Your Own Dark Side of The Border, Tonight - An Evening With Angie McMahon
Wow.
And he says it after every song, for at least the first few songs in her set. Saying in the space that forms when the final note rings out into the ether, but before the rest of the audience begins to applaud, or cheer, and well before Angie McMahon moves herself back toward the microphone and says, “Thank you.”
Wow.
It makes sense, I guess. The first time it happens. After McMahon had finished playing the moody, swooning “Fireball Whiskey,” the first song of her 14-song set, It makes sense to be so moved, or so impressed, or awestruck, or overtaken with a sense of genuine surprise, or whatever, by what you are witnessing on stage, that you will, perhaps, in that silence that descends upon the room, when she’s sung the final line and strummed the last chord on her electric guitar, but before the audience, as a whole, has a chance to respond appropriately—well, maybe you will feel compelled to let the single syllable word, said in complete and total earnestness, slip from your mouth.
Wow.
It makes sense, still, I guess, maybe a little less sense, though, the second time it happens. After McMahon plays “Black Eye.” It makes sense to still be so moved, or impressed, or awestruck, or whatever, but maybe a little less overtaken with surprise, by what you are witnessing on stage that when you see the opportunity and that space returns—the silence that forms in the room between the artist and the audience, when the moment is over, before another one begins—that you will feel compelled to, again, let the single syllable word, said with astonishment and enthusiasm, slip from your mouth.
And he does, eventually, the further along McMahon leads us into her set at the Green Room, on a Friday night in Minneapolis—Uptown, specifically, stop saying the word, “Wow” after she has finished every song. Because between the second and third time it happens, after the second and third songs of her set, it does, at least temporarily, for me, become exponentially less charming, or endearing, quickly becoming a little annoying.
If not annoying, perhaps unnecessary.
If not unnecessary, perhaps a bit performative in a sense.
And I would, before I stop myself short of doing so, here, describe him as an older gentleman—he potentially has two decades on me, give or take, though I am a terrible judge of age at times, and in this situation, am simply trying to use what contextual clues I have available to me to place him in a demographic.
He is not alone at the concert, but he is alone at the front of the stage, standing next to the barrier placed in front of it. He is here with his wife, who, as best as I can tell, is being a good sport, or as good of a sport as she can be, about a potentially late night out in the city—a good enough sport to accompany her husband of presumably a number of years to an intimate concert in a small venue to see an artist that she, potentially, has little to no interest in seeing. She’s a good enough sport to accompany him, and she’s a good enough sport to let him have fun, or set himself up to engage with the show, and the experience, in the way he wishes to.
He is not alone at the concert, but he is alone at the front of the stage, standing next to the barrier placed in front of it. His wife has positioned herself at a table, in the balcony of the venue. Before the show begins, in the hour and change, after the doors have opened and the crowd begins to slowly file in, he turns to face her, and waves, as she takes a photo of him on her phone from where she sits—both participating, and not, in this evening out in the city.
He, before the supporting act, Rett Madison, takes to the stage shortly after 8 p.m., makes small talk with the two young women who are standing next to him—both of whom are under 21, as noted by the large Xs drawn on their hands with black marker—trying to make it casual but it does, to me, anyway, come out as seeming a little timidly, asks them something to the effect of how long they had known about Angie McMahon, or how they first heard about her.
I can’t make out how they respond—they are quiet, and their voices are swallowed up by the dull roar of the conversations surrounding me, and the, at times, loud pre-show music playing over the P.A. But I can hear him—his response, to them, a little timid still, yes, but also shamelessly boastful, telling them he had heard about McMahon, or started listening to her, before her debut album, Salt, arrived in the summer of 2019.
Before.
Wow.
And there is a point, somewhere in the small window after Rett Madison has concluded her seven-song opening set, and before McMahon takes to the stage at around 9:15 p.m., that this man’s wife carefully makes her way down from the balcony, and weaves through the crowd, to the front of the stage where he is done, standing next to the barrier placed in front of it, and hands him another drink—a cup full of a dark, thick looking liquid. A dark, tap beer, perhaps. He thanks her, and she more or less hands it off to him without breaking her stride, and makes her way back upstairs, to the table she’s stationed herself at for this evening out in the city. Wishing to be as good of a sport as she can be; perhaps pushing herself just enough out of her comfort zone.
And when she does hand this drink off to him, and continues moving, the small crowd of young people who are behind us—maybe four or five individuals in their early 20s, certainly, say something to the effect that he is lucky. Lucky that he has a spouse who will weave her way through the crowd of around 400 people, give or take, to hand off a fresh drink. He, perhaps a little less timid than he was when speaking to the young women next to him, or, perhaps, simply beaming with the kind of pride that a “wife guy” will have, bellows over the sounds of the conversations around us, “Don’t I know it! I’m very, very lucky,” and then extends the cup in his hand forward just slightly, to offer a salutation.
Wow.
And there does come a point through the duration of McMahon’s set, when I am certain that this older gentleman standing next to me does become less enthusiastic with his utterances—the single syllable word slipping out of his mouth and into the air, drifting toward the stage, and the kind of chaotic, wholehearted way he waves his arms towards his center with his palms meeting to create the sound of applause. And there does come a point through the duration of McMahon’s set when I soften a little—that I find this man’s enthusiasm, and astonishment, less annoying, or irritating, or permeative, or unnecessary, and I return to a place where I do, in fact, appreciate the earnestness with which he is enjoying his night. There is a wholesomeness to it—to the whole thing. To him, alone, up near the stage. To his spouse, giving her husband his space to enjoy a night, and as she is able, enjoy it with him. To his unabashed awe at what is happening on the stage, a mere two or three feet, in front of us.
And I would, before I stop myself short of doing so, here, describe him as an older gentleman—and I stop myself, or should practice restraint, honestly, in doing so, because it is not like I am young.
I mean, I suppose, comparatively, I am. To him.
But to the crowd of four or five people to my right, standing behind me, or to the two gals under 21, or to the woman with chin-length jet black hair and olive skin who has been standing behind me all night, who then does take her place in front of the stage when this exuberant man, seemingly unprompted, bows his head down slightly, while McMahon is in between songs, turns around, and begins to weave his way through the crowd, perhaps returning to his spouse, or perhaps simply calling it an early night—to those people, I am the older gentleman.
