I first heard of Daniel Johnston back in 87-88 when i went to visit my old college roommate Bob down in CT. He told me about this guy who records all this great music on a tiny tape recorder in his basement. He then handed me one of his cassettes (remember those?) and i was fascinated by the rawness of the audio quality and simple stories he sang about. Fast forward 18 years or so.
In short, Daniel still communicates his touching songs in that refreshing straight-forward way. But now he’s a little more polished, using an electric guitar, a keyboard and a backing band. The show started at 9:45p sans any opening act. (On Friday, The Youngs did open for him). Daniel opened the short, one hour set with “Mean Girls” followed by “Sense of Humor.”
He was accompanied by Brett Hartenbach on acoustic guitar. Brett has performed on and has produced some of Daniel’s albums too so they were totally in sync on stage and was a nice complement to Daniel’s singing. Several songs in, Daniel removed his guitar and made his way to an electric keyboard where he sang a couple of songs alone. The crowd loved it. Afterwards, he brought out the rest of his rock band and then continued ‘rocking the house’ as only Daniel’s melancholy songs could. Highlights were “Casper the Friendly Ghost” and “Walking the Cow.” Although the show was only an hour long, Daniel kept the audience thoroughly entertained, and in hind-sight he probably performed twice as many songs as most since his insightful music is typically shorter than a more traditional song one might hear.
