Slaid Cleaves - Mississippi Studios (Portland, OR; Sept. 15, 2009)

Mississippi Studios was politely packed by the time Slaid Cleaves took the stage for the first of two sets. Despite the fact that it was early in the work week, every seat on the main floor was filled, and even more people hung loose-limbed over the balcony rails. Throughout the tour, Cleaves has been performing with a rotating set of accompanists. This stretch featured Billy Bright, a reserved but swift-fingered mandolin player who accented the spaces in-between Cleaves’ deceptively straightforward lyrics, just as Cleaves’ frequent stories between songs shaded in the sketches of characters that come alive in his music.

Cleaves began the show with “Horseshoe Lounge,” a lonely ode to “missed beginnings and things that never start.” Toward the end of the song, though, he was ready to gamble on the early spark of connection with the crowd, and called out for everybody to join in on the final chorus. The crowd obliged, and afterward Cleaves remarked with a grin, “This doesn’t sound like a Tuesday night crowd; it sounds like a Saturday night crowd.”

Cleaves fed off of the enthusiasm, and in his next few numbers he emphasized the bawdy and bold in songs that could just as easily been stark and somber. This versatility is part of what makes Cleaves’ best work so remarkable. The unadorned language that he uses, culled from country’s pathos and folk’s sincerity, disarms with a candid directness such that the full resonance isn’t felt until later, after multiple listens. This depth of range allows his songs simultaneously to occupy multiple, even competing, emotions without contradiction.

As the set progressed, Cleaves expertly guided the crowd through the grief of a miner’s wife to the breezy joy of picking parts in a junkyard, and then to the place they all knew they would end up, “Broke Down.” In 2000, “Broke Down” broke Slaid Cleaves to a national audience. After Cleaves finished the song, he remarked on the way it continues to divide his career. The story served as a preamble to the set closer that he seemed to hope would be the next landmark, “Cry.” He was clearly proud of it as he described the effort he invested, even if he was doubtful of its chances of becoming the hit that “Broke Down” proved to be.

During the intermission, Cleaves signed CDs, chatted with fans, and took requests. When he and Bright came back out for the second set, most of the crowd remained. If the first set was a carefully orchestrated journey, the second was looser, more raucous. The stories between songs grew more digressive, and he catered to requests, if somewhat reluctantly. After a song of his own that involved a bit of yodeling, he proceeded to cover a song by late great yodeler Don Walser because, after all, Mississippi Studios is “a great room to yodel in.”

Afterward, Cleaves stepped aside for Bright to perform one of his own songs, an instrumental called “Waltz into Morning.” Before he began, Bright recounted the bouts of insomnia he experienced before the birth of his son, which inspired the tune. When Cleaves returned, he continued the theme, finishing the night with a set of tender songs and stories about family. He halfheartedly admitted that cheering people up was “not really my forte.” Still, the plaintive end to a dynamic night of music seemed appropriate for an evening that began with a rousing sing-a-long.

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