LIVE JOURNAL 10/20: Baddy’s Gold, Will Orchard @ Vera Project

Whether it’s my new job, new friends or simply the guiding hand of fate, I’m starting to find myself at the Vera Project more and more. There are certainly worse places to be on a typical Seattle evening. Considering the city’s tempestuous history with all-ages spaces, you have to respect the venue for providing such a rare opportunity not just for local artists but touring acts as well. I love this fucking venue.

That being said, I didn’t plan to be there on a Wednesday night after a full shift, but it worked out because I got to see two really awesome acts that I had no idea existed. Check it out!

All thoughts are mine; all experiences are mine. If you don’t like it, you can go [have a little cup of cider that you zapped in the microwave just enough so it burns the tip of your tongue.]

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BADDY’S GOLD

This was the act that got me out here. The lead singer stopped by work and asked if anyone wanted to come watch, and given that their show was less than a minute’s worth of footsteps away, I had literally no excuse.

Baddy’s Gold (at least that night) were three stringed instrument wielders sitting in comfy chairs positioned behind a gorgeous condenser microphone, which allowed the nuances of their harmonies to come through. Kate Van Petten, perched behind a classical guitar, helmed the trio with a beautifully understated voice; her compatriots Connor Colbert (on banjo) and Elena Denny (on cello) added a rich depth to her gentle, folk-based tunes.

They had me from the very first song. I didn’t catch its name, but it unfurled like firewood smoke across a twilit field, the emergence of perfectly balanced three-part harmonies simply stunning. Many of their songs forged similarly winding paths, while others, especially near the end of the set, were content to carry one or two solid ideas to their emotional conclusions. I distinctly recall one song where each member took on a distinct verse before coming in together on the chorus, very much like a traditional folk song. And of course, there were the voices themselves: sweet like honey, rippling like meadow grass, each flowed warm and rich in a way that captured the antiquity of such a style of folk.

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WILL ORCHARD

Hailing from Boston by way of Rhode Island, Will Orchard sat alone on stage after having traveled over three thousand miles in a car to play his own version of winding, snapshot folk. Where Baddy’s Gold carved an impression through voice, Orchard did so through nimble fingerpicking and fretwork. Using his ring finger and pinky to pluck the higher-pitched strings, he quickly filled the space with dense layers of arpeggiated open chords played with the speed of a rapid river. His own voice, raised and thin like the tip of a redwood, painted scenes saturated with the foggy quality of memory.

His guitar playing, and his itinerant narratives, couldn’t help but recall Joni Mitchell and her school of songwriting. His words could have been metaphorical, but more often than not I simply wanted to sink into the images they formed: crisp winds, patchwork fields, chiming sounds, shrouded mountains, bears gorging on honey, all mixed with the quotidian gathering of friends and strangers. It all flowed out of Orchard similar to the way he’s managed to write and record hundreds of songs over the last seven years, as if he were a conduit for some strange force: nature, maybe. Though the crowd wasn’t huge, its members (including me) were universally captivated by it all.