Midway through McMahon’s set, when she moves stage right slightly to the small keyboard set up, plunking out the notes to the opening track on her most recent release, Light, Dark, Light Again, she confidently howls the line—one of many from the album that has stuck with me—“I want to be wide awake when I’m 40.” And, on the cusp of 41, as the older gentleman, comparatively, to some of these people surrounding me in the darkness, I wonder if this is, in fact, a moment when, despite my best efforts, I am wide awake.
The next morning, on Twitter, I say, “Shout out to the older gentleman standing next to me at the Angie McMahon show last night who exclaimed ‘wow’ at the end of each song. Something kind of wholesome about the good time he was having.”
To my surprise, McMahon herself responded. “I actually loved him.”
Wow.
*
And, I mean, it is not something that I have written extensively about—especially in recent years, but I have, certainly, in the past, written about the complicated relationship I have with going to concerts. And, I guess for lack of an easier way to describe it, I refer to it as my “concert anxiety,” but it is ultimately about something a little harder to explain, or to explain in a way that doesn’t lose people.
It is, really, about the fun that I wish to have, or the things that I wish to do, and the fun I am uncertain I am capable of having, or the things I am uncertain I can push myself into doing.
It is about knowing my limitations, and conceding that those limitations often allow me to easily talk myself out of things.
And I have, over the last two years, to very mixed results, tried to finesse those limitations; to see where there is room for me to try. Not to push myself completely out of, well, it isn’t even a zone of comfort exactly. But to try. And overcome. And find myself inching closer toward the fun I wish to have, and the things I wish to do.
The mixed results often arrive in the form of a sad, six-word short story: concert ticket purchased, but never used. It is money wasted, with the fear of missing out, or long-lingering regret at not trying, or playing against type with the limitations I have known so well, for so long.
And even in knowing myself, and knowing that in the last two calendar years, there have been at least four times when I have gone so far to purchase a ticket for myself to go to something but not go so far as to actually attend the concert in question—even in knowing that, at precisely 10 a.m. on a Friday in mid-January, I am huddled over my phone, refreshing the ticketing page for the Green Room so I can purchase one ticket to see Angie McMahon on the final Friday in March.
And initially, there was no date in the Twin Cities—let alone a date in the midwest, when McMahon announced a North American tour in support of Light, Dark, Light Again around the time that the album was released near the end of October. And, in the balance of wishing to experience more, and understanding my limitations, I initially felt the way I often do when seeing an artist, or band, that I like and would perhaps in theory like to see live, skipping the metropolitan area of the state that I live in.
I am, at first, disappointed.
But then, I quickly tell myself what I so often do—that it’s for the best. Because I wouldn’t have fun if I did try to go—I’d be too anxious, or too depressed to enjoy myself.
It’s for the best. Don’t bother. Don’t even consider it. Don’t spend the money. Don’t leave the house. You can be miserable, and anxious, and depressed in the comfort of your own home, for free.
In January, though, and I am not sure how, or why, but a Minneapolis date was added—McMahon, who has been touring with a band, would be giving a solo performance at the Green Room, a venue that had, at that point, been open for less than a year.
And even in knowing myself, and in knowing that in the last two calendar years, there have been a number of times when I have gone so far as to purchase a ticket for myself to go to something, but not go as far as to actually attend the concert in question—in knowing all of that, I purchase a single ticket to see Angie McMahon, and as January becomes February becomes March, I continue to think about the show. About my “concert anxieties.” About my limitations and if there are, in fact, ways for me to finesse myself around them as best as I am able. I think about the things that I would like to do, or go to, but often do not because of how I am feeling.
I think about how, at the end of March, I would like to find myself in a place where I am, perhaps, at least for a single evening, feeling more wide awake.
*
And I did, of course, roll my eyes slightly—just slightly, at the gentleman of an older yet undetermined age standing to my left, near the front of the stage, at the Angie McMahon concert when, in chatting up the two young women next to him, declared he had been following McMahon’s career before the release of her full-length debut, Salt.
I roll my eyes slightly but only slightly because I am certain there is a version of myself, maybe even in the not-so-distant past, that would have, perhaps, said something similar about another artist, in an attempt to gain some kind of credibility, or appear savvier or cooler than I am to strangers at a concert.
I roll my eyes and I admittedly did not know about Angie McMahon before the release of Salt—the earliest release in her small body of work is attributed to a ferocious, emotional cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless,” released in 2018, with a four-song EP, aptly titled A Couple of Songs, arriving in the spring of 2019, followed by the release of the LP in July, which I happened to read a brief, but very positive review of on Consequence of Sound. And I think that maybe, even before Salt’s blistering, smoldering, cathartic opening track, “Play The Game,” had completed when I was listening to the album on McMahon’s Bandcamp page, I felt compelled to order both the record itself, as well as a t-shirt with her name, and a strange, charming doodle printed in the center of it.
And maybe you are not entirely interested, or in a place where you wish to hear about someone’s “pandemic stories,” or what their life was like in the spring of 2020, and I don’t blame you, because I am not entirely interested in telling those stories. Not now. Maybe not ever. Not really. And, I mean, I have alluded a number of times to the circumstances I found myself in, and the toll that it took on my mental health as 2020 became 2021. And maybe Angie McMahon wishes that some of her music—some, not all, mind you—is something that a listener, at times, despite their best efforts, does associate with the first year of the pandemic. But if you are going to make that association, as I did, and still do, to some extent, because some memories and association are extremely difficult to shake, you are doing so as a means of comfort, or solace.
And it is the closing track on Salt, but it was the version of “If You Call” that McMahon recorded as a duet with Leif Vollebakk, released less than two months into the pandemic, that more or less got me through 2020, and it created, as it delicately unfolds, the slow-moving, beautiful, and melancholic soundtrack for my morning walks to work, often as the sun was just beginning to rise.
This recording of “If You Call,” where Vollebakk, outside of providing devastatingly gorgeous harmony vocals throughout, also creates an effortless sense of warmth within the song, off-setting the harder edges of McMahon’s electric guitar, with his work on the electric piano—it did ultimately find a home within an EP that McMahon recorded early on during the pandemic, when Australia was the first to deal with lockdowns and quarantining. Piano Salt, a small handful of tunes from Salt, reimagined for the piano (as the title alludes, as well as two cover songs), arrived near the end of 2020.
