Photo by Lukas Truckenbrod
Jad Fair got weird on us Wednesday night, delivering a quick thirty minute set full of non sequiturs in musical form. Fair sang about crushes on Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, teenage angst, and peculiar everyday observations of love through the psychotropic Jad Fair lens. Fair plays a homemade guitar with drawings and paintings covering the body and head, and a variety of colored inlays along the neck. Though it has six strings and looks (mostly) like a standard guitar, the strings are a seemingly mismatched bunch of gauges, going as far down as bass-string levels, with a hinge where the neck meets the body. The hinge acts as a whammy bar, but more severely raising and dropping the pitch of the detuned strings than a traditional whammy bar. At certain points, Fair played his guitar with his teeth, backwards with the strings against his body, and more percussively than melodically, announcing his guitar solos, telling jokes mid-song, and howling along with a hound in the back of the bar. The awestruck crowd laughed and smiled throughout the set, offering a respectful round of applause at the end of his set, following the literal destruction of his guitar after it fell apart on stage. He then started with, “So what’s the deal with shopping malls?” and a handful of other corny jokes in a deliberately awkward stand-up routine.
Photo by Lukas Truckenbrod
Fair challenges the listener with his appearance, non-traditional instrumentation, and improvisational delivery. Compared to what the common listener is accustomed to hearing on the radio or television, Fair is miles away. Lightyears away. Like his old collaborator and fellow Austinite Daniel Johnston, Fair takes the traditional expectations of a song and inverts it so that we begin to think about what actually makes a song, and what is important to a song so that the message is delivered. Fair proves that melody and rhythm are only a fraction of what really counts. Honesty to one’s art by preserving one’s intentions is perhaps the most important part, for when we see the artist at his or her most vulnerable, we see the artist unadulterated by influence; these are the most arresting moments.
Photo by Lukas Truckenbrod
Some Say Leland, “official house band of the Annie Street Arts Collective,” followed with their brand of expansively gentle and envelopingly warm alt-folk songs. Organic warbles, distant echoes and cooing harmonies filled the ballroom, disco ball swirling as the reflections danced over the spectacle, providing a celestial wake.
Photos from the night below. All images © Lukas Truckenbrod & Pop Press International. Click any image to open in slideshow viewer.
