The Bristol leg of his UK and Irish tour saw a near-voiceless, and so yodel-light, Eller supported at the Grain Barge by his Biggest Fans, local Klezmer madmen (and -woman) Boxcar Aldous Huxley, promoting their new, 10" vinyl-only EP The Initial Proceedings of the Boxcar Aldous Huxley Historiographical Society. Discordantly drunk-Balkan brass, saw, woodwind, banjo and harmonium complemented or, perhaps, off-set by frontman Clawhammer Xerxes' (really?) almost-in-tune voice and late-prog-rock lyrics: think Fish on Marillion's Fugazi. Yet somehow, just somehow, it all comes together to make for an intriguing, ear-testing hour.
Truth to tell, they're better on disc than live, at least with the Grain Barge's puzzling acoustics. On the record, the brass is calmer, the saw less shrieky and the voice more carefully modulated so as to be a little more almost-in-tune. Songs about such things as, so BRoutes understands, the freedom of the press / failed 19th Century moon voyages make a little more sense heard first in the shelter of one's room. But if sense was what you wanted, you wouldn't see this band.
Curtis Eller's first words to the gathered crowd were more or less inaudible. The reason, it turned out, was that he was losing his voice. Now, under normal circumstances, one might think this something of a handicap for a solo performer playing only the inexpansive strings of a banjo. Not so for Curtis Eller. Making a virtue of his plight, he bounded like a demented Labrador into (around, under) the audience, stretching his banjo's wireless mike as far as it would virtually reach and demanding levels of audience participation which was taken up with an enthusiasm rarely seen outside a Show of Hands gig (or the X Factor final).
His Coney Island sideshow appearance and easy facility with sarcasm (both giving and getting) might disarm you into assuming he's a one-trick muscial funnyman. You'd be wrong. Both angry and melancholic, his bluegrass tunes paint pictures of bleak, wide-open Southern US landscapes (but he's a New Yorker...) and tell stories of quiet nobodies in difficult times. He never let you forget his voice was going, which led to some lengthy opening expositions, but he could just as well have kept quiet about it - that his voice was hoarsening acutely as the evening progressed only lent greater poignancy to his stories and songs. And he wasn't even singing into the microphone, eventually taking up a position on the bar, much to the barmaid's evident joy.
An early highlight was Last Flight of the Pigeon Club, a song which required audience-participation in the form of a cooing chorus while relating the story of a lonely, suburban everyman pigeon-fancier dreaming of better times and better places. Alan Bennett on a banjo. Best song of the evening was the very last, Save Me, Joe Louis, with Eller bowing out before his voice gave up on him completely. Not about the boxer himself, but the urban legend telling that the last words of the first convict to be executed in the North Carolinan gas chambers were a plea for redemption to the great Joe Lewis. The song is heart-breaking. For all Eller's animation, there was an intense stillness to the crowd, even during the choruses - needless to say, there was a certain amount of audience-participation in this one, too.
Eller is a wonderful musician, with a rare ear for melody, but an even better songwriter. Live, he is michievous, witty and clever, and never less than exceptional. A definite date to make next time around.
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