Leigh Busby Photo
Vance Gilbert performing at Jazzy's.
Vance Gilbert
Jazzy’s Cabaret
4 Orange St.
New Haven
Feb. 8, 2025
Vance Gilbert was talking about John Prine before a full house at Jazzy’s Cabaret Saturday night when he saw flashing lights outside on Orange Street.
“Black guy playing folk music,” he reported, lowering his voice and leaning into the mic. “Over. … Let’s surround the place.”
Then, amid chuckles in the audience, he straightened and returned to his story: About how John Prine’s first solo album blew him away. Especially the song “Hello In There.”
His Black friends, he said, didn’t have that record. (They did have Bette Midler’s “The Divine Miss M.”) The record spoke to him.
“It’s strange that a kid who grew up in Philly and then was homeless four years through college would end up trying to sound like a white guy with a guitar who was a postman in Chicago,” Gilbert recalled. “He made magic with such simple lyrics and simple chords.”
Gilbert developed his own sound. He has spent three decades touring the country and recording albums in the singer-songwriter vein.
A vein the late Prine would have recognized if he were in the house at Jazzy’s Saturday night. Gilbert spoke of how, when the day Prine died of Covid, Gilbert posted on Facebook a new song he’d written directly inspired by Prine’s approach.
Then he played it for the Jazzy’s crowd, finger-picking a I‑IV‑V chord progression with an alternating bass that could have leapt from that album he discovered back in the day. The song is called “Simple Things.”
Last day of winter
First day of spring
Livin’ ain’t easy
Like a broke kite string
Today wasn’t nothin’
See what tomorrow brings
Tryin’ to make a life
Out of simple things
Click on Leigh Busby’s video at the top of the story to watch Gilbert perform the song, which appears on his album The Mother of Trouble.
Leigh Busby Photo