By Fred Mills

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Avetts.

Several months ago Concord, NC, trio the Avett Brothers—siblings Seth and Scott Avett, plus Bob Crawford, on banjo, guitar and upright bass, respectively—sold out back-to-back December 28 and 29 concerts for the 950-capacity Orange Peel club in a matter of days. And while sellouts are increasingly common for the Avetts, this particular box office coup strikes me as a watershed event for the band.

For one thing, it marked the end of the most successful year yet for the Avetts, who released the Emotionalism album and saw it go on to land on scores of 2007 best-of lists. It also figuratively capped a steady career ascent for the hard-touring, hard-playing combo. Most observers agree that there’s no question the Avetts are on the cusp of being too big a draw to play clubs anymore, and just as R.E.M. found themselves, at the end of 1983 ready to make the leap permanently to larger venues, so too will the Avett Brothers be coming very soon to a large-sized theater or college auditorium near you. You can say you saw ‘em way back when…

Scott Avett tacitly admitted to the foregoing when, in a recent interview with the local daily newspaper the Asheville Citizen-Times, he reflected upon 2007. “I have this funny feeling,” mused Avett, “that as we move forward, we’re going to look back on this past year, and even the years before, and think, ‘Wow, those were the best.’ In a lot of ways, if feels like the end of the first half.”

With change comes inevitable growing pains, however. Still employing the R.E.M. model, we can presume that Avetts shows will eventually feature bigger/slicker productions (all bands talk about the necessity of reaching out to the people in the very back, and one way you do that in large spaces is via stage props and decorations, lighting cues and even some rehearsed choreography from the musicians) and, unfortunately, a loss of intimacy (which tends to breed alienation among some fans who remember hanging out with the band at pizza joints and house parties). And like R.E.M. was in the early ‘80s, the Avetts are a notoriously populist group so it will be interesting to see how they handle those growing pains. For now, though, I’ll put down my Nostradamus spyglass and focus upon the second night of those two Orange Peel gigs.

***

A brief but rousing 4-song set from Paleface & Mo (aka Avetts’ close pal Paleface on guitar and Monica Samalot on drums) opened the show, and the description on Paleface’s MySpace page is pretty accurate: “Tom Waits, Hank Williams and the Beatles in a blender.” Langhorne Slim was next, a three piece featuring Slim on vocals and acoustic guitar plus upright bassist Paul Defiglia and drummer Malachi DeLorenzo. They, too, were the perfect openers for the Avetts: a little bit of folk, a twinge of country-rock, a hefty portion of Dylanesque talking blues, and a good chunk of punk-spawned reckless ‘tude. Dapper in a buttoned-up vest and a Swiss yodeler’s hat and sounding like a cross between Loudon Wainwright III and Cat Stevens as interpreted by the Violent Femmes, he played most of 2006’s Brian Deck-produced Engine EP (including his modest radio hit “Restless”) and choice tracks from 2005’s When the Sun’s Gone Down. Near the end of the set Seth Avett came out to sing a duet, “Sweet Olive Tree,” with Slim and elicited a huge roar of approval from the crowd, but by that point they’d already been won over anyway.

Now, a lot of bands, mindful of giving every audience every night the proverbial “quality entertainment experience,” prefer working from a relatively static setlist. The Avett Brothers, on the other hand, don’t work from setlists; they trust their instincts to lead them, and that in turn trust that they’ll have a pretty good chance of hitting the audience’s G-spot. In fact, the band only repeated four tunes from the Friday night show, and those were all popular favorites from Emotionalism—opening track “Die Die Die,” “Paranoia in Bb Major,” “Pretty Girl From Chile” and “Go to Sleep.” In truth, this particular audience was so deep in the Avetts’ pockets from the get-go that the band could have pulled up chairs, recited Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and still would’ve brought the house down.

Are the Avetts bluegrass? Country-folk? Twang-punk? Some unholy hybrid of ‘em all? Best to simply call it rock ‘n’ roll before you get a headache pondering the matter. The entire concert was a stomping, hooting, raveup hoedown—at times you could feel the wooden floor beneath your feet actually flexing. And Scott, Seth and Crawford responded in kind, a nonstop blur of motion all night. Both the brothers have grown their beards out to Garth Hudson length again, giving them a kind of crazed mountain-man look as they twirled, dipped, jumped on monitors, and crooned/bellowed into the mics. Interestingly, Seth took more of the lead vocals than Scott for this show. Scott appeared to be suffering from a sore throat and his voice was extremely hoarse. No doubt he blew it out the night before, although when he did take the lead he didn’t hold back. And those honeyed sibling harmonies remain a thing of wonder; where early on they were quirkysexycool and with a meandering quality, now they are just plain sexy and cool. These days Crawford is going for a significantly less hirsute look than Seth and Scott, but don’t confuse his banker’s looks with a conservative approach to music making. The dude ain’t nobody’s straight man. He twirled his bass like a giant spinning top, slapping notes on it with each rotation (eat your heart out, Lee Rocker), and in general wielded his axe with such percussive force that you never noticed the absence of a drummer in the lineup.