McMahon’s second full-length, Light, Dark, Light Again is not a “pandemic record,” though it certainly, in part, in an unconscious way, is a response to the life we know now, and how it was so different from the life we knew before. A song cycle that, more than anything else, is about the journey to self-discovery and self-acceptance, and the work that goes into, and must continue to go into both of those things, it is a collection of songs that were written after McMahon, as she puts it from the stage at the Green Room, on a Friday night in Minneapolis, while she tunes her guitar, had hit “rock bottom.”
Light, Dark can be, and often is, an bleak album—but it is, as the title implies, an album that is also about finding hope, and holding onto that with the tightest grip you have. And it is that juxtaposition, often stark, or surprising, that McMahon does bring with her in her presence on stage. Even when she isn’t backed by a band, there is a snarling ferocity in the way she performs, often singing about these dark times, or difficult feelings, and doing so not with a smile exactly—she does save those for her between song chatting with the audience—but with a kind of reflective honesty that things can be, and still might be hard, but there is a jubilance in taking that and turning it into something powerful, and sharing that with whomever needs to hear it.
*
And, I mean, even outside of the anxieties that I have, or the barriers I have found myself behind, that prevent me from going out, in the evening, and enjoying myself at something that requires traveling a distance to arrive, and then traveling that same distance back, a few hours later, often closer to the time when one day will be turning into the next, something that I do often find I struggle with, or, at the very least tests my patience at times, is the supporting act for a live performance.
And, yes, I mean, this is a way for a perhaps lesser-known artist or band to potentially build a new audience through putting themselves in the face of a captive audience. I get that. And I respect it. But even if the amount of live performances you have attended in your lifetime eclipses the amount I have taken in (I am certain it does), I am confident that you, like I, have suffered through some pretty terrible supporting acts—clapping politely, or not clapping at all, and looking at your watch, hoping that the 30 to 45 minutes they’re given on stage is mercifully quick.
When the Minneapolis date for Angie McMahon’s North American tour was added, months after the tour itself was originally announced, and two months before the date of the performance, there was no information, at the time, that she would be accompanied by a supporting act, and from January, through February, and into March, I had been under the impression—one that did turn out to be erroneous—that it would be “an evening with Angie McMahon” kind of situation. Not that she would play, like, for two hours or whatever, or any kind of exhaustive marathon of a performance; but rather, it would just be her. It would start promptly and the night would end a little on the earlier side.
Maybe the day before the show, it was announced that Rett Madison would be playing a supporting set, prior to McMahon—Madison, out on the road in support of her sophomore album, which, coincidentally, was also released at the end of October, had literally just performed in Minneapolis a few days prior, playing a show with her band.
She, like McMahon, would be performing a solo set, with Madison’s band on the road, ahead of her, on the way to their next show the following night.
In my minor disappointment that it would become a little bit later of a night than I had originally wished it to, I was relieved, though, that the supporting act was an artist I had heard of, and one that I liked, albeit one I was not well versed in the canonical works of.
I was introduced to Rett Madison in the fall of 2021, maybe two months before the release of her self-released, debut full-length, Pin-up Daddy, was released; prior to that, she had released a handful of singles—the first, and perhaps one of her most well-known or at least more attention garnering, is “God is A Woman,” dates back to 2018. It was the title track off of her debut, though, that served as my point of entry when it was chosen as a song a guest on the music podcast I used to host wished to discuss during our conversation.
Pin-up Daddy is, ultimately, a long-gestating collection of Madison’s earlier material—with her seven songs, supporting set in Minneapolis, pulling a surprising five songs from the album, including the two aforementioned tracks, as well as the self-deprecating “Fleas,” “Shame is A River,” and the album’s somber closing track, “Don’t Know Better ’til You Do,” which shares a lot thematically with the two songs that she played found on her more recently released album, One for Jackie, which is a concept album connected by loss and grief, as Madison, with an unflinching candor and a soulful grace, explores all of her feelings in the wake of her mother’s death by suicide.
Madison’s commitment, at least in this era, to a very specific aesthetic is admirable—in her performance on “Seth Meyers,” her hair was expertly feathered, and she wore a shimmering and subtly plaid, gray pantsuit that does create a presence that demands your attention. Similarly, as she stepped onto the stage of the Green Room, 10 or 15 minutes later than the anticipated 8 p.m. start time for her set, Madison’s pantsuit shimmered underneath the stage lights—this one was a rich, dark blue.
And there is, I think, a space where the sounds, and the feeling, or “vibe,” if you will, of a different, and very specific era collide, or converge—I am thinking about a kind of seamless blend of styles that speaks to the 1970s, or even into the early 1980s. There’s a warmth, and a soulfulness—which is something that you can hear very clearly in the commitment to a sound that courses throughout One for Jackie, and you can hear the beginnings of it, anecdotally, in some of the songs on Pin-up Daddy. The seamless conjuring and merging of lush country and western, with the smoothness of R&B—that is, perhaps, the easiest way to describe Madison’s sound. And maybe that isn’t even the easy way. But what she does on record, is certainly impressive, and how she carries that over into a solo acoustic performance is quite jaw-dropping.
Translating a majority of these songs into just acoustic guitar accompaniment works—it perhaps is the most successful on her older songs, like “Fleas,” or “God is A Woman,” or “Pin-up Daddy.” With the two newer songs in the set, the intensity of the arrangement from the recorded version of “One for Jackie, One for Crystal,” a humorous, macabre narrative about Madison traveling back in time to shoot the man who abused her mother when she was young, is lost a little bit with just the acoustic guitar backing her, though the narrative itself, and the power of Madison’s voice certainly is not lost at all.
And okay. Can we please just talk about Rett Madison’s voice for a moment.
Perhaps longer than just a moment.
And I have already used the word “soulful” to describe the sound that Madison, on record, aspires to, but there is an otherworldly soulfulness to her singing voice. To say that it is impressive is doing it a disservice. To say that it is powerful is an understatement. She goes for it—in nearly every song, there are enormous moments where she reaches down deep within and then lets her voice soar as far as it can carry itself, and on the stage at the Green Room on a Friday night in Minneapolis, she didn’t miss. Not once.
That is not to say that Madison spent her roughly 45 minutes stage just belting it for the sake of belting it—showing off, rather than showing out. Throughout the songs she selected to play, and even within specific portions of the songs, she can show a restraint, creating moments that are tender or at least a little more inward.
