BY ROXANA HADADI / PHOTOS BY ADAM FRIED

Exactly what is it about William Elliott Whitmore that allows the folk/blues singer/songwriter with a profoundly punk mentality to steal shows with such ease? Is it his unwavering charm, as seen in his polite chit-chat with bemused members of the audience's front row? Is it his propensity to drink large amounts of alcohol in absurdly brief amounts of time? Or is it simply his unfettered, unbelievable talent?

We're going to go with all three.

Whitmore opened for City and Colour, the side project of Alexisonfire's singer and guitarist Dallas Green, who put on a bearable performance. Though Green's very emo, very escapist brand of sad rock isn't exactly our cup of tea, the shockingly large crowd of underage, X-marked hands (some of whom kept calling fellow under-21ers to brag about their concert status during the show) definitely liked the 13-song set, two-song encore (which included crowd favorites "Forgive Me" and the Alexisonfire cover "Boiled Frogs)," and kept up a steady worshipping silence/screaming craze throughout.

But it was Whitmore who got things off on the right start; despite showing up 30 minutes later than the time the Black Cat's website listed, the singer/songwriter's humble stage presence and propensity for crowd chatter more than made up for it. Clad in a brown tweed suit and his customary fedora, clutching a bottle of Red Stripe and perching on a stool with his name written on it in silver Sharpie, Whitmore grabbed his banjo (his instrument of choice) and launched right into his 11-song set, inviting "all you good people" to gather round and listen as he unwound his tales of morality, hope and despair.

After his first song, Whitmore exchanged pleasantries with the audience's front row (most of whom had just been murmuring amongst themselves about how they didn't know who he was, but were cordial all the same), and got right into "From the Cell Door to the Gallows," from 2003's Hymn for the Hopeless. "Well, I heard six shots ring out in succession/ And it broke the night air like a china plate/ And in my knife blade I saw my own reflection/ And the devil was at the front gate," Whitmore sang, eyes tightly shut as he unraveled another one of his deceptively complex yarns of life and death.

Throughout the set, Whitmore redefined the appeal of acoustic, as he relied only on a banjo and acoustic guitar (to great result, as they allowed his phenomenally engaging singing voice to always be on display) and played with a full band just once, when he invited City and Colour (whom he described as "funny, affable, congenial" while he spoke of the time they spent backstage watching kung-fu films, which caused Whitmore to be "pumped up! That's some fucked-up shit") onstage for a full-band rendition of "One Man's Shame." The song, which is normally a Whitmore-fan favorite for its hum-along melody and bleak lyrics ("One man's story is another man's shame/ I ain't bound for glory, I'm bound for flames/ Take to the woods, boy, and cover up your tracks/ Go away, child, and don't look back"), transformed into a jazzy, almost upbeat number with the addition of electric instruments, and lost nearly all of its depressing-as-fuck impact as a result - kind of a downgrade.

Though the collaboration was interesting on the ears (if a little traitorous to the original version), Whitmore is best alone - and the rest of his set, which included staples "Diggin' My Grave" (which Whitmore described as a song "about killing yourself very slowly, over years and years" but urged the audience not to "mistake reflection for glorification"), "Pine Box" (which, about a lost love, includes the sympathy-inducing lyrics, "It would prove to be true my whole life through/ That nothing good would last"), "Lift My Jug (Song for Hub Cale)" (a song Whitmore named after and wrote about a hobo, and "the freest man," he said he has ever known) and "Sometimes Our Dreams Float Like Anchors" (which includes some of the most insightful lyrics Whitmore has ever written, in "And sometimes our dreams, they float like anchors/ In hopeless waters, oh way down deep/ Sometimes it seems that all that matters/ Most are all the things that you can't keep") reflected that.

Oh, and he also drank a full glass of Guinness (bought by a friend Whitmore had been looking for all night) and another one of whiskey (bought by a member of the 9:30 Club, another Washington club's, door staff, no less) in that time, too.

But the best surprise of the night came when Whitmore debuted two new songs off his upcoming album, Animals in the Dark. The first, "Hell or High Water," was an upbeat little ditty about how Whitmore would be home, regardless of anything out of Dante's Inferno or some crappy weather, but it was the second track, "Old Devils," that demonstrated the depths of Whitmore's musical prowess. "Living here in D.C., you should definitely understand this one," Whitmore said of the snarlingly furious song that calls out "politicians, charlatans and crooked cops" for their incessant dishonesty and corruption. If all of Animals in the Dark is like this, we can't wait for Feb. 17 - or for the next time Whitmore goes on tour.