Patty Griffin & Parker Millsap Live Show Review: 1/27, Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago
Patty Griffin
BY JORDAN MAINZER
Patty Griffin’s songs are true folk songs, in the sense that their studio arrangements can be pared down to befit any number of instruments, and that their stories are ever-present. Performing Friday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music, Griffin told these stories, sometimes their context, too, other times letting the words do the talking. Accompanied by virtuosic guitarist David Pulkingham (whose flamenco licks on set opener “Mama’s Worried” recaptured the magic of hearing it for the first time) and percussionist Michael Longoria, Griffin rejected the pattern of touring off of an album release cycle and delivered