Marilyn Catasus Photo
Robert Messore closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and gently coaxed from his acoustic guitar the ascending triplet of notes that opened the gorgeous, mournful Celtic waltz, “Citi Na gunman.” He played the instrumental rendition of the song slowly, letting each note ring, as though allowing it to breathe.
The concertgoers sat motionless, utterly silent, transfixed. When Messore finished, they waited a beat, or three, before erupting into applause.
The occasion was the 13th edition of Robert Messore’s annual Fabulous Guitar Night. On the first Saturday of December, Messore — a longtime central figure in New Haven’s folk music scene — gathers some of the region’s best guitarists in the sanctuary of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Humphrey Street and treats attendees to a feast of fretwork. “Citi Na gunman” was the evening’s final piece; Messore somehow managed both to bring the festivities to a hauntingly beautiful conclusion and wordlessly to convey the plea of the song’s lyrics: “do not desert me, come on and elope with me.”
Elope we did, some three hours earlier, when Messore opened the evening’s performances with brief introductory remarks and an acoustic guitar instrumental (the appropriately and delightfully titled instrumental, “I Once Had a Standing Gig at a Spanish Restaurant but Only Knew Celtic Music, So I Faked It”).
He then ceded the spotlight to his guests, beginning with one of the few new faces to grace the Guitar Night stage, Ian Meadows. All of 21 years old, he’s the elder half of the sibling duo The Meadows Brothers, whose rootsy blend of country, folk, and blues has been taking the New England folk scene by storm. Big brother is also a compelling solo performer, particularly impressing with the Meadows Brothers’ original, “Trouble,” which pairs a catchy melody with Townes Van Zandtish lines like “I’m troubled now but I won’t be troubled long.”
If you’re offering three hours of all guitar, it’s good to have a few of the guitars look and sound different. In what would be the only performance on non-conventional guitars (and might have been even more warmly welcomed later in the program), Dan Bonis and Christopher Davis played lap-style slide guitar, with their instruments resting horizontally on their, well, laps. As my 60 years placed me near the mean age of the audience, it was not surprising that the duo received some of the evening’s most boisterous applause for lovely renditions of “Sleepwalk” and “Teardrop,” both 1959 instrumental hits for Johnny and Santo, the brothers Farina.
The evening continued with a who’s who of Connecticut six-string pickers. Glenn Roth, who regularly gigs New York City’s subway system as a licensed participant in the Music under New York program, demonstrated the musicianship that charms the bedraggled of rush hour into stopping, listening, and paying for instrumental guitar playing. Judy Handler and Mark Levesque added pop music and tango by performing songs like the Andrews Sisters’ “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Made in USA.”
Area legend George Baker, who in the 1960s served as Marvin Gaye’s musical director, opened the second half of the show by announcing that he and partner Tony Dioguardi would “lay down a mellow groove” and leave it to other performers to “rock it up.” Groove they did with Brook Benton’s soulful “Rainy Night in Georgia,” the Carl Perkins rockabilly nugget “Matchbox” (itself derivative of earlier songs recorded by Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson), and the Mel Torme holiday classic, “Christmas Song.”
But no one did much rocking; the evening was dedicated to the beautiful, calming, and pleasant. Michael Racine offered a convincing, upbeat cover of the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac song, “World is Turning.” Prester John, the guitar and mandolin duo of Shawn Persinger and David Miller, alternated their engaging, rhythmically complex instrumentals with delightfully upbeat pop-rock songs.
As the small but happy crowd stepped out into the night, I overheard one attendee suggest to another, “Same time, same thing next year?” I’ll very happily commit to being a serial elopist and attend the 14th rendition of Fabulous Guitar Night. But, if we accede to Baker’s implicit plea to have some rocking on the bill, that crowd may grow and its mean age decline — and the event might become even more fabulous.