Dar Williams starts a revival in Chicago

August 23, 2009, at the Old Town School of Folk Music

By Charlotte Loftus
Published: August 26th, 2009 | 12:05am

Dar Williams often refers to her songs as pop music, although her albums are usually found in the folk music section of your music store. If all pop music could combine clever songwriting with glittering melodies the way Williams’ does, the Top 40 charts would probably look significantly different right now.

Williams started her seventy-five minute set with “Calling the Moon” off of 2000’s The Green World (Razor & Tie), a spare arrangement that fully showed off her three-octave soprano voice. She then moved into a number of songs off of her most recent album, last year’s Promised Land, which marks her seventh solo studio release. Throughout the night, Williams also played a small handful of older fan favorites, including “After All” and “As Cool As I Am” (the last being the only song to elicit the usual sing-a-longs and dancing seen at her live shows, which were otherwise absent from the slightly sedate crowd at the Old Town School).

The intimate venue was an ideal setting for Williams’ bouncy, wide-ranging, and affecting performance. The smaller space lent a revival feel to the brightest and poppiest numbers — and a reverential feel to the quieter songs. Her touring band this time around consisted of multi-talented Jordan Hamlin on bass, electric guitar, and accordion (as well as, according to Williams, “the keeper of the Tweet” and “the curler of the hair”) and Bryn Roberts, her Crispin Glover lookalike keyboardist.

In the past, Williams has kept alive the folk music tradition of between-song banter at her live shows, and this one was no exception. She told stories ranging from what it’s like to live in the shadow of West Point to how Al Gore redeemed his coolness in her eyes when he went to see towns flattened by the 1993 Mississippi flooding wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt.

Introducing “Buzzer,” off of Promised Land, Williams talked about being “obsessed with the Milgram obedience experiments” done at Yale in the 1960’s. She continued the conversation, and spoke about choosing Wesleyan as an undergrad because “the women there never shave anything … well, okay, they shave their heads.” Somehow, Williams brought together these disparate threads — the idea of living in New Haven and going through the gates of Yale to take part in the experiment, how life must have changed for the people involved, and the self-absorption of many college students — to show how things that seem simple at 18 aren’t quite as clear-cut 20 years later.

Williams is a storyteller in every sense of the word, which only adds to the humor and sheer fun she brings to her shows. An antidote to the layers of sexed-up irony, cynicism, and Auto-Tune found in pop and indie rock, Dar Williams effortlessly proved that heartfelt stories and a three-octave soprano can make everything seem fresh again.

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For more photos from this show visit Venus Zine’s Flickr page

Dar Williams official site

Dar Williams MySpace page

Razor & Tie