Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Sandt and Teddy Holly.
From the stage at Never Ending Books on Thursday night, Trae Sheehan asked if there were “any introverts in the crowd.” He was met with complete silence. He beamed.
“See, I try that at every show, and audiences fail,” by cheering, he explained. The cheer, he said, was a sign that they couldn’t be introverts; the silence felt all too right. “This one goes out to you,” he said.
Sheehan was part of a three-act bill at Never Ending Books on State Street — including Sam Moth and Allie Sandt — that warmed a rainy night by fostering honesty, openness, and kindheartedness in song after song.
New Haven-based musician Sam Moth kicked off the evening with “11 songs to play for you,” she said. “Five are mine. Six are by other people. I hope you enjoy them.” Her cover songs included Sinead O’Connor, Chappell Roan, and Trixie Mattel, but in Moth’s hands, those and her originals all felt of a piece, united to tell a common story about the joys and heartaches that can come with moving through the world in an open-hearted way.
She paid homage to the artists whose songs she presented. She “sadly did not discover” O’Connor “until she passed away” in July 2023. “If you don’t know who she is, she’s incredible.” She tipped her songwriting hat to Roan, and honored the fact that the new full-on pop star doesn’t seem to actually want to be one. And she introduced Trixie Mattel as “a fabulous drag queen who is also a fabulous country-western recording artist.”
Moth used her own songs to complete the narrative. “As some of the other songwriters in the room may know, sometimes the shortest and most toxic relationships are the most generative for songs,” she said after one that described a tear across southern California. When another song ended with the lyric “will you let me love you?” she added, “no, no they would not. Listen to people the first time they tell you things. They’re probably telling the truth.” Many of the songs she sang, she said, were written years ago, but another song, “the baby of the bunch,” she added, “goes out to anyone who’s ever been ghosted by a friend, which in 2024 is probably all of us.” Her vulnerability created connection and camaraderie with the audience, especially as her set had a hopeful ending with a song she dedicated to “my honey.”
What really brought the set together, however, was Moth’s performance. Accompanying herself on steady acoustic guitar, she let her voice range from its fluttering upper register, to guttural tones at the bottom, to an open-throated bell-like middle range. All this was in the service of delivering the message of the music and the lyrics. Moth connected because at every turn it was clear she was telling the truth.
Massachusetts-based musician Trae Sheehan next regaled the audience with a set of hopeful and wistful originals that showed a sensitive eye, a canny humor, and an ear for a catchy melody, delivered with a strong voice and versatile, dextrous guitar playing. His banter also showed an amiable humor. “I was raised home-schooled on an alpaca farm in West Virginia. Please don’t hold it against me,” he said. The joke had the opposite effect.
Later in the set, he asked if “there were any whistlers” in the audience, and was met with nods. He explained that one section of his song had a whistling solo, and he asked the audience to supply it. Usually, he said, “it’s very chaotic, very atonal,” but he encouraged the crowd to try it, “even if we’re just screaming wind through our lips.” When the time came, the room filled with a whistling chorus in three-part harmony. Sheehan beamed again. “That was better than any other stop on this tour,” he said.
Between his winsome songs and between-song banter, the bond with the audience was complete by the end of Sheehan’s set. He asked the audience to hum along to the chorus for his last song, and in the end, let the crowd take the song out. The last note wasn’t Sheehan’s at all; it was the people in the room singing together.
New Jersey-based musician Allie Sandt was up last, and she and bandmate Teddy Holly (“that’s his real name!” Sandt said) finished the night strong with a set of complex and entrancing originals that mixed folk, blues, and jazz together. Sandt and Holly were both extraordinarily agile guitarists, with Sandt’s fingerpicking style and Holly’s plectrum complementing one another. Their abilities meant the duo could unspool texture after shifting texture, sometimes creating lush atmosphere, sometimes counterpoint, and sometimes complex lines in harmony. The package was complete with Sandt’s voice, smoky yet smooth and utterly in control. She played and sang with an effortlessness well beyond her years.
“This is the third time playing at Never Ending Books, and I love this place so much,” she said. She mentioned that she had graduated from college in central New York not long ago, and drew inspiration from several of the towns she visits playing music in the area, whether it was a conversation in an antique store in Cazenovia or a mural in Syracuse that read “I only paid the light bill to see your face.” Her breezy, self-deprecating humor (“we’re getting loungey in here!” “I sound like I’ve been smoking for 100 years but I just have a cold”) was charming in its humility, but there was no fooling anyone. The music — both the quality of the writing and the dexterity with which it was played — spoke for itself. The set ended too soon, but on a certain level, it might never have been enough.