Slaid Cleaves

Thu. Jun 21, 2012 at 8:00pm EDT
21 and Over
Price: $18.00
21 and Over
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Price: $18.00
21 and Over
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Slaid Cleaves
When Slaid Cleaves moved from Portland, Maine, to Austin, Texas, at the tail end of 1991, he landed on South Lamar Boulevard, a few blocks from the legendarily seedy Horseshoe Lounge. But as he points out on his new live album, "It was many years of drivin' by before I worked up the courage to come in through the door."

Maybe his New Englander's reserve got the better of him; one thing most Texans do not fear is walking into a bar. But curiosity and, no doubt, the lure of stories contained within eventually won out, and in 2000, Slaid wound up releasing "Horseshoe Lounge," an ode to the 46-year-old beer joint, on his breakout CD Broke Down. A turning point in his career, Broke Down transformed Cleaves from feckless Austin singer/songwriter, playing open mics and running sound at the legendary Cactus Cafe to Americana chart-topping, New York Times-lauded ("One of the finest songwriters from Texas") national touring artist. Oh, yeah, and the 2001 Austin Music Awards named the title track, written with childhood pal Rod Picott, Best Song of the Year.

It had been a rough eight years in Austin for Cleaves, having left the small pond of Portland, Maine, where he'd busked and played bars and started the alt-country (before the term existed) Moxie Men, for the allure of milder winters, a fledgling South by Southwest, and a desire to hone his skills amongst the likes of Joe Ely and Lucinda Williams. But with the Americana radio success of Broke Down and subsequent tireless touring of the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands, Cleaves made good use of the 2000s, connecting to audiences and developing a reputation for sincere and entertaining shows featuring his intimate songs presented with a variety of top-notch instrumental accompanists.

And now, 20 years after his Southwest migration, he's releasing his first live album — a double disc, no less, titled Sorrow & Smoke: Live at the Horseshoe Lounge, on Music Road Records.

When he first contemplated a live album, Slaid turned to the massive collection of performance recordings he's acquired during his decades as a wandering troubadour, traveling from stage to stage and entrancing audiences with tales of lost souls. But he couldn't bring himself to sort through it all, and decided to do fresh versions.

"I thought, 'How can I make a live record special?'" Slaid explains. 'Well, it has to be in a special place.'" It makes perfect sense; so many of his songs reference watering holes anyway. Sorrow & Smoke fully conveys the spirit of an intimate yet jovial crowd: Clinking beer bottles. Laughter. Sing-alongs. Good-natured heckling. "The give and take, this sort of conversation I have with the audience," he says. And of course, the self-deprecating humor that leavens the singer's stories of people struggling to make sense of their lives.

"That's a big part of the show and I wanted to capture that as much as possible," he says, adding, "I also wanted to give an honest depiction of what my show is like these days."

Unlike his beautifully realized, Gurf Morlix-produced studio albums, Sorrow & Smoke is a more stripped-down, mostly acoustic affair. South Texas Walk of Fame guitarist Michael O'Connor twangs acoustic lead guitar with Slaid at "the Shoe" while accordionist/trumpeter/harmonica player and all-around character Oliver Steck keeps the crowd on their toes. (Both O'Connor and Steck have ridden many a mile in the van with Slaid over the years.) The plan was for a single disc, but there was so much good material, they decided to pack it with Slaid's most-requested tunes and "greatest hits" — the ones he likes to joke carried him from "total obscurity" to "relative obscurity."
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Rex Theater 1602 E Carson St
Pittsburgh, PA 15203