Xavier Rudd + Mishka - Paradise Rock Club (Boston, MA; Jan. 30, 2008)

Wednesday night’s show at the Paradise featuring Mishka and Xavier Rudd was a welcomed escape from the reality of a long Boston winter.  With infectious melodies, soulful singing and cheap beer replacing dirty, stale snow, slightly above freezing temperatures and hours of studying, I was quite content standing in the back of the jam-packed club enjoying the music.

Mishka started things off around 8 to a crowd that surprisingly almost filled the club.  It was a nice representation of the college town that is Boston, with the diversity provided by a guy wearing an Irish clover stitched into his yarmulka, and the dance moves provided by free-spirited, bearded hippies.

Mishka’s set-up on stage was simple: him and an acoustic guitar.  As he carefully strummed chords and sang lazily drifting melodies with his eyes closed, one could tell there was more to the performer than his austere appearance or straightforward song arrangements would suggest.  For the two mesmerized girls next to me cackling away about how much they loved him, Mishka’s good looks and gravelly Marley-esque voice struck them as the x-factors in his performance.  But, for other individuals in the crowd locked into his words and slow, steady reggae grooves, it was Mishka’s bare-bone approach and positive energy that made him most captivating.

Raised on a boat in Bermuda, Mishka’s devotion to the Rasta culture permeated his performance in both direct and indirect ways.  His lyrics centered on his distrust of authority, hatred of corruption, and faith in love and the world’s people, messages that may have unfortunately gotten lost in the crowd of pre-gaming partiers.  His voice was calm at times, and soared at others, reflecting his intense emotional attachment to his songs.  The culmination of these factors allowed Mishka’s performance to transcend the “surf rock” label.  His performance, although simple and relaxing, possessed something more than the breezy shallowness of Beach Boy rock, and thus made for an enjoyable preface to Rudd’s more dynamic sound. 

Xavier Rudd’s complex set-up on stage may have drastically contrasted Mishka’s one guitar, but in many respects Rudd’s performance shared the same, indescribable spirit that flowed through Mishka’s performance.  Rudd is a multi-instrumentalist to say the least.  On Wednesday, he played drums, harmonica, both six-string and twelve-string acoustic guitars, a four-string acoustic bass, various Weissenborn-style lap slide guitars, and most unique of all, the didgeridoo, called the Yidaki in Australia, Rudd’s native country.  More impressively, Rudd played a number of these instruments at the same time, as he often played one of the guitars while blowing on the didgeridoos or the harmonica, stomping a drum with one foot, and working his effects pedals with the other foot.  Rudd accomplishes all this from a high stool with the didgeridoos propped in front of him, and a number of drums, symbols, bells and noisemakers surrounding him.  Rounding out Rudd’s set-up was another drummer, Dave (couldn’t catch his last name) stationed behind a more traditional drum kit.

Rudd’s set began ominously, as Dave pounded an erratic drumbeat to the droning of the didgeridoos and the flashing of a surreal movie on the back wall.  When Rudd finally came out on stage, he was handed a 12-string and tore through “G.B.A.”, a song off of his first official American release Food in the Belly.

From that moment on, Rudd’s connection with the crowd was unbreakable as he unleashed a full-textured, organic sound that traversed musical styles as diverse as Rudd’s instrumentation.  Rudd began with a series of songs driven by heavily distorted guitar riffs and thumping drum beats that merged to form some kind of tribal hard-rock, providing a powerful contrast to Rudd’s mellow voice, which at times sounded remarkably similar to Paul Simon’s.  Interspersed with extended didgeridoo jams that elevated the crowd, Rudd’s set continued with free-flowing, reggae songs like “Twist” and “Come Let Go” that certainly had the crowd swaying to the music.  At various times during the show, Dave would leave his bandmate on stage to play some of his softer songs, like “Messages” and “Land Rights”.  Even when the sound was reduced to just Rudd, a Weissenborn and a harmonica, the musician still maintained the energy, shifting the audience’s attention to his poignant lyrics set to the backdrop of the whining notes of his lap guitar.  Rudd’s set changed form once again in the encore when he finally emerged from his pod of instruments to stand in front of the audience and deliver the folksy “Energy Song” alongside a friend playing banjo.  “Energy Song” captured Rudd’s ability to command the crowd, bringing the volume down to near silence, only to raise it back up with his rolling fingerpicking and lifting vocals.  Rudd finished the night back behind the driving force of the didgeridoos with Mishka called back on stage to provide vocals and rhythm guitar, and even slipping in portions of “Good Lovin’” (made famous by the Young Rascals in 1966).

Besides his unique instrumentation and talent as a songwriter, Rudd stands out as a performer because of his presence on stage.  Constantly smiling and exchanging laughs with his drummer, Rudd seemed to enjoy the response he got from the crowd as much as the crowd enjoyed what Rudd was sending their way, a connection that led Rudd to thank the audience for its “good energy” half way through the set.  After experiencing the simple soulfulness of Mishka and dynamic power of Rudd, I’m sure that the audience felt a similar sense of gratitude, taking some of that good energy with them and making the Boston winter a little more bearable. 

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