The Avetts augmented their sound with cellist Joe Kwon on a number of songs (he also played on Emotionalism), bringing an intriguing additional set of textures and sonic hues to their stage show. And just in case you ever wondered what the Avetts would sound like with a drummer, prior to the encores Paleface (on guitar) and first Malachi DeLorenzo then Mo (on drums) joined the band onstage as well. For the encores the Avetts turned the Orange Peel into a gospel-rocking tent revival with “Offering” (a deep-vault number from 2003’s relatively obscure A Carolina Jubilee followed by “Salvation Song” (from 2004’s Mignonette, the album that “broke” the band outside of their regional audience). Closing things out was a totally unexpected cover—“On The Road Again,” which was just sloppy enough (in a good way) to make you think they could have literally just worked it up at soundcheck that afternoon, yet so on the money both musically and thematically that you could also imagine they’d been stockpiling it for this precise moment.

Incidentally, the evening was a bit of a family outing for the Avetts as well. Concord is just down the mountain a couple of hours from Asheville, and the band members have a lot of friends and relatives in the region. Taking in the band from the sidestage area were several mom and grandmother types plus some young pre-teens staying up wayyyy past their bedtime, and they were all clearly enjoying the VIP treatment. Judging by the ecstatic movements and gestures of those kids, they were ready to R.O.C.K., too. I don’t mean mime to some electronic rock band game, either.

Final thought: On practically every song the audience was singing back the words to the band. Loudly, and enthusiastically. (Okay, drunkenly, too.) Starched commentators and pointy-headed pundits might rightly wonder how did this unassuming three-piece outfit from nowheresville in the middle of the Tarheel State happen in such an under the radar fashion without the record industry noticing.

But every now and then a bonafide grassroots phenomenon like the Avett Brothers does happen. Remember that little band called R.E.M.? It’s never an abrupt groundswell; behind so-called overnight success stories is a lot of hard work and nonstop touring, the artist winning over fans one venue, one tour, one record at a time. And in that winning-over process, you can’t deny the sincerity factor either: this is a group that believes in itself, a group that sings about real-life experiences in a plain-spoken yet emotionally poetic way while kicking out some serious jams. True music fans, who when you really get down to it can usually smell bullshit a mile away no matter how many Daughtrys the music biz heats up in the corporate microwave, simply respond to the Avetts on an intuitive, possibly even primal level.

And there’s nothing so thrilling as to be on hand when that electric charge of the band-audience transfer occurs. You can see it on the faces, and you can feel it as the music rattles your innards. It’s real.

Fuck the pundits, then. This is one of the realest bands to emerge in the last decade.

***

Afterwards, while stage and club personnel cleared out gear and cleaned up the beer cup-strewn floor, the photographer and I talked some with Avetts manager (and Ramseur Records owner) Dolph Ramseur. He’d already sent the band back to their tourbus, he said, so they wouldn’t do further damage to their throats by yakking with fans late into the night; the evening after next they would be doing a New Year’s Eve concert in Charlotte—long ago sold out, natch—and they could definitely use a couple of day’s rest leading up to it.

I can believe that, given this band’s estimable work ethic and obvious commitment to delivering 110% for their audiences each night. With that in mind, I predict that the Avett Brothers will be appearing on the cover of every major entertainment magazine within two years—sooner than that, most likely. If they don’t, I’ll eat this review.

SETLIST:

1 - The Weight of Lies
2 - Denouncing November Blue
3 - Signs
4 - Please Pardon Yourself
5 - I Killed Sally's Lover
6 - Living of Love
7 - Greensboro Woman
8 - Walkin' For You
9 - Pretty Girl From Chile (complete)
10 - When I Drink
11 - If It's the Beaches
12 - Matrimony
13 - Salina
14 - Die, Die, Die
15 - Paranoia in Bb Major
16 - Colorshow (w/ Paleface and Malachi DeLorenzo)
17 - Go To Sleep (w/ Paleface and Mo)
(encores)
18 - Offering
19 - Salvation Song
20 - On the Road Again (w/ Paleface and Mo)

[Photo Credit: Allie Goolrick]