My clumsy, but heartfelt, ode to the Avetts

“Talking about music is like talking about sex. Can you describe it? Should you even try?”

-Bruce Springsteen

Thank you, Bruce, for giving me an excuse to utterly suck at writing about music.  It possibly cannot be described and I probably shouldn’t even try.

But I really want to talk about music and, right now in particular, I really, REALLY want to talk about the music that is constantly playing either in my car, on my ipod, or in my head…the music that I followed 1700 miles, roundtrip, spent a good few hundred dollars on and am dying, just DYING to experience again as soon as possible. It’s the music The Avett Brothers are making.

I really want to do it justice, but that would mean finding words that are as simple, honest, and poetic as theirs and I am not up to the task.  But that’s so much of what fuels a fan’s passion -fuels my passion- for a band, and that is seeing and hearing someone call out a feeling, a moment, an experience and give it a name that no one’s heard before.  The perfection of that is so thrilling.  And when it’s done not just with words but with tone and breath and beat and ache… it captures life in a way that the most central part of me recognizes, but cannot itself name.

Though any and every review of an Avett show centers on the band’s energy and intensity (“muppet-like” in one review), I defy that as the sole indicator of this band’s power. I’ve seen tons of musicians give super high-energy performances…performances where they clearly left their hearts and souls on the stage.  They were great, memorable shows, to be sure, but they did not fuel the kind of obsession I (and many other Avett fans) are experiencing now.  And equally, I have seen far less energetic shows that have resulted in a similar obsession.

So what’s the difference? The difference is what happens to my heart, and here are the examples:  Ryan absolutely, completely, and totally broke my heart.  Bruce seems to know my heart and has, on countless occasions, healed it. Now the Avetts have stopped my heart, and restarted it in time with their own. And it was inevitable given what kind of band they are and what kind of fan I am… I was a goner the moment I stepped into that first show, just like pretty much everyone else who steps into an Avett show.

Avetts sold out in Boulder

In Steamboat Springs

At the Minnesota Zoo

~ by Kirsten on September 8, 2009.