Jose Gonzalez: Still Intimate and Haunting

Panic set in immediately. I waited to get Jose Gonzalez tickets. By the morning of the show, the Mercy Lounge sold out. Nancy had never seen him and eagerly wanted to go. The tickets had been on my to-do list for weeks and I failed to buy them before leaving for Canada.

Fortunately, the old concertgoer adage – “There are always tickets” – proved correct. My first plunge into Stubhub did not gouge deeply – secondary market prices were just $30, a reasonable price for an artist as good as Gonzalez. Panic vanished the moment I printed the tickets.

From his first banter, Ryley Walker appeared to be related to Frito Pendejo from Idiocracy (Seriously, I thought he might complain that playing this show interrupted his viewing of “Ow! My Balls”). He became all business when playing his Martin. Walker sported a surprisingly soulful voice that could tackle a Van Morrison cover and show shades of Jim Morrison.

While Walker played alone, the main act was now a foursome. My first Jose Gonzalez experience came at the Wexner Center’s Performance Space, a tiny room where only Gonzalez and his guitar took the stage. At Bonnaroo 2008, a conga drummer supplemented his picking and strumming.

Now Gonzalez had three musicians with him – a second guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. The additions subtracted nothing from the intimacy of the music. They supplemented him well. When a song required only Gonzalez, the band went silent. They could have pulled off Line of Fire by Junip (Gonzalez’s other gig) but he went solo, which worked well to differentiate the song from Junip’s take.

 On the surface, Gonzalez’s music follows a simple template. But little is actually simple. His finger-picking forms the musical backbone, and the other pieces come in as needed. The set spanned his whole career, with highlights of Veneer and In Our Nature breaking up tunes from Vestiges and Claws, his latest record.

The always haunting Crosses is the song that won me over in 2006 and still gives me a chill when Gonzalez launches into that incisive opening riff. Gonzalez ended the show energetically with a three-song encore capped by Down the Line.

He exceeded the 90-minute mark, covering a wide range of songs. Since his songs fall on the shorter side, the show length felt perfect. As on his albums, Gonzalez never overstays his welcome, always leaving a listener hungry for more songs.