Honest Folk brought Canadian singer/songwriter Cat Clyde to Rochester’s Skylark Lounge on Saturday night. By the end of the show, or rather not even halfway through, it was a mutual love fest. The crowd, some familiar some not, were eating up every word and every note, while Clyde, recognizing this, was visibly and verbally blown away by the response. It was her first time to town and the cozy bar was essentially sold out, many singing along and most all exuberantly encouraging her between songs.
She, along with her band including guitar, bass and drums, were touring behind her excellent new release Down Rounder. In a little over an hour, they would play nearly every track from that record, while also sprinkling earlier and even newer material, one played for the first time live even, throughout.
Musically songs patched together sounds from grooving rock, surf, honky tonk, 50’s ballads, indie rock, slow blues, outlaw country, 60’s European psychedelia and even a little Middle Eastern influence.
Thematically the songs were grounded in the natural world. Rain, rivers, trees and other elements found around us were referenced liberally. But it as those actually ungrounded in nature that popped up most frequently: the birds, the moon, the sun and the stars.
“Hawk in the Tree” was about her urge to be a bird. An urge that doesn’t seem all that recent, because in “Not Like You” from her earlier release Hunters Trance she sang, “I may be a bird in a cage, but at least I have my wings.” In “The River” there were “birds moving like a school of fish in the sky.” “The Gloom” expressed her love for the moon, and in “All the Black” she “told the moonlight I was scared.” Even her one cover of the night was of Bonnie Guitar’s country croon “Dark Moon.” And in “Papa Took My Totems” she brought them both together, singing “the moon was a loon.”
Instrumentally the music was carried on Clyde’s incredible voice. Her backing band was excellent at fleshing out her tunes but remained a backing band throughout, there to service and highlight the talents of their front woman. Except when she played a couple on her own mid-set. She could drift from husky and deep to soft and soaring from verse to chorus, or jump octaves instantly and effortlessly from one word to the next. At times she would just be singing syllables in a folk-like scat, using her voice solely as an instrument, and an incredible instrument it was. When “Real Love” opened with her singing a capella, it became apparent she could carry an entire song, maybe the whole set, with just her voice.
Clearly Cat Clyde is a star, or bird or moon, on the rise.
Opener Libby DeCamp had played Rochester before, seven years ago, but her memories were fuzzy. She used her honey sweet voice and resonator guitar to present a set of mostly new songs like “Tigers of Wrath,” inspired by a transcendentalism phase she went through, and “Torch.” Her material was sparse and spacious, each note and each word carrying extra weight. Hopefully this memory sticks a little better for her, Rochester would love a quicker return.
But until then, Rochester has another Honest Folk show to look forward to as the great Marty O’Reilly returns to play an intimate gig at the brand new venue, Essex, on November 11.
Cat Clyde Setlist: So Heavy, Mystic Light, Everywhere I Go, Hawk in the Tree, The Gloom, Real Love, Mama Said, Dark Moon (Bonnie Guitar), New Song, Not Like You, The Man I Loved Blues, Where is My Love, Bird Bone, Papa Took My Totems, Eternity, So Cold, All the Black
Encore: The River, I Feel It
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