At church with Lee Ranaldo

It’s easy to grow suspicious of a show in a new venue. When news reached Nancy and I about former Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo performing in a Nashville church, we had no idea what to expect. Even finding tickets proved difficult at first, but Nancy acquired them.

The Anchor Fellowship seemed an unlikely spot for Ranaldo, best known for his critical role in Sonic Youth’s noisy palette and alternative tunings. But the small church had a row of acoustic guitars along the dais, and Ranaldo and his younger tour-mates – Meg Baird and Steven Gunn - would eventually use them all. They handled their own gear and had a single crew member to help when Ranaldo broke some strings.

The church’s acoustics well-suited to the (mostly) unplugged sets. The buzz of alternate tunings rang heavily on this night. The Nashville show capped two weeks of acoustic shows through the Southeast, with Ranaldo road-testing new material. As for the venue, Anchor Fellowship acquitted itself well. Along with the good acoustics, the church had seating for maybe 100 people and a small serving area for a temporary bar.

Despite a long drive back to New York City hanging over them, none of the musicians phoned in the last night of their tour.

Meg Baird’s vocal comparisons to the late Sandy Denny were apt. Sonorous and emotional, she accompanied herself on guitar, fingerpicking nimbly through a set of dirge-like folk numbers.

The middle spot on the bill belonged to Steve Gunn, formerly with Kurt Vile’s band and an established solo artist in his own right. Some of Gunn’s lyrics felt a little forced. Having never heard him before, what initially felt forced gradually felt more organic as we grew accustomed to his style.

Gunn skillfully navigated the fretboard, going on several extended, intricate runs. He finished with a song about his family’s longtime summer retreat on the Jersey Shore, and mentioned that name-checking the place gave him instant credibility with his late father’s boating friends.

In typical Nashville fashion, the crowd dwindled to a skeleton crew after Gunn’s set. The drunkest among the crowd stayed and continued to interrupt Ranaldo’s banter.

With his shock-white hair and rumpled clothes, Ranaldo is a hard character to miss. Nancy and I have seen him several times, and he always comes off as affable, modest and approachable.

Ranaldo debuted a number of new songs from his upcoming album Electric Trim, featuring lyrics co-written with author Jonathan Lethem. The new material was uniformly strong, showing Ranaldo’s skill with straightforward songwriting as well as his enviable chops on the guitar.

At moments, the solo acoustic arrangements of what will likely be full-band songs felt a little cluttered. Most of the new songs carried themselves well amid selections from Ranaldo’s preceding solo albums, Between the Time and the Tides and Night on Earth, a song cycle . Even on an acoustic guitar, he moved at a torrid pace, talking with the sparse crowd and running through more than a dozen tracks.

Ranaldo brought Baird onstage for a duet. To close the show, Gunn joined them and the three cruised through an understated rendition of Neil Young’s already-dark Revolution Blues. Gunn drew the task of not making the line “We’ve got 10 million dune buggies coming ‘round the mountain” not sound completely silly, and performed it admirably.

Seeing a musician road-test new songs always feels like a peek behind the songwriting curtain. Ranaldo’s acoustic show fit with his growth as a solo artist but also left us curious about how they will sound the next time he tours with a full band.