In between songs, while she tuned her guitar, her conversations with the audience were charming and genuinely funny—if not just a little nervous when chatting, rather than singing. She did talk openly about her mother’s death, as well as her religious upbringing, and her queer identity—the themes that she effortlessly weaves into her songwriting in songs like “God Is A Woman,” which recalls the first time she kissed another girl, with the howled chorus of, “I bet God’s a woman, and she fucks a woman just as divine,” and “Pin-up Daddy,” which finds Madison reflecting on the ease, and joy she feels from embracing both masculine and feminine aesthetics, from day to day, in how she presents herself to the world.
And I tell you all of that to tell you this—that in knowing Madison was going to play a supporting set for Angie McMahon, I wondered, and was perhaps a little nervous about the potential, that she would play “Jaqueline,” because the risk is high that I would cry in public.
The song, however, in a mix of disappointment and relief, was not part of her set, but in a photo I took of her, bathed in red light on stage, that I shared later in the evening on Instagram, writing that since Madison didn’t play “Jaqueline,” I didn’t ugly cry at the Green Room. She responded the next day with, “Awww. I’ll play it next time!”
Even with as intimidating as her voice can make her appear, at least in the moments when she is singing, Madison is charming, earnest, and seems like a genuine and approachable person, remaining humble and approachable, but then tapping into this other part of herself once her fingers begin to the strum the guitar, reaching down deep into herself and pulling something transcendental out when her mouth opens to hit that first note.
*
I can’t claim Minneapolis, or any specific neighborhood, or area, of the city itself as my own since I do not actually live there—my spouse and I live 45 minutes, or so, south, but there was a time, when we first had moved in together, that a friend of hers from college, who, as friends often do, became a friend of mine as well, was living in the Uptown neighborhood, where the Green Room is now located.
We were young—early 20s, and were living in a small, one-bedroom apartment, and outside the workweek, we were never really busy, or booked up, on the weekends, and would often visit and often stay overnight in our friend’s apartment. Uptown, at the time, in 2006 and 2007, was not “rough” by any means, but it had, I suppose, what you could call a character. Or more character. And, of course, there are still bits and pieces of that version of Uptown there today—I suppose the Lagoon movie theatre is maybe the first thing I can think of, and the McDonald’s that is nearby.
A lot of things moved out of Uptown. Or a lot of things didn’t last. Or a lot of things changed hands and then changed hands again. The dusty, musty Uptown Theatre—a one-screen movie theatre where crust punks could sneak in tall boys in their backpacks to watch art movies was dramatically renovated a little over a decade ago, but the building, as a movie theatre, shuttered a year into the pandemic for unpaid rent.
It’s still called the Uptown Theatre now, but it’s a concert venue that has been open for less than a year—Five For Fighting was playing there the same night I was just down the street at the Green Room to see Angie McMahon.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—yes, like 17 or 18 years have passed, but the neighborhood, and this area of the city has changed a lot, and has been developed and redeveloped, and there is something that is very close to a gentrification that has occurred with all of the seemingly luxurious or upscale apartment complexes or condos that are now casting a shadow over what was once just a kind of dilapidated parking lot behind a kind of rundown but charming movie theatre.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—the Green Room is housed within a building where you might not anticipate there being a concert venue, because it is most certainly within the lower level of what is seemingly a very luxurious or upscale apartment complex, and just a few doors down from the Green Room is the Cyclebar—which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a place for indoor cycling.
The space was, apparently, according to a short puff piece about the Green Room’s opening from Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine, the Uptown Pourhouse, which closed in the spring of 2022.
There are a lot of venues of varying size, and of varying aesthetic, in the Twin Cities area—and many of them are operated by First Avenue, perhaps the most well-known venue or the one with the most lore or clout. And so, regardless of its perhaps unconventional or surprising location in Uptown, it is refreshing that the Green Room is an independent venue operated by Tanner Montague, who is a musician in the Twin Cities, per the Minneapolis-St.Paul article, which refers to him as the “visionary” behind it.
Opening roughly a year ago, I do not believe I was all that familiar with the Green Room prior to the announcement that they had booked Angie McMahon—if anything, I, perhaps, saw that a band that I like, or at least follow on social media, was touring through the Twin Cities and were playing a show there shortly after it opened, and I would have done a double take at seeing the name—not knowing what it was, or where it was. The venue’s main focus, as it seems, is local acts, or dance party nights, with only the occasional national (or in the case of McMahon, international) touring artist.
And maybe it’s because it has only been open for a year, or maybe it is because of a number of other reasons, but it is, like, a relatively nice (and surprisingly clean) space—and at least on the night of McMahon’s performance, it felt like a welcoming space, and the few interactions I had with the venue staff at both the main door and at the bar were very pleasant.
Holding around 400 people, the Green Room is small—not small enough so you feel like you are in a hole in the wall, or that, once the music starts, that you are literally inside the speaker, as it does so often with other venues of a smaller size. But it’s intimate. And, I mean, I can’t speak to what it is like if you are not standing right in front of the stage for a performance that is, already, an intimate one, but it is a small enough space that I feel like the intimacy extends towards the back, and into the balcony—like if you are there, wherever you might be, you feel like you are part of what is happening on the stage.
*
Hanging behind Angie McMahon on stage at the Green Room, and presumably on the other nights of this tour of North America, was a small drop cloth featuring a picture of an outdoor landscape—similar in aesthetic and in its color palate to the photography used for the album artwork to Light, Dark, Light Again, as well as promotional images of McMahon for the release of the record.
Projected above the backdrop, at least before she took to the stage around 9:15 p.m., was the album’s titular phrase, which ultimately becomes a kind of mission statement for the record itself.
Light. Dark. Light again.
Things are going well. Things are not going well and seem impossible. Things are going to get better.
It just takes time.
And effort.
The effort often feels like the hardest part, in a lot of ways. Just one more thing, On top of all of the other things.
And because of the size, and potentially the layout of the Green Room, or simply just the nature of an artist who, in the days and weeks prior, had been touring with a full band behind her and for one night only, was adapting her show to a solo performance, I am remiss to say that McMahon’s arrival on stage was unceremonious, but it was very matter of fact.
