Every once in awhile you’re at a show and there’s a feeling in the air that goes beyond the sensations brought on by the whiskey you’ve been kicking back as you wait ages for the acts to finally come onstage. It’s a feeling like change, but it goes beyond that. Hope is the best word to describe the subtle crackle in the air that runs through the crowd on such a night. In the wake of the election, hope is something we know a lot about; we’ve felt it and talked about it and held onto it. So it seemed easy to recognize when Ben Sollee performed before a hometown audience in Lexington, Kentucky, at the Dame, hands down the best place to see a live show within a 200-mile radius.
That sense of hope belonged to the assembled crowd, all of whom were there with the hope that there truly is enough justice in the world for a musician like Ben Sollee to become more widely known. He’s already toured overseas and across the country and is part of the Sparrow Quartet (with Abigail Washburn, Casey Driesen, and Bela Fleck), but his solo recordings and songwriting (political without ever becoming polemical; romantic without being sappy for even a second) are even better than anything showcased with that group.
Sollee brought along the excellent guitarist Justin Craig and pumping drummer Jon Moore to liven up his subtle, soulful, quiet, yet always lively compositions, playing many of the cuts off his excellent 2008 album Learning To Bend and adding a couple from a new EP he’s working on with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. Sollee’s set was rousing and riveting; by the third song (a reworking of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”), he had silenced the entire, large room which had earlier held some loud talkers at the back. By the time Sollee was halfway through the show, the crowd was fairly mesmerized.
Ben Sollee performs “A Change Is Gonna Come”, a few days before the Dame show.
Sollee brings the cello out of the realm of classical music and makes it a part of the people’s music. I’m not sure anyone has even tried this before, but even if they have, I doubt they’ve done it with more beauty or grace than Sollee, who can pull an agonized, mournful note from the instrument one minute and turn it into a sort of wild and wonderful impetus for headbanging in the next. He plays it as funky, country, Appalachian, classical, bluesy, and folksy. Sometimes all in the same song, and it works every time.
Sollee’s voice is just as versatile, a soft whisper in one song and a screaming growl in another (best displayed by his amazing rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”). He burns slow and intense on “Panning For Gold” (one of the best cuts on his album), and speeds up the tempo and the sarcasm in his great cover of Gillian Welch’s “Everything is Free”.
Sollee took time out of his set to showcase another artist and educate the crowd on mountaintop removal – a form of coal mining that is devastating his beloved state – but he kept the night hopping with song after tight song. Best of all, he was enjoying every minute of the show, and that spirit washed out over the crowd as thickly as the hope for justice everyone was feeling. This guy has it all: the singing, the playing, the songwriting. Here’s hoping the world is wise enough to welcome his music with open arms.
