Matthew Perryman Jones played with Ingrid Michaelson at the 930 Art Center on Monday (I will be reviewing her performance soon). I was nervous the show wasn’t going to go on, because the storm was so bad. MPJ & Ingrid were coming in from Nashville and although they were supposed to arrive around 4, they instead pulled in about 30 minutes before they were set to go on at 8. So we got to see something special in the fact that this show was a little raw because there was no sort of soundcheck before MPJ went on. It took a little before the sound guys were able to get things straight.
MPJ played a nice sort of folk that was at times sleepy and at others times quite poppy. For about half of the set he played solo before calling up Ingrid’s guitarist/tour manager Allie Moss. MPJ reminded me of a male version of Ingrid & I think I’d have thought that even without them playing together. A little less range than Ingrid as many of his songs were similar. He was a little quirky but fun, and very intimate with the crowd. At one point he noted the living room-like atmosphere of the 930 art center. I couldn’t agree with him more. The 930 has very quickly become my favorite venue in Louisville. I’ll praise it more a little later, but the intimacy that just naturally comes from this venue is amazing.
MPJ was an entertainer and he knew how to get a crowd interested. 3 songs in he asked us for a topic, resulting in him singing a rather good song about Cheez Whiz & putting it on biscuits and triscuits and things like that. About halfway through this spontaneous track he forgot the topic. Later, and probably the best portion of his show was his performance of the song that brings people together. He’d asked us what we thought it’d be, so we all shouted out things like We Are the World (my suggestion), Over the Rainbow, and other songs like that. Instead it was Rainbow Connection. What made it so great though was that he has a bit of a talent for voice impersonations, so he effectively brought up Cher (upon request, but he conceded defeat on that one), Kermit the Frog, Edde Vedder, Aaron Neville (hilarious), Bob Dylan (very good), Johnny Cash, & Dave Matthews (raised his guitar high in DMB style and sang a little high). He only sang the first line because it was the only one he knew, but that’s all we needed.
Later, MPJ brought up Allie Moss for backup to his song “Save You” featured on Kyle XY. MPJ noted the song was recently used on the show as one of the main characters jumped off a cliff to his death. Made for a nice introduction. His last song, “Beneath the Silver Moon”, was written for his father & was a very nice, sleepy sad and emotional song.
Setlist:
Meghan’s Song
Motherless Child
Cheez Whiz
Refuge
Rainbow Connection
Save You
Beneath the Silver Moon
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