Karen Ponzio Photos
(from left to right) Lawrence, James, Serenita, and Andersen
Four singer/songwriters shared their words, music and admiration for each other side by side last night under the ever-changing spotlights on The Cellar at Treadwell’s stage while a full moon glowed in the night sky.
“Storytellers in The Cellar: Songwriters Sharing the Stage, Songs and Stories” featured CT-based musicians Zach Andersen, Steph Serenita, Ethan James, and Lisa Lawrence, each armed with a guitar and taking turns talking, singing, and flat-out having a good time interacting with each other and the audience at the Hamden venue.
Andersen, who had organized the event, began the proceedings by asking the audience if they wanted a song that was “upbeat sounding or emotional.” An audience member answered with “I wanna cry” and “I wanna feel something tonight.” Andersen responded by saying he was wearing a mask now and had written mask-related songs during the past year, but this song was about “the masks we wear every day to cover up sadness or illnesses or wanting to feel stronger.”
The song, aptly titled “Masks,” included the line “underneath there’s something real / full of charm and appeal / the mask can never replace.”
Serenita’s first song was called “Carry Hunger,” which she said she wrote during the Syrian refugee crisis after watching news reports about it and asking herself, “if I had to leave my home really quick, what would I take with me?”
“That’s not always physical objects,” she added. She received cheers and chants of “yes” from the crowd as she sang “carry hunger, carry pain, carry little bits of sin.”
“That was really good,” said James after Serenita was done. James, who plays in the band Fiction, talked about the song he would be beginning with. “I decided to write a song a few hours before I came here, so the story for that song is I wrote it a few hours before I came here.” James did not offer a name for the song, but lines like “the setting sun, the smell of the air, and fireflies,” delivered with passion and grace, received a rousing round of applause and loud cheers from the audience.
“That was beautiful,” Lawrence said before talking about her first song, “Good Love Gone Bad,” saying that she wrote it “in one sitting” even though with songwriting she typically takes longer and “likes to milk it.” This one, she said, “fell from the sky.” Later on, Serenita would also note that one of her songs, “Untangled,” about a “Tim Burtonesque mummy character” in her mind, was also written in one sitting.
After Lawrence played that song, to which she added a beat by banging on her guitar, James responded with “I love it when people percussively bang on their guitar.” He also noted how much he loved “his musical peers,” and how spoiled they had all gotten because so many people were coming to shows since live events had returned.
“Keep coming or I’ll cry,” he joked, and then dedicated his next song — with the line “we breathe fire out of our mouths” — to those musical peers, shouting out each performer in the lyrics, much to their delight.
“I’ll take your fire and add rain,” Lawrence said to James as she offered “Then Came The Rain” to the set. She said the song was about “things we can’t control” and “letting yourself be yourself.” and Andersen followed that up with a song he said “would completely change the tone of the evening,” called “Stepping on Turtles.” It was rooted in the philosophical side of video games, pondering the question, “was Mario in love with the princess?”
Throughout the eight rounds of the four performers talking and singing, there was continuous exchange with each other and the audience. Andersen even shared two singalongs that saw the other performers harmonizing along with many in the crowd. James told the rest that they were “wicked talented” and then asked a friend in the audience to choose one of two songs he offered. The friend chose “Weird Guy,” a jovial tune that ended with the lines, “that’s the love of my life, he’s a really weird guy. I’m even funny sometimes.” It had everyone smiling.
“I feel like all our voices are similar yet different. Zach is melodic and comforting. Steph has an amazing rasp. Lisa, your voice comforts me,” James said.
The group created an intimate yet vibrant evening with songs that touched on everything from physical ailments (Andersen’s songs “Broken” and “The Allergy Song”), to feelings of inadequacy (Lawrence’s “Secondhand,” which James said was his favorite song of the night) dealing with loss (Serenita’s song “Black Hole”) and insomnia (James’a acoustic version of Fiction’s “Night Owl”). The energy never let up once, and the audience responded with as much love and joy as they had been given.
The night ended with one more laugh as Andersen said, after introducing and thanking each performer one more time, “thanks for coming to our therapy session!”