And for a long time, before she appeared, setting her mug of Throat Coat tea down and placing her red, hollow-body electric guitar over her shoulders, tuning and fidgeting with the small pile of effects pedals stationed on the floor to her left, there was just noise—not an unpleasant sound, but not a pleasant one either. An ambient din that continued to swell through the speakers as the crowd readied themselves for her to step out from behind the stage.
The din, then, giving way to the opening guitar strums of the moody, smoldering, melancholic first song of the set, “Fireball Whiskey,” the start of which is also subtly underscored by the sound of birds chirping.
With two full-lengths and a handful of well-received cover songs, including a harrowing take on Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Spring,” and a surprising and slinky turn on ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” McMahon’s 14-song set relied heavily on material from Light, Dark, performing nine songs from the album, peppering in four tunes from Salt, and one cover—not “Silver Spring,” much to the chagrin of the person standing in the balcony who called out for it at one point, with McMahon saying she wasn’t sure she could recall all the words and might do the song a disservice—instead she was joined on stage by Rett Madison for a loose cover of Bob Dylan’s protest song “Blowin’ in The Wind.” Fitting, I suppose, because of Dylan’s origins in the northern part of the state, but also a slightly heavy-handed, albeit important, inclusion with its intention as a statement on the genocide in Palestine.
McMahon, after she and Madison finished, and embraced on stage, commented that she had played “Blowin’ in The Wind” at another stop on the tour earlier in the month and that when she sang a specific line—“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free? Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see,” that she felt a horrible sense of tension splitting from within the audience, much to her surprise and disappointment.
Her music, as a whole, is more personal than politically charged, but as she is able, McMahon does not shy away from sharing her views with the audience—she begins the show with a land acknowledgment, which I get the feeling she does prior to every performance, as the rightful people of the lands she has been touring through are noted alongside the tour date and city—Mni Sota Makoce appears next to Minneapolis, adding, in her acknowledgment that the original stewards of the land knew how to better take care of it than the colloquial “we” do.
In the second song of the night, “Black Eye,” before she begins, she explains that there is a line in it about vaccinations, which she feels that, in performing it live, she needs to clarify. “I am pro-vaccine,” she exclaims, then says she was just looking for a word that rhymed within the structure of the verse. When the line does come, “I’m trying to insert myself like a vaccine into your arm—I didn’t know I was doing harm,” she smiles a little, and nods her head, before beginning the final lyric within the verse.
“But I don’t know what I am if I am not your medicine.”
Something that did strike me, perhaps early on in the set—at least by the third song, the dreamy, stuttering “Fish,” is that McMahon, as she is singing and playing, is intense—which is contrasted by how humble and often funny she is in conversation in between songs. She, at one point, becomes too overheated by the flannel shirt she’s wearing on stage and, in removing it, makes a joke about the shirt itself and her hair being in loose pigtails, comparing herself to Lindsay Lohand’s portrayal of Hallie Parker from the 1997 remake of The Parent Trap.
There is a ferocity, and a snarl on McMahon’s face throughout a number of the songs—particularly the slower, or more inherently emotionally charged moments, but she cuts the tension when she, in a light but extremely self-effacing way, introduces a number of the songs as, “here’s another one about depression,” then laughing quietly while she slowly tuned the guitar strings.
It reminds me of when, nearly six years ago, I watched Julien Baker perform—headlining the early Boygenius tour that she went on with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers, the three of them each getting their own solo sets, and then playing the six songs from the then recently released Boygenius EP as an “encore.” Baker’s songs—from her first and second albums, are bleak and often harrowing in their depictions of spirituality, identity, self-destruction, and violence. But Baker, at least at the tail end of 2018, was in a good enough place where she often sang with a huge grin on her face. She told the crowd that she could because even though the songs were written from within a dark place, or are about difficult things, she was just so happy that she was able to share them with others, and that people were connecting to them in deeply personal ways.
There is a place between sorrow and joy, or humor and pathos. And a lot of artists have a hard time finding that balance, or walking that line, especially in live performance, but McMahon does it with a gentle grace.
*
Having been performing across North America with a band behind her, McMahon was not out of sorts exactly by being on stage alone, but she was admittedly not as accustomed to playing some of the newer material in more hushed and stripped-down incarnations. Comparatively, the songs from Salt, at least three of the four she performed (“Soon,” the rollicking, snarky “Slow Mover,” and the set-closing “Pasta”) all feature additional instrumentation in their recorded versions, but are much less dense in their arranging—Light, Dark, Light Again, outside of being simply impressive for how confessional and honest it is in its lyricism about McMahon’s journey through growth and discovery, is also impressive in just how layered, meticulous, and often ornate a bulk of it is.
In this much more skeletal, unadorned presentation, it did make the newer songs, for as intense as McMahon can be, and often is, feel a lot more fragile, and with the only accompaniment being her electric guitar, or the keyboard for a handful of songs near the final portion of the set, it does give her poignant lyric writing a chance to really resonate even more so than it does within the studio recordings.
McMahon, at least on stage at the Green Room, structured her set in such a way that the overall gradual rises and falls in exuberance and in emotion were paced well, and in that, the shifts in tone were noticeable, with songs that are a little more “fun,” or at least have more momentum or enthusiasm in them, peppered in just the right places to bring the level of energy in the room up just enough before inevitably turning things inward, or into a more quiet, contemplative place once again.
McMahon certainly isn’t without a sense of humor, as shown by her conversations on stage in between songs, and I am remiss to say her music is “humorless,” but the songs on Light, Dark, Light Again, in documenting the journey from a place of seemingly debilitating sorrow towards self-improvement and discovery, but they are much, much heavier in comparison to her older songs, where she does crack even the slightest of smiles. “Slow Mover,” for example, a shuffling, and ultimately scathing track from Salt—when the jaunty, rhythmic opening guitar strums of the song began, they did illicit a huge cheer from myself, along with other members of the audience.
Because, yes, sure, McMahon can be and often is very intense, and emotional, creating moments of catharsis throughout her performance. But. You can still find moments of reprieve in that intensity, and “Slow Mover,” even in the very destructive relationship it details within the lyrics, is a well-written song based around a literal groove that is ultimately fun to hear, and presumably, for her, fun to play.
The song itself depicts McMahon as the protagonist on a late night out, with an off-stage antagonist who wishes to take things much, much faster than she wishes—with things escalating, between the first and second verse, from a place of optimistic adoration, to irritability and resentment.
