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Set
Free
By David Greenberger
Geoff Muldaur
Berkshire
Museum, Pittsfield, Mass., March 7
After a 17-year absence from regular recording and performing,
Geoff Muldaur has spent the past five years doing both with
gusto, verve and consummate style. He first appeared on the
scene in the early ’60s as part of the then-burgeoning roots-folk-blues
scene, making his mark as a member of the Jim Kweskin Jug
Band (he did remark at the start of his show, “Pretty soon
all the people that saw the Jug Band will be dead, and then
we can move forward”). A pair of justly lauded albums with
then-wife Maria Muldaur followed, before he embarked on a
solo career over the course of the ’70s.
Last Friday’s show at the Berkshire Museum revealed Muldaur
to be at the peak of his ever-expanding and subtly understated
powers. Accompanying himself on guitar, he played with the
essential foundation of any solo performer. However, his approach
to the instrument is tempered by his keen ear as an arranger.
Over the decades, he’s worked with bands of various sizes,
scoring for horns and whatever was needed to give a particular
song its necessary character. Those skills have come to fully
inform the structuring of his playing without a band.
Playing two 45-minute sets, Muldaur drew from his two most
recent releases and a wide range of songs that reflect his
lifetime in music. His introductions mixed a musicologist’s
depth with personal anecdotes: smoking pot with Mississippi
John Hurt, driving cross-country with Bobby Charles, discovering
a 78 by Blind Willie Johnson as a teenager. He also played
material by Sleepy John Estes, Henry Thomas and Vera Hall,
as well as his own “Got to Find Blind Lemon,” with Part 1
making its appearance in the first set and Part 2 as the encore.
Throughout the night, Muldaur’s voice was a marvel, stepping
up into falsetto with the casual ease of turning a page in
a book. He could move from a raspy growl to a whisper like
flipping a light switch. He was fully in the moment with each
song.
It was an emotionally riveting show, not because he was re-creating
the works of other eras, but because he’d made these sturdy
compositions his own, taking them where he needed them
to go. Muldaur is currently in the midst of recording music
by Bix Beiderbecke for the Deutsche Gramophone label (a fact
that still amazes him), with this short weekend tour being
a bit of a breather for him. He explained that the only time
he’s truly relaxed is when he’s performing on stage—every
logistical detail of the real world disappears, and he is
set free by song, one man and a guitar weightlessly filling
the room.
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