Music seen, at the Time of Rivers Festival, the Soundpost, September 9
By IAN PAIGE | September 12, 2007
Seeing Micah Blue Smaldone at the Soundpost on Sunday was like going to church. The audience sat in their pews and listened to the final set of a two-day celebration of guitar playing. The Time of Rivers Festival went off without a hitch, providing an easy-going atmosphere for guitar geeks and greats to share their music. The beleaguered crowd still had smiles on their faces and were more than ready to lean in just a little bit farther and let the final performer lead the congregation into collective reflection. While so many of the festival’s participants kept the audience interested with creative explorations of guitar loops and tones, the mild-mannered Micah elected to abandon the microphone, sit in front of the stage, and begin the end of the night with just a voice and a guitar.
As he started playing, people stopped shifting in their seats and someone closed the door, hushing the room. Some hung their heads attentively while others stared at Smaldone’s fingers to see how he was pulling off such virtuosity. The new songs he presented were straightforward, but colorful, just like his voice, which didn’t try to rise above the crowd but suggested it might be worth a listen.
And the songs were stories, even when he wasn’t singing. His lyrics speak of finding rivers and quarries, of ships caught on Maine shores, but the metaphors are deep and artful, unafraid to point to themes of love, war, and a life in the process of being lived. If Micah Blue Smaldone is best known for his throwback blues and ragtime sound, he just graduated to timeless.
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