There’s nothing like experience to harden even the most lighthearted, and a stage provides the best place to expunge tragedies and triumphs — to shine an unforgiving light on their inevitable effects. , one of indie/country/rock’s paradoxes who seems to get more than his share of press concerning his lack of stardom — usually based on a history with his dad, Bobby Bare Sr., and their 1973 Grammy nomination — was the picture of these ravages in his show at the on Wednesday night, where he played with a band made up mostly of members of Portland “supergroup” Blue Giant.
Bare’s been through Denver a number of times in the last six or so years, usually with his band the Young Criminal Starvation League. He consistently entertains full houses with a show bursting with energy, smiles and laughs and filled with hopelessly catchy tunes and brilliant lyricism. While the lyricism and catchy tunes haven’t changed, Wednesday nightap performance was much heavier, more morose. He used to play barefoot, howling impossibly quaint stories that inspired giggles more than sympathy from behind an unwieldy mop of sweaty curls, out of a mouth always bent from recent laughter.
But on Wednesday he wore a dark blue jacket and slacks, a white cowboy hat and shoes. His hair was still a wild mass with a mind of its own — itap gained even more independence over the years — but it wrapped a lined face adorned with sensible glasses. And his mouth inspired a visage of Joe Cocker crooning amidst considerable pain, rather than ebullience.
He looked and performed more like a later-in-life Roky Erickson than the wonderful and careless Bobby Bare Jr. that has been here before.
His voice still ran the gamut from a higher-end Aaron Neville to a more guttural Frank Black, and his new compositions were still impossibly catchy. The stories in his songs, though, moved from minor heartbreak and tongue-in-cheek social commentary to contemplative, often bitter tales. And maybe for good cause, since recent years have seen divorce, the near loss of a child and nearly his mother — the subject of the title song from his latest album, “A Storm — A Tree — My Mother’s Head.”
He led his accompanying band — built, by the way, around the fantastically talented husband-wife duo of Kevin and Anita Robinson on keys and guitar, respectively — through an hour of new and old material after starting on stage solo. His first minutes were filled with a lamenting version of “Sad Smile,” which he sang almost to himself while playing a well-worn guitar. The set lightened somewhat as they progressed through songs like “I’ll Be Around,” “Your Goat Is On Fire,” “Uh-Wuh-Oh” — which featured the signature “pop” sounds Bare makes into the mic at curious points in the song — and a particularly rocked-up version of the usually charming “Valentine.” While it was a very different Bobby Bare Jr. set, it was still a Bobby Bare Jr. set — thankfully.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