“Maybe you will get married,” she begins in the chorus, which she alters slightly between the first and second time it appears to indicate the descent from a humoring nature to one of contention. “Maybe fall in love. Could you make me fall asleep when you’re holding me?,” she asks, before the final line. “Try to set me on fire.”
“Could you go on and fall asleep when you’re not holding me,” she scoffs in the second chorus before stopping short of telling this person to fully fuck off. “Go get set on fire.”
And, yes, some of the ferociousness of McMahon’s onstage persona from the more intense, or somber moments of her set do inevitably find their way, albeit a little lighter, in the songs that move a little faster, or at least are not as emotionally weighty—not one of my favorite songs from Light, Dark, but a crowd pleaser within the folks gathered at the Green Room, and perhaps elsewhere on the tour, is the ramshackle “Letting Go,” for which McMahon bounced around near the microphone and wordlessly sang the notes to the little riff that plays in between the verses and chorus on the recorded version, while she kept rhythm within what she was playing on her own guitar.
The song itself, as you may have figured out by the title, is, in her continued path toward discovery and acceptance of the self, about letting go, and in doing so, the song swells to a cacophony with McMahon repeating, then yelling with unabashed glee, “It’s okay! Make mistakes! Make mistakes”—a phrase that she, after the song was done and she was tuning her guitar before beginning the next song, admitted might follow her around for the rest of her life.
McMahon closed her set, as she did each night of this tour of North America, with the boisterous “Pasta,” which, in the rise and fall and then sudden shift in tempo as it careens toward a frenetic conclusion, makes sense as the final song of the night—an old song, one with a lot of self-deprecation in its few, yet pointed, darkly humorous phrase turns, that builds to a last gasp before McMahon said good night and wandered backstage. Prior to this, though, was the show’s penultimate moment—one of the two songs from Light, Dark, Light Again, where she was slightly uncertain of how they would work in this solo, stripped down context, and explained that, near the climax of “Exploding,” which continues to grow to a place where it does what the title promises it will do, if she were to destroy her voice from screaming the line, “I hope I am always exploding” over and over, it would be fine, since it was the final night of this tour.
Even without the steady rising and then detonation of the bashed-out percussion and other instrumentations spiraling around her on the recorded version of the song, and just McMahon alone, seemingly lost in a moment all of her own, wailing away on her guitar while her voice soared until it hit the ceiling of the venue, created something undeniably powerful if not moving.
*
Even with as spirituous of a place as McMahon’s set at the Green Room could find itself, interjecting small amounts of enthusiasm both into the crowd and presumably into herself as well, it is, of course, the moments that smolder, or where she turns the most inward, both in tone and lyricism, that was the most impressive—specifically in this setting, where even if you are familiar with the song, and her writing, the emotional stakes seemed much, much higher.
The slow-burning anguish of the night’s opening number, “Fireball Whiskey,” which, in its honesty and magnitude, was extremely worthy of the “Wow,” uttered by the gentleman standing next to me at the front of the stage, because even without the tension and release that the song has in its recorded iteration on Light, Dark, McMahon did really set the mood for the night with that song—not only in what it says about the self, specifically self-worth, in the lyrics, but in how she says it, allowing her voice to rise quickly, then fall, in an effortless, astonishing way.
And, yes, there are a number of poignant, thoughtful, and extremely personal reflections across the board on Light, Dark, Light Again—the kind of reflections that hit so hard, and are so stark, that you catch extremely unflattering, or unsavory parts of yourself in them. But that’s the thing, though, the further along McMahon takes us on the album—the letting go that she alludes to. The assurance that it is okay to make mistakes. The journey of acceptance and discovery of the self involves a kind of compassion towards those unflattering things.
“Fireball Whiskey,” the album’s second track, and of of the singles that was released ahead of the album’s arrival in full, is one of the more poignant and personal moments within the album, and it is, honestly, audacious on McMahon’s part to begin her set this way—with a song that is so unflinching in what it depicts.
And, yes, there is, like, a sad, macabre kind of humor within the song’s chorus—“The one time I drank too much Fireball Whiskey ‘cause I wanted you to kiss me,” Mcahon recalls when the song itself shrinks to a whisper. “So I threw it up, washed my mouth, and sat back on the couch with you.”
And, in spending the last few days of October of last year, well into November, with Light, Dark, and from writing my thoughts on the album when I was in an admittedly bad, or low place, for myriad reasons, I think I always knew that, once I sat down with the album, my way into it was always going to be through a part of the second verse to “Fireball Whiskey.”
“This morning, I didn’t want to get out of the shower,” McMahon sings, with her voice growing into a snarl as she punctuates this seemingly innocuous observation with, “But hot water runs out, and you have to carry on, don’t you?”
The hot water runs out. We have to carry on.
Light. Dark. Light again.
And within just the first few minutes of her appearing on stage, there was something remarkable and cathartic about hearing those lines, sung with the kind of conviction and honesty you think they would be, and should be, only a few feet in front of you.
*
She describes it, before the first, pensive guitar strums begin, as a song about friendship.
And I suppose that, yes, I could have gone onto setlist.fm and peeked at the songs McMahon had been playing in her set on this tour of North America before she took to the stage at the Green Room, but I did not. Not out of a need to be surprised. I just did not feel compelled to. So going in, I was uncertain if, within how much she would split her time between new material and older songs, “If You Call” would make an appearance.
Placed near the end of the set, following the flickers of hope, and audience singing along to the album’s titular phrase, in the slinky “Making It Through,” it does make sense that “If You Call” would be the set’s last, like, very slowly placed, hushed, and inherently somber, or at least bittersweet moment, before the literal and figurative explosions to come.
And what I have realized, and what the last two weeks and change, since sitting down to reflect on my evening in the city with Angie McMahon, is that within the themes of discovery and improvement of the self, and really showing up for yourself, and wishing to grow, that are present in a majority of the songs on Light, Dark, Light Again, there is one song—the surprisingly jaunty “Staying Down Low” (included in the evening’s set when McMahon took a break from the guitar and stood behind the small keyboard on stage), that shares similar sentiments to those found in “If You Call.”
You show up for yourself as you can, if you can. But, you also want to show up for someone else.
