of this set was ‘the same’, but things are never the same. You sit and have the songs hold you. She sits and stares ahead, and sends the songs in spirals towards you. There is somehow less intensity these days but in only the right way: More banter, more around the creation of the material, which should always be part of a song performance I think. And, as with Muq before her, Kristin knew the balance of what to say and when to say it and then how to deliver on top of that.

Thirty years ago was my first time seeing Kristin (with the Muses). She’s been back so many times since, in various guises, and we are always lucky to have her. Cannot wait for the next time.

This evening was subtly spellbinding. As always.

Live music hitting you right in the ‘feels’. Just as it always should.