Allison Hadley Photos
“How many teachers are there in the audience?” said MC Taylor, frontman of Hiss Golden Messenger, surveying the crowd.
“11th grade history!” “4th grade everything!” “Art!”
Taylor smiled. “Hiss Golden Messenger is getting a rep as a teacher band,” he said.
He went on to explain that he and his wife were both children of public school educators, and that a dollar from every ticket on this leg of their tour was going to the Bull City School Foundation, a nonprofit in his home of Durham, N.C .that provided support to teachers in need of supplies.
This kind of feel-good solidarity and affirmation permeated Saturday night at the Space Ballroom, with a packed and lively crowd that featured a neverending parade of flannel, glasses, and beards as only a stellar Americana show such as this would summon from the area.
Molly Tuttle, bedecked in a boldly printed jumpsuit, started the night with crisp bluegrass and bluegrass-adjacent guitar, mixing covers such as Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Zero” with original music off her first — and recently released — LP. Finding notes no one even thought possible at a driving pace, Tuttle matched frenetic guitar with clear, mindful vocals that brightened up the room, shaping tone and mood to match her songs, ranging from mournful renditions of the bluegrass standard “Rain and Snow” to upbeat songs about power outages. Tuttle hails from Nashville, where she moved from Boston, and the influence shows. The twang of country and bluegrass, even in her original material, was always floating above the frets. That some of her songs were played in the clawhammer style, usually reserved for banjo, also didn’t diminish the presence of traditional southern roots. By the time her all-too-brief set was over, the crowd was ready to party.
And party they did as Hiss Golden Messenger took the stage for a remarkably long set, grooving through old and new songs as a fair share of the audience mouthed along the lyrics. The band brought the energy: guitarist and keyboardist Phil Cook traded heavy solos with the other side of the band, a guitarist dubbed Bronco, while MC Taylor held the group together in the middle with his folksy lyrics and perpetual half smile. This was a band that loved to play together. And the crowd loved them, trading banter back and forth and feeling very comfortable. It felt less like a show with strict boundaries between performer and audience and more like a large house party where everyone was having a good time and bopping along to the grooves Hiss Golden Messenger laid down. After a point any sense of time was lost and the set took on a life of its own, feeding on itself in a way that made two hours fly by, and no one seemed to be tired at the end of it.
On the stage at the Space Ballroom were two strings of golden lights — LEDs made to look like filament bulbs — that framed the stage, with Hiss Golden Messenger’s distinct, hourglass-like logo in the middle. It felt like a scene from a music video, almost, in terms of how keyed in everyone was and how much everyone was smiling. It was a very joyful show for the first truly cold feeling day of this fall-into-winter, and one that seemed to bring the room right back to those later days of summer, when everyone could go on a picnic and just enjoy the company of those near them.
The magic of Hiss Golden Messenger is that it is both transporting and nostalgic, similar to John Prine’s music, or Gillian Welch’s. It taps into an American mythological landscape that never existed in our timeline, yet still carries all the pains and joys of the American experience.