And, while I have more of a fondness for the version of “If You Call” from the Piano Salt EP, the sentiments of the song are still incredibly resonant, and affecting, even without the warmth of the electric piano or the accompaniment of harmony vocals—it was rather stunning to not just watch, but to be a witness to McMahon working her way through the song, stepping away from the microphone just slightly to whistle the little melody that plays in between chorus and verse, and to hear all that really does hang in the intentionality in how, and when, the words come tumbling out over the sound of her guitar.
And, like the sentiments that McMahon expands upon and explores in her more recent material, like “Staying Down Low,” and even “Making It Through,” the conceit of a song like “If You Call” is that even in the bond that is portrayed, and portrayed with humility and beauty, is that there are going to be moments for each person where things are maybe not going to be going as well, and that things, in fact, might seem impossible.
But there is the hope that things will eventually get better.
There is certainly a lot within the lyrics of “If You Call” that hit, and hit hard, but it has always been both what Mcahon sings, and show she sings it—really stretching and pulling her voice—in the second verse, and then the chorus itself.
“I’ve been a little darker,” she begins, tentatively, before taking a breath, and a pause, and dragging her voice down into a surprisingly lower register as she continues. “Than I’ve been wanting you to see, and you’ve been coming ‘round here, needing to be looked after.”
“If you call, I will turn on the light for you,” McMahon continues tenderly in the chorus. “If you call, I’m gonna be bright for you.”
You show up for yourself as you can, if you can.
But, you also want to show up for someone else.
Things, maybe, are not going well, and perhaps they seem impossible.
Things are going to get better.
It just takes time.
And effort.
*
Of all the newer songs included in McMahon’s set at the Green Room, the moment where she did confess that she was uncertain how things would go, or how things would sound, without the full band behind her, to recreate the thunderous swelling that occurs as the song drifts forward, is the delicate and compassionate opening track to Light, Dark, “Saturn Returning.”
The song does open with a quiet piano tinkling before, at least on the album, it gives way to much, much more, and this was the second out of four tunes she stood further stage right to play on the keyboard, sequenced together within the final third of the set.
And it is easy, at least in the grandeur of the album version to “Saturn Returning,” for the sentiments of the song to get lost, or at least overshadowed by just how big it all becomes—it is, really, the thesis for the album, and the path, however challenging, toward discovery and acceptance, and forgiveness, even, of the self.
It is about opening yourself up to something much, much larger, and having faith in whatever that is.
“Please, alway catch me the way that you caught me,” McMahon asks as the crescendo builds and builds until it bursts and recedes.
And it is something, more and more, that I find myself writing about, because I keep finding reminders of it in the music I listen to, and wish to analyze—and, of all the through lines that I found when sitting down with Light, Dark, Light Again last fall, yes the way into the album was through the depiction of being unable to get out of the shower, but another way in, or one that took hold of my hand and pulled me in deeper, was the line that comes shortly before the end of “Saturn Returns,” as a declaration or an assurance to the self.
“Just wanna be wide awake when I’m 40.”
And it is something, more and more, that I find myself thinking about, or at least I keep finding reminders of it, especially as of late. And this is the idea of living versus being alive. Because there is a difference. There, of course, is an overlap, but one of those things is much more about actively participating in something, and having experiences, and the other is not.
When I turned 40 last year, and when I heard McMahon sing those lines just a few months later, I realized something that I think I had truly known all along but was not really willing to give a lot of time and space to, which is that I have rarely if ever felt wide awake.
Like I am an active participant who is having experiences.
In knowing myself, and in knowing that in the last two calendar years, there have been a number of times that I have gone so far as to purchase a ticket for myself to go to a concert BUT not go as far as actually attend the concert in question, for whatever reason, or reasons—In knowing all of that, and in understanding that, I found myself standing against the guardrail in front of the stage at the Green Room on a Friday night, watching Angie McMahon.
There are a lot of things that McMahon declares or assures herself of within the lyrics to “Saturn Returning”—she is going to love every inch of her own body, and she is going dance every day until she’s old. I cannot say that I would be capable of doing one of those things and I will leave it up to you to determine which one that is.
And you may think that it is a small thing. But it is a thing. An important one. At least for me, and to me, regardless. About the space that forms between living and being alive and in finding myself in a crowd hearing McMahon promise herself she is going to be wide awake when she is 40.
I am not wide awake. By any means. But I am trying.
During the first half of her set, McMahon played one of my favorite songs, and I think one of the more surprisingly effecting songs from Light, Dark, Light Again, “Divine Fault Line.” And I say surprising because for as many moments as there are on the album that do find McMahon exploring something somber, or sorrowful, and the few moments where you can feel a jubilance or a hope, “Divine Fault Line” is a place where both of those things ultimately collide in a genuinely fascinating way.
It’s a song, musically, that is rather buoyant, gliding and then stuttering its way through to the anthemic chorus, with McMahon piling on two layers of vocals in an effort to create a dizzying experience—one of the melodies, leading up to the chorus, one that does kind of skip along, I still argue does sound very, very similar to that of Donna Lewis’ “I Love You, Always Forever.”
It’s a song, lyrically, that is about hope, yes, but it’s also about how difficult it is to get to that point.
Light. Dark. Light again.
Within the first verse of “Divine Fault Line,” McMahon does echo the sentiments found as the album begins, in “Saturn Returning”—of wishing to literally and figuratively love yourself, and of wanting to move, in time, each day. And the writing itself is not bleak, exactly, but it is also dark—or at least quite frank in its honest portrayal of clawing yourself out of an emotional rock bottom. And that kind of writing, along with the near jubilance of the arranging, creates such a compelling contrast—the infectious, fun melodies and the soaring triumph of the chorus offsetting slightly the seriousness of the song’s core, even with how plainly McMahon lays it out in the chorus.
“You’re on your own dark side of the border tonight,” she begins. “And you’re all fucked up, and you’re wanting to die. And that’s the place where the breaking out begins—it’s the divine fault line opening.”
And it is, at this point, reader, where I may do the thing that I have, up until this point, perhaps alluded to or implied that I would do—potentially arriving a little later than I would have liked, or, at the very least, at a place when the word count of this reflection has already surpassed the point of being reasonable, for accessible, to someone.
For reasons that are often difficult to articulate, for the last four years, despite my best efforts, I have not been able to successfully write any personal essays—and that is why, at least in part, I have wound up writing so much of myself into what I write about music. There is, of course, a separation between myself, as the writer and the listener, and the music that I am listening to and writing about. A lot of people would, I think, prefer a very objective review of something, and that’s fine. I get it. But it’s not what I do. It’s not fun for me to do, in terms of extracting my experience with an album or the artist from my reflection. What I am more interested in is the overlap between the album, or the artist, and myself. And what that entails. For better or worse.
