FTW, 11.11.2022

It's unsurprising that I'm so late to the party on Ed Hamell aka Hamell On Trial, who played at the Grackle Art Gallery in my neighborhood last night. I've been reliably swinging after the pitch since at least 1970 (listening to the Yardbirds when most of my age cohort was digging Grand Funk Railroad), even when folks whose opinions I respect like my buddy Harvey from Ohio or Justin "Hush Puppy" Robertson, who booked Ed at the Grackle, try to pull my coat. Hush Puppy went so far as to suggest that my wife -- whose favorite performers are Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, and Laurie Anderson -- might dig Ed. He was right (I went home and played her the live CD that I brought home from the gig). We'll be there when Ed comes back in January.

What surprised me was realizing how inward I've become since the pandemic started. We only started going out to shows again back in February, then after a few weeks there were six months of illness, bookended by the passing of two of my oldest, dearest friends. The shows we attended in February and March reminded me that there's an energy exchange that takes place during any live performance, and my response to those shows was partially a result of feeling overwhelmed (in a good way) by that phenomenon. But after watching some live Hamell videos on YouTube, I questioned whether I'd be up to seeing a performer as loud and brash as Ed in a room about the size of our living room (the Grackle is essentially our house with different stuff in it).

I'm happy to report that at the end of a week when the voters of America, led by the young, came out rousingly in favor of women's right to choose and against election-denying Christofascists -- except here in Texas, where most of the 47% of the registered voters who bothered to cast a ballot chose to continue the abortion-banning, immigrant-targeting, gun-toting status quo -- it felt downright cleansing to hear some good ol' folk-punk rabble-rousing, which Hamell most assuredly brought. But that wasn't all he brought.

Ed Hamell is: 1) a goddamn force of nature; 2) the thread that connects political folk-punker Ani DiFranco, with whom he's toured and for whose label he used to record, and Hickoids supremo Jeff Smith, whose Saustex label released the last couple of Hamell discs; 3) able to spit out lyrics with the velocity of Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Chuck D, and in even greater profusion; 4) as astute (and funny, and obscene, and true) a social commentator as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and his main man Bill Hicks; 5) the wielder of a percussive right hand attack that renders his amplified acoustic as forceful as an entahr punk band, when he wants it to be; and 6) the father of a 20 year old son named Detroit who grew up touring with his old man when he was out of school and is currently pursuing a doctorate at Yale. You can't make this shit up.

I arrived at the spot half an hour before showtime and found a few folks already seated and focused on the back of the room, where Ed was holding forth while he changed strings (and made sure they were well seated in to maintain his tuning; he pummels them really hard). By the time that was accomplished, the room was full, and he made his way to the front, where his microphone, beat-up 1937 Gibson, and the Grackle's self-service PA awaited. 

I'll start by saying Ed really knows how to work the room -- not just the audience, but the "set and setting." Unlike countless solo acoustic performers I've seen who are either at the mercy of the house mix or incapable of using a mic and a mixer to balance their own sound, he varied the dynamics of his set masterfully, cranking his guitar volume and moving in on the mic for the rabble-rousers, backing it off and moving away for the more intimate moments. Years of touring and playing hundreds of rooms like the Grackle have allowed him to hone his craft.

The other beef I've had with lots of performers (and bands) over the years is that they sound great, but by the time the show is over, none of their songs have made a strong impression. That was hardly the case with Ed, whose songs overflow with observational acuity, skillful wordplay, rage, humor, and dare I say, compassion. I'm not a songwriter; after spending four hours sitting outside my ex-wife's house in the rain waiting for a tow truck, all I could think to write is what I just typed. So when I encounter someone who can pen a line like "dragging the vowel like a thief wrestling a weighted bag of golden chalices down the Vatican steps" ("Mouthy B"), they've got my attention.

"The Happiest Man in the World" starts out like a rip from Ray Charles' "Busted" (it's all folk music, anyway), but turns out to be a rumination on how having friends and living with dignity under difficult circumstances beats having money. "Not Aretha's Respect (Cops)" recounts the efforts of a parent who's "trying to teach [his] kid that there's some authority worthy of respect" when confronted with the occupying army attitude of contemporary militarized policing (like the cops in Uvalde who seemingly thought their job was controlling the brown parents, not rescuing their kids from the AR-15 slinging killer). 

"Whores" puts me in mind of the church in New Jersey my "lapsed" Catholic wife attended as a child, the sign by the door that said "There are no strangers here" in five languages, the liberation theology nun we met there, and my wife's late uncle the priest who once told a woman in an abusive relationship, "Divorce the bastard." (Besides working in a guitar store, Ed says he used to play two folk masses a week. Which put me in mind of the two acid-eating Catholics I've known, who used to attend Wednesday mass "electric" because, one of them said, the church had "the best costumes and rituals.")

I'm now at the age when I like stuff that makes me cry. It happened a couple of times during Ed's set: once during "Ballad of Chris" (sort of a mini-Magic and Loss) because we apparently share a lot of formative experiences, as well as more recent ones like losing old, good friends, and I suck at staying in touch with people; and again during "Hail," Ed's hate crime song (think "a trans kid, a punk kid, and a gay kid meet up for coffee in Heaven"). It's a scary world we live in now, but Ed Hamell assures us that in the room where we've gathered to listen and laugh, "You're safe here" ("Safe"). It gets no better. Music's a deep well; how fortunate are we.