At the risk of renaming this the Blog of Bad News, let me tell you about last night.
Railroad Earth mailed it in. They played barely an hour and half at the Lyric Theater in Oxford, Miss to about 250 people. That’s a pretty good group of people to pay 17 American dollars each to hear some music in a small town on a Wednesday night, but it seemed sparse in the 1,200 capacity Lyric Theater.
The last time Railroad Earth played in Oxford, they played to an energetic and enthusiastic packed house at Proud Larrys—about 250 people. That night, the crowd danced and whooped and hollered and generally advanced the energy flow between crowd and audience that is so crucial to a successful performance by a band like Railroad Earth, who relies so much on seat-of-the-pants improvisation. They’d booked another gig at Larrys last year, close on the heels of the release of their excellent album Amen Corner, but cancelled the show, purportedly because they had their sites set on the bigger hall.
To be sure, The Lyric is a splendor. Since its opening, the venue has reinvigorated the Oxford concert scene. That’s due in no small part to the fact that it feels more like a concert venue than a bar. The elevated stage, the wraparound balcony and the early start times all convey the sense of an event, something more than just a night out at the club listening to some tunes whilst quaffing some brews. The finally converted ancient movie theater on the Oxford Square has thus far hosted stellar shows by Modest Mouse, North Mississippi Allstars, Conor Oberst, Girl Talk, Old Crow Medicine Show, Andrew Bird and many others, with a sold-out show by Wilco coming in two weeks. For the most part, these are shows that would have passed Oxford by in the absence of a proper venue such as the Lyric. All of those concerts drew at least a nearly-full house.
But on Wednesday night, the Lyric was far from packed, and the place seems extra cavernous when it’s like that. At Larrys, the same crowd would have provided the required energy to take the performance to stellar heights. Instead, we got a show where the band seemed to want to get off the stage as soon as possible, and a crowd that was inattentive. Instead of jumping to the larger venue, Railroad Earth should’ve stayed put at Larrys until the time was right. Though they’
Taking the stage at about 10 pm, the band worked through a number of instrumental tunes, finally making their way to an exploratory workout of “Forecast,” the Amen Corner tune that from its creation seemed to be crafted as a springboard for improvisation. Railroad Earth indeed used it to spring into a shrewd jam that for a while invigorated the set. But they quickly fell back into a play-by-numbers approach. A guest appearance by local vocalist Shannon McNally, who relied on what must have been a TelePrompter iPhone app to remember her lyrics, didn’t do much to bolster the set.
They ended their set at about 11:20, then came out for a perfunctory “encore” that including a brisk take on “Hard Livin’,” with fiddler Tim Carbonne strapping on an electric guitar for some cathartic shredding.
One mark of professionalism by performers is the ability to play as well to a smaller but appreciative crowd as to a larger one. Years ago, the San Francisco group OM Trio played a gig in Oxford on a Tuesday night to about 20 people. During a break, they griped to me about how they were so much more used to playing for a thousand or two thousand people, and during the show they goofed off on stage, amusing each other with silly sampling and more or less disrespected the audience members who had turned out to see their show, and paid American currency to the band for the right to do so. Those people deserved more respect that that. If you’re asking, Who The Hell is OM Trio?, your query is understandable. They were a nifty little jazz fusion band who thought far too much of themselves to respect their audience and lost them because of it. They broke up a few years into their career, having released just a few albums and never gaining much momentum.
Railroad Earth strikes me as more caring than that. They’ve amassed an impressive catalog and dedicated fanbase. They’re adept performers and insightful songwriters. They seem to care about their craft and about their supporters. They are capable of enlightening and exhilarating performances. It would have been nice to have seen one in exchange for seventeen American dollars last night.
