Erin McKeown at The Independent
I got the chance to see Erin McKeown and Kris Delmhorst tonight at The Independent in San Francisco. I’d seen Erin before, but it was maybe 3 or 4 years ago, when she was opening for Peter Mulvey at The Palms in Davis. She was witty, charming, and played well off of Peter. But even with the bluesy electric guitar, she was definitely doing the folky singer/songwriter thing.
Well, that didn’t quite prepare me for tonight. The girl’s five feet of rock star now. And I mean that in a good way.
Having a Neil Cleary on drums and the ubiquitous Julie Wolf on keyboards certainly helped fill out the sound. And The Independent isn’t exactly The Palms. But the biggest difference is Erin’s guitar work. She’s playing with all sorts of energy and confidence and aggressively attacking songs in a way that has left the f-word in the dust. It was a night of power pop, and it was truly enjoyable.
I didn’t have a copy of McKeown’s latest album, We Will Become Like Birds (iTunes), until I bought it at the show tonight. So I wasn’t familiar enough with the newer material to bother trying to keep a setlist. But the highlights were when Kris Delmhorst added her remarkable voice to the mix for a few songs, most notably “Air,” which closed the concert. For the encore, all four were back for the tear-up-the-floor-bring-the-house-down two-step revival of “La Petite Mort.”