I first came across his most recent album; The Reluctant Graveyard on a music forum a few months back. I enjoyed it from first listen, the wonderful melodies and quirky lyrics really sold themselves to me. A few days after seeing The Antlers in Chicago I noticed in a paper that Jeremy had been playing on the same night I was rather disappointed to have missed him.
Being from Ireland, you don't hold high hopes of your favourite relatively obscure Minneapolis based singer songwriter appearing in a theatre near you very soon. Upon crossing a large amount of the country and finding myself in Berkeley I plunged into the local gig listing and there it was. Standing alone and proud in black generic print. 'Hotel Utah Saloon, July 20th, Jeremy Messersmith'. The quoted price was 10 dollars, not too shabby I must admit.
And so on the evening in question my girlfriend and I donned semi-respectable clothes and hopped aboard the Bart, the Hotel Utah Saloon our destination. We got the venue and it was just a small cosy bar with a little stage and a little standing area a half floor below the bar. We listened to the two opening bands whilst choking down some inappropriately and formidably hot chicken wings. Having undergone the pain of handing over 14 dollars for two JD and coke's we moved to Pabst Blue Ribbon at a measly 3 dollars a pop.
We were in flying form by the time Jeremy took to the stage with his band. As you see in the photo he plays an improbably cool acoustic guitar with a white patch in the middle of it. He switched to another uber-cool instrument; a small Paul McCartney-esque bass guitar for some songs. I could tell you the songs he played or you could refer to the picture of the setlist which I now own having chatted up the guitarist and plundered it.
Lazy Bones and Dilinger Eyes both from his latest album really got the gig going for us. We sang along at the tops of our voices, tragically being the only people in the small crowd doing so. We couldn't help it really such was the infectious brand of indie pop being played by Jeremy and band. The guitarist in particular was amazing.
One song you will not see on the set-list is A Girl, A Boy And A Graveyard, upon which the title of this posting is loosely based. It is not included on the set list but Jeremy did play it after outlined encore.
'Well, why did he do that huh?'
He played it because we urged him too, honestly the two of us and a third chap we did not know started asking him to play it, calling out to him, beckoning him to ease our blues. The rest of the band the violinist apart had departed the stage for the bar. This didn't seem to deter Jeremy though as he produced a truly splendid, perfect and soothing version of the song. It was the highlight of our night. We also got a chance to speak to Jeremy at the end of the gig and he turned out to be a really nice and genuine guy, he took the time to talk to us and then posed for a few pictures with us.
Peace
