Lyle Lovett, Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, August 2nd

I can pinpoint the precise moment at which I became a Lyle Lovett fan. It was about 20 seconds into If I Had A Boat, track 9 on the Cowboy Man anthology I’d picked up on spec. He sang, and I quote: “If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean/ and if I had a pony, I’d ride it… on my boat.”

Advertisement

Steve Forbert: Strange Names and New Sensations

I’ve had Strange Names and New Sensations for six weeks or so now, and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. There are some cracking songs on it – Seaside Brown-Eyed Girl and Thirty More Years (“objects in the mirror may be just as they appear”) stand out for me – and two or three amusing side-tracks – Middle Age and Strange Names (North New Jersey’s Got ‘Em. The trouble is, there’s not very much to it.

Kensson at the Haufbrau’s open mic, Bozeman MT

It’s terribly pretentious to write a review of one’s own gig – almost as pretentious as referring to oneself as one. But since the gig was at the Haufbrau, a bar from which I have had occasion to turn away on account of the fistfight taking place in the doorway, I feel a modicum* of pretense probably gets me back to my normal level of poshness.

Steve Forbert, Turning Point Cafe, Piermont NY, May 25th 2007

Dogs chase cars, men chase dreams
The dogs are the more practical, it seems

Steve Forbert is a slightly unlikely folk hero.He’s too big, for one thing, and isn’t anywhere scruffy enough. He jerks his head back and forth as he sings, perhaps the reason behind the title of his Rocking Horse Head CD. He’s a folk hero… but he rocks.

The Turning Point is about the most intimate – read cramped – venue I’ve seen anyone play in. According to the sign on the wall, it seats a maximum of 69 people; it seems a few short of that number, but is still cosy. Uncomfortably so, given the lack of respect for personal space shown by the nearby New Yorkers who have obviously come to have a crummy time. The voice of a nearby folkie carries along the table: he too appears to be hoping for a poor show so he can say he wasn’t as good as when he saw him at the Gaslight in 1978, or something along those lines.