While My Guitar Gently Weeps

If the smell of coffee and faint aroma of patchouli in the air weren’t clues enough, the two singer-songwriters each performing alone with their guitars were a dead giveaway that Friday Night Folk at New London’s was in full swing. Aside from the guitars and the old-school amps, however, there was nothing retro about Jim Carpenter or Richard Shindell’s performance last night.

Carpenter, a locally-based singer songwriter who splits his time between recording studios in Niantic and Nashville, and headliner Richard Shindell, a New York native who now calls Buenos Aires home, were both eager to test drive new material from their latest recording projects.    

Carpenter opened the show with songs that told tales culled from his experiences growing up in Chincoteague, Va., that ran the gamut from melancholy to madcap and invited audience participation. It’s perhaps not a big surprise to discover that, in addition to playing with The Hoolios, Carpenter is a born storyteller with a collection of short stories, Delmarva & Albino Heart, and a novella, Black Narrows, both inspired by his hometown in the south.

For Shindell, who grew up on Long Island and moved to his wife’s native country of Argentina with their three children in 2000, this concert was like coming home. Although Shindell often returns to tour stateside-- in March he drove 4,000 miles from Decatur, Georgia to Ann Arbor, Michigan to play 13 dates in 15 days—this three-gig mini-tour was clearly his chance to relax and the show felt less like a concert and more like a private performance at a friend’s house.

 “It’s nice to be back in the United States,” he said, acknowledging a number of friends among the 140 or so people who packed the chapel. “That you still come and see me never ceases to amaze me.”

It’s hardly a big surprise, though. Shindell has six albums to his credit, including “Reunion Hill” (Shanachie Records) which won the Association for Independent Music award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1998 and his 2000 release “Somewhere Near Patterson” (Signature Sounds), which spawned sold out shows nationwide. Eclectic, irreverent, and evocative, his songs turn every day folk into heroes and poke fun at the powerful.

As you might expect, Shindell is a skilled guitarist but his vocal ability is equally impressive and surprisingly nuanced with a range that encompasses sweet high notes and low caresses that build to a powerful bass and back again, often in the same song. Clearly, Shindell’s voice is as important an instrument as his guitar but ask him what he loves best and his answer is unequivocal.     

“I’m obsessed with guitars,” Shindell admits. “I’m constantly buying and selling them. I fall in love with them and am completely promiscuous.”

Indeed, throughout the night Shindell swapped instruments frequently, alternating between a 1962 Epiphone Texan, a 1932 Gibson L-00, a 1965 Danelectro Convertible, and a David Oddy tenor guitar which he picked up in England nine months ago and, having just bought new strings for it, was eager though a bit nervous to play in concert for the first time.

His abiding passion for the guitar was best evidenced in a new song, tentatively titled “Your Guitar” or “This one just flew,” which Shindell wrote and played on a guitar that was previously owned by the late singer, songwriter, actor, and guitarist Stephen Bruton.

Shindell is known for writing songs told from the point of view of his protagonists. In this concert, that included a trucker in “The Kenworth of my Dreams”; a jilted lover in “Are You Happy Now?”;  a motorist stuck in traffic and a nun with a flat tire on 1-95 in “Transit”; and Mary Magdalene in “The Ballad of Mary Magdalene.” One of Shindell’s new songs “Stray Cow Blues,” is even told from the perspective of a cow that never seems to find its way back to the barn at night. “I’m now branching out to other species,” Shindell joked.

With “Your Guitar,” however, he’s taken another anthropomorphic leap and transformed his favorite instrument into a female entity mourning one love as she creeps into the heart of another. Living up to his reputation as a perfectionist, Shindell told the audience that the song “might not be done.” Even so, more than one person in the audience was moved to tears by his not-quite-there-yet version.

“To make an audience fall in love with a guitar,” says Jim Stidfole, founding member of in New London, “I haven’t seen anyone do that in years.”

 “It’s been a total pleasure,” Shindell noted at the end of the two-hour set and, judging from the standing ovation and call for an encore, the feeling was mutual.

The next Friday Night Folk concert, one of a series of four major events the group has planned at All Souls in New London, will be held June 3, featuring performances by John Flynn and John Wort Hannam. For more information call (860) 447-9580 or check out the Web site at www.fridaynightfolk.org.