Jason Eady rapidly became one of my favorite songwriters when my personal alt-country renaissance began several years ago. His humble blue-collar wisdom shines through most of his songs. He is smart, introspective, and never takes himself too seriously. Wednesday night at the Turf Club was one of those shows that helped me understand just how much I love music.
The evening started with a solo acoustic performance from Chicago’s Matthew Francis Andersen, a solid storyteller in his own right. He won American Songwriter Magazine’s 2012 lyric contest; the prize was a songwriting session with Texas legend Hayes Carll. Andersen’s songs draw from his experience working in rural northern Wisconsin for much of his life as a muskie and walleye fishing guide. Andersen talks his way through his set, explain the inspirations of his meticulously written songs and travis-picking away through each tune. His song “Quite a Life” is about “middle-aged women who are always in the bar, never married, and covered in hard bark.” He was an excellent choice to open for Eady.
Mississippi-born Jason Eady now lives in Ft Worth after serving in the Air Force. He played two hours on a warm humid July night. In an amusing exchange, Eady took off his jacket and said “coming up to Minnesota from Texas, I didn’t expect it to be hot.” An audience member shouted he should “come back in February.”
The setlist included “Black Jesus,” a story of a young man and an old ‘Nam vet working on a road crew together. “He taught me the blues/I sang for him old Hank Williams tunes/and he’d say ‘boy the only difference between us/ is your white and my black Jesus.'” “Cry Pretty,” a ballad of a conversation with an old flame, is the song Courtney Patton (his wife) called his “‘panty dropper,’ because all the women seem to love it” when she sang at Big Wood Brewery a few months ago.
After the show, Eady came out and mingled with the thinning crowd, signing cds, posters, and even a fan’s guitar. I chatted with him briefly about his recent vacation in Canada, an old guitar I’ve owned for decades but still can’t play, and his new hobby of photography. “It’s amazing that I can take 600 pictures in one day and only have 5 good ones,” he told me bemusedly. Welcome to the club, Jason.
I also tanked him for playing “God Fearing Blues” during the encore, my favorite of his songs. “We wanted to play it because it got requested it on Instagram” Eady replied.
Yes, that was me.
