BY ANTHONY D’AMATO

It was not easy to see the Avett Brothers Wednesday night in New York. The concert—part of the free, summer-long River-to-River Festival—was supposed to be held outdoors in Rockefeller Park, but it was moved inside to nearby Stuyvesant High School due to ominous skies. The school’s auditorium had seating for 300, and including standing room, was meant to handle only up to 900. By the time the Avetts hit the stage, though, there were nearly 1500 people in the auditorium and concert promoters had to turn away scores of fans at the door.

What a show they missed. The Avetts were on fire from the very start, and the crowd (mostly die-hard fans who had been waiting in line hours to get in) let out their day’s worth of pent-up energy in the form of near-deafening cheers and jubilant dancing. Notoriously genre-confounding, the band turned their rather unassuming line-up (acoustic guitar, banjo, upright bass, and cello) into an earth-shattering powerhouse, rewarding the faithful by stomping, screaming, jumping, and dancing their way through a blend of folk/punk/rock/bluegrass that spanned their discography.

They hit the stage with a slow tune, “Shame,” letting it drift out over the crowd like a breeze preceding the tornado that was “Die Die Die” from their most recent album, Emotionalism. They beat their instruments like nobody’s business; strings broke left and right during the uptempo tunes, and Scott Avett repeatedly had to switch banjos mid-song because of the damage he’d wrought. He kept a kick drum by his feet (his brother Seth had a hi-hat) for bare-bones percussion on songs like the brilliant “Paranoia in Bb Major,” and he seemed destined to bust right through it all night the way he jumped on the foot-pedal.

If the band were only about brute force, though, their shows would get old quick. The magic of this group lies in the shift from the foaming-at-the-mouth intensity of a song like “Wanted Man” to the wistful introspection of “When I Drink.” It’s sometimes easy to lose yourself in the rip-roaring fervor and forget that this is a band capable of performing some achingly beautiful music. As raucous as the crowd was for the loud songs, absolute attentive silence ruled the aisles during the more tender tunes, and Seth Avett would often step away from his microphone to sing in stunning harmony with his brother, offering up his voice to the natural acoustics of the room.

Part of the excitement of this gig might have stemmed from the fact that the band had just a few days earlier signed a deal with American Recordings, an imprint of Columbia. They shared the news with fans on their website via an open letter that also announced plans for a new album to be produced by industry heavy-hitter Rick Rubin. For a band whose popularity has grown by astonishing leaps and bounds in the past year, news of an upcoming major label debut made it quite clear that this was the last time anyone would be seeing the Avett Brothers perform in a high school auditorium.

The band offered a sneak peek of what they’ve been working on for the new record with “Tin Man,” a real rocker that found Scott behind a full drum kit, and “Laundry Room,” a softer one that drew a laugh from the line “tip-toe across the dance floor,” as the crowd had moments earlier been pushed back by security after they rushed the stage to dance. “It can be a little scary playing the new ones,” Seth told the crowd in between songs, relieved at the overwhelmingly positive response. “It can be scary playing all of them,” his brother added with a laugh.

Another new, though not unfamiliar, track was “Murdered in the City,” the first single off of “The Second Gleam,” the band’s new EP and final release for indie label Ramseur Records. Like many of their best songs, “Murdered in the City” contemplates the big ones: love, death, honor, doubt, and family. “Always remember there was nothing worth sharing/Like the love that let us share our name,” concludes the song. If I hadn’t seen it, I’m not sure I would have believed it, but these “folk” musicians from rural North Carolina had a crowd of what looked like your typical twenty-something, New York City, too-cool-to-care, urban hipsters worked into a night-long frenzy over familial love and personal integrity. It was nearly impossible to hear the brothers repeat the song’s final line over all the cheering from the audience.

At the end of the night when the Avetts returned to the stage for an encore, the crowd reached an ear-piercing volume, and while hyperbole is the enemy of any levelheaded concert review, I would be amiss to describe the atmosphere as anything but euphoric. It was a shame that so many people had to be turned away at the door (I would have been one of them were it not for the generosity of a complete stranger on a cigarette break), but those who made it in were treated to something truly special. The Avett Brothers may well be headlining a sold-out Town Hall next time they come through New York City, but I doubt anyone will forget the night they headlined Stuyvesant High.

[Photo Credits: Mike/Crackerfarm]