Small music venues are the choice music venues. Don’t let the size of the performance space dictate your expectations on the quality of the product.
If a band or performer graduates up to the 3,000-seat theater, the overall connection between musician and fan can get lost. And as much as musicians want to play for more people, it’s important to maintain that connection. Luckily there are musicians like Kai Welch who want the audience to be in their face.
For Welch, that means playing house concerts and intimate listening rooms as much as playing clubs or festivals. The songwriter and performer, who is currently developing a nature-based concert series where performers and listeners will travel together into the backcountry for intimate shows in outdoor settings, will be in Durango tonight, playing for 40 or so lucky ticket holders in the Studio & Listening Room.
The solo performer will have his guitar, a looping pedal, keyboard, trumpet and kick-tambourine. Studio &, a cooperative art gallery, is not a regular music venue, but the two or three Listening Room” shows it holds yearly are always sell-out events.
“I love connecting with people on more of a one-to-one basis if possible,” Welch said during a telephone interview from Oregon in mid-July. “I love a small room, I love being able to look people in the eye. I love being able to have that exchange of energy that happens in a little space.”
The Nashville resident’s music career began as a kid; Welch was raised off the grid in Oregon by music-loving parents. Hi mom was a violinist, his dad was bouncing back and forth between listening to Native American chants and the music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Since relocating to Nashville, Welch has chalked up credits with banjo player Abigail Washburn and The Greencards as a player, songwriter and producer.
Welch recently wrapped up recording and production on a five-song EP titled “Perpetually out of Fashion.” It was a record he didn’t anticipate releasing, much less recording. He recorded the songs in his spare time, and was so taken with the results he found it better to release than shelve the product.
It’s a throwback to classic AM radio gold. While he may be pegged as a folkie songwriter armed only with a guitar, the EP is a collection of Americana pop songs rife with horns and electric guitars, featuring mellow melodies and clever lyrical play. Recording was done in a home studio, alleviating the studio pressures normally put on watch and wallet.
“I work in studios sometimes where there’s a very large gorilla on your back, which is the fact you might be spending 500 or a thousand bucks a day on the space. At home it’s a very different scenario. I’m fixing a snack, I might fix a cocktail. I might set up a microphone on a pump organ that sits in my dining room. And maybe you’ll hear background noise of my roommate doing the dishes,” Welch said. “That’s OK; it’s all true to life. I’ve found that it can be a lot easier to capture a real vibe, a real feeling and real emotion when you don’t have the pressure and sterility that comes with a studio.”
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s Best
Today: Acoustic music with Kai Welch, 7:30 p.m., $10, Studio &, 1027 Main Ave., 773-263-1279.
Tuesday: Dean Ween and Brothers Keeper, 10 p.m., $20/$30, Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive, 799-2281.
