Folk of mood – newspaper

Vance Gilbert

Jazz’s cabaret

4 Orange St.

New Haven

February 8, 2025

Vance Gilbert spoke of John Naine before a full house in the jazz cabaret on Saturday night when he saw the flashing lights outside of Orange Street.

“The black man who plays folk music,” he reports, descending his voice and leaning into the microphone. – Over. … Let’s surround the place. “

Then, in the audience, he stood up and returned to his story: about how John Naine’s first solo album blew him up. Especially the song “Hello there”.

His black friends, he said, did not have this record. (They had the “Divine Miss M.” by Beth Midler “The record speaks to him.

“It is strange that a child who grew up in films and then was a homeless for four years in college, will eventually try to sound like a white guitar man who was a postman in Chicago,” Gilbert recalled. “He made magic with so simple texts and simple chords.”

Gilbert developed his own sound. He spent three decades on the tour of the country and recorded albums in the vein of the singer for songs.

The vein that the late Prine would have recognized if it were in the house on Saturday night of Jazz. Gilbert talks about how, when the day the Prine died of Covid, Gilbert posted on Facebook a new song that he wrote directly inspired by the Prine approach.

Then he played it for the crowd of jazz, choosing a finger progression of the I-IV-V chord with alternating bass that could jump from this album he found during the day. The song is called “simple things”.

Last day of winter

First day of spring

Livin ‘not easy

Like a broken kite

It wasn’t today

See what it brings tomorrow

I try to make life

Of simple things

Click on Leigh Busby’s video at the top of the story to watch Gilbert perform the song that appears on his album The mother of troubleS