The Café Carpe is one of my favorite places on earth to see a show, and definitely my favorite place to see Peter Mulvey. The last time though was a bit disappointing, a head-scratching re-gathering of Redbird, his folk supergroup which also includes Jeffrey Foucault, Kris Delmhorst and David Goodrich. Instead of their voices blending seamlessly together, they more were like nails on a chalkboard. I was looking forward to a solo Peter show to renew my faith, and it worked. First though, I had to get through Hayward Williams set. There’s nothing wrong with Hayward’s music exactly, I’m just not into it and I’m not sure why so many people, Peter included, get so excited about him. I did my best to pay attention, but I found myself daydreaming during most of his set, only really listening when Peter joined him on stage. Peter mentioned later that he covers Hayward’s promisingly titled “Problems with Hemingway.” I’d be curious to hear him do it to figure out if it’s the singer or the song.
Since the last time I’d seen Peter he’d gotten a charming new hat and grown some rather bad facial hair. The hat he got in California and it was adorable. I’m not sure where he got the facial hair, but he might want to rethink that acquisition. Tonight was the first time other than in the basement that I’d seen him do the letters implied by the title of his most recent release, Letters From a Flying Machine. The letters take some of his best stories, Vlad the Astrophycisist and Dynamite Bill, and frame them as letters to one of his many nieces and nephews which gives him license to tell them over and over again. I’d always suspected that the basement and the Café Carpe were the only places quiet enough to allow for these spoken word interludes. Tonight however a crowd that had been duly, not to mention unnecessarily, chastised by the promoter between sets during his announcements of his upcoming shows remained silent.
I hadn’t been to a show since returning from SXSW earlier in the week and tonight’s early show was an easy way to ease back into it after the overload induced by five days of nonstop music. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing experience and likely to become a yearly tradition for me, that doesn’t mean it isn’t exhausting.
Hayward Williams
Peter Mulvey
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