Flanked by two women who were alternatively adoring and accusatory, Stout began her show with Nina Simone’s “My Name Is.” There was nothing behind them but a blank white space, an empty canvas. Stout moved to a small electronic rig just within arm’s reach, pressed a button, and started off a drum beat to slip into “See-Line Woman.” Then she added a coda that layered her own voice to create a lusher soundscape.
Voices intertwined. The drums dropped out. A sound emerged like a UFO landing.
“Queen Nina. That’s what you are. Even though you left us, your legacy still resides,” Stout said.
The New Haven-based musician Stout — aka Denise Renee — dropped by Kennies Earl Kreative House on Shelton Avenue in Newhallville on Friday evening to do a live broadcast of a set paying tribute to Nina Simone through the new online platform At Home in New Haven — and show how she continues to be a vital force in New Haven’s music scene, even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stout channeled Simone’s regal bearing for her first couple numbers, interspersing her singing with an homage to the legendary singer and civil rights activist who “lived fearlessly,” she said. “Your voice paved the path for young hopefuls. Your posture demanded attention. You expressed the deepest part of your soul.” And, she added, Simone “didn’t take any mess.”
But the deeper Stout drove into Simone’s catalog, the more she also found and brought out her own voice. The Simone classic “Feeling Good” got a dramatic reharmonization, as Stout used it to explore more corners of her singing voice — finding spots that were sweet and rich, and others that were gritty and rough-edged. She moved between the two with an ease that reminded viewers why she toured the world with Alicia Keys. (For more background, listen to an interview with Stout on WNHH’s “Northern Remedy” from 2019.)
She was, by now, alone on the stage. She didn’t need anyone else. She dropped into a deep, shuddering beat. “Don’t you feel me while you’re watching me?” she said. “Feel it in your heart now…. If Nina was here, she would say ‘we’re going be all right.’ I’m going to keep on living. I’m going to keep on giving.”
Now Stout was moving into the present day. “Everything I need has been provided,” she sang; it sounded like testimony. “I’ve been hurt, I’ve been down before. Looking at my family like ‘where do we go?’”
She set up a snapping beat, and sang in a quick note that she looped to create a breathy drone. That led to a recitation of poet Nikki Giovanni’s “No Heaven.”
How can there be
No heaven
When rain falls
gently on the grass
When sunshine scampers
across my toes
When corn bakes
into bread
When wheat melts
into cake
When shadows
cool
And owls
call
And little finches
eat upside
down
How can there be
No Heaven
When tears comfort
When dreams caress
When you smile
at me
Stout added: “How can there be no heaven if he created her?”
She moved then into a sung version of the Lord’s Prayer that felt both brooding and hopeful — different from the version she recorded in 2017 (for which she released a video in April) but a cousin to it. She finished it with breathy layers of her own voice that she lost herself in. She finished the prayer on notes that felt despairing and triumphant at the same time.
It turned out to be a preamble to the song “I Shall Be Released,” which Bob Dylan wrote but Nina Simone made her own. Stripping the song back to a simple rhythm guitar track that felt a little like Motown, Stout made the song hers too.
“I can hear the old folks singing,” she sang, “On the dirt roads. Just trying to survive…. I see my light. I see my freedom shining from the west down to the east. Any day now we all shall be released.”
In just over a half hour, Stout had brought us into her musical world, one that, at its simplest and deepest — often just voices and rhythm — feels like it stretches back in history to the origins of American music and across the ocean to the West African rhythms that still pulse through America and have developed in their own directions as well. In doing both of those things, it also feels like one of American music’s possible futures.
“Clap your hands. While you’re drinking your wine, or sitting on your couch,” Stout said. “We’re going to get through this. It’s almost over.”
“I’m so proud to be from New Haven. I’m so proud to be a part of this. It is our intention to bring you joy…. I hope you take away peace, and joy, and motivation. Don’t give up.” She added. “Work on you. Do some self-reflection, because once this thing lifts, we got to hit the ground running. We got work to do.”