And it is, at this point, reader, where I do the thing that you have maybe been expecting this whole time. Because I have taken you to this Angie McMahon show with me, and you have watched it unfolding through my lens, but there is of course the wider lens than just standing at the front of the stage at a concert on a Friday night.
And, maybe, you, like I so often do, find yourself on your own dark side of the border.
And, maybe, you, like I so often do, continue to wait for the place where the breaking out begins.
Light. Dark. Light again.
There is an adage that you are to “write what you know,” and perhaps that is one of the reasons why I ultimately write so much about my own (failing) mental health—because it often does inform a large portion of my connection to a specific artist, or album.
Writing with honesty about being a depressed person was, at first, not easy, but it is what I know. It always finds its way in. It seems horrible, or in poor taste, to say that it has become easier, or at least has felt more natural to fold in to the larger narrative for the sake of making a connection, at times I will admit a flimsy one, between myself and the music.
Writing with honestly about chronic passive suicidal ideation was, at first, certainly not easy. But it is what I know. And what I have known for much longer than I was comfortable revealing. And it is still not easy. It may never be. But it, like so many other themes, seems to continue to find a way to fold itself into the larger narrative of what I am writing for the sake of making a connection, even with as dark or a topic as it it is, or as uncomfortable as it might make people.
You’re all fucked up.
And you’re wanting to die.
The conceit of Light, Dark, Light Again, and the message that one is, or at least I was, ultimately left with after watching McMahon perform at the Green Room, is that clawing yourself out of whatever emotional bottom you have plummeted into is possible. It just takes work. Sometimes, a lot of work. And sometimes that work that might be required is going to be draining, or more uncomfortable than the discomfort you already may regularly find yourself in.
Sometimes, the effort required to find yourself on the other side of this seems impossible.
Light. Dark. Light again.
And it can be, and perhaps this does make it all seem a little more accessible or manageable, about making small steps at first before throwing yourself, or handing yourself over, to something much larger and trusting in that—whatever it might be.
Somebody I used to work with recently told me that the feeling, as I describe it, of not always being attached to the idea of being alive, is more common than I maybe realize. I don’t know that, if in my difficulty to articulate it, I have ever considered the commonality of it or not but it can be, and often is, a lonely place. Because it is a place that you do not wish to invite others—or it requires care in how you approach the subject, since it can be and often is met with alarm, or frustration, or sometimes anger.
You’re all fucked up.
You’re wanting to die.
And it is not something that I have written extensively about, but I have, in the past, written about the complicated relationship I have with going to concerts. And, I guess, for lack of an easier way to describe it, I refer to it as my “concert anxiety,” but it is something that is a little harder to explain.
It is, really, about the fun that I wish to have, or the things that I wish to do, and the fun I am uncertain I am capable of having, or the things I am uncertain I can push myself into doing.
It is about knowing my limitations, and conceding that those limitations often allow me to easily talk myself out of things.
And I have been, with mixed results, trying to finesse those limitations; to see where there is room for me to try. To find myself inching closer toward the fun I wish to have, and the things that I feel like I wish to do.
The place where the breaking out begins.
A big contributor to the anxiety that I often feel at a concert is about trying to leave the show in a timely fashion—about making my way out of the venue, into the street, back to whatever parking garage I placed my car in, getting out of the garage somewhat efficiently, and navigating my way back to the highway, heading south.
The drive back, itself, then, often done late at night when today is on the cusp of becoming tomorrow.
At the show, when I am standing at the front of the stage, next to the older gentleman who has already chatted up the two young women standing next to him, but before he is so awestruck by what he is witnessing that he allows the word, “wow,” to slip from his mouth after the first handful of songs Angie McMahon plays, I send a brief message to my friend Alyssa.
In her response, a few moments later, she says she hopes I’m having fun. “You deserve to have a good time,” she tells me.
The place where the breaking out begins.
I have been, with mixed results, trying to finesse my limitations, and within the last year, Alyssa has been kind enough, on more than one occasion, to offer me the guest room in her home as a way to offset some of the anxieties I experience about going to a show.
And I did, even though I had a very short commute from the Green Room, to my friend’s home, notice those familiar, anxious, or rather, nervous feelings surfacing toward the end of McMahon’s set. I looked at the time—becoming closer to 10:30 p.m., and I started to wonder if I should step out after the last song, and not stand around, clapping, waiting for the inevitable encore, as a courtesy to Alyssa, who was kindly waiting up for my return, and to her family, who I did not wish to disturb with the incidental noise of my arrival.
McMahon, though, after ripping through the frenetically paced conclusion of “Pasta,” made it easy for me to make the decision on whether I should depart or not—she doesn’t do encores. She thanked us, in the audience, once again, and after setting her guitar back on its stand, and began to walk off stage, the Green Room’s house lights came back up, and the electric first few notes of Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” blared over the PA system.
In turning around, to make my way to the exit, I lost count of how many faces I saw mouth the words, seemingly instinctual, “Let’s go, girls.”
*
Last summer, both prior to attending, and in the time I spent reflecting on seeing Taylor Swift perform, I, mostly in jest, wondered if going to the Eras Tour was going to cure my depression.
It didn’t. Not really. But it was an event, and a night, for a number of reasons, where I was able to give in the moment, let go as much as I was able, of many of the limitations.
The breaking out. The divine fault line.
And there are of course a number of different concerts you can go to—a spectacle, full of theatricality, like the Eras Tour for example; or, an act of intimacy between the artist and the audience, like seeing Angie McMahon in a room with, like 400 people. In a moment like that, it feels less like you are watching something, and more like you are bearing witness.
I didn’t wonder, even in jest, before going to see McMahon, if my evening with her in the city would cure my depression. Because it didn’t. Not really. I didn’t anticipate it would. But it was a night, for a number of reasons, where I was able to give in to the moment, and let go as much as I was comfortably able, of some of those limitations.
It’s where the breaking out begins.
Things can be going well. Things can not be going well and seem impossible.
You have to hold onto the shreds of hope that they are going to get better.
It just takes time.
And effort.
Light. Dark. Light again.
Comments
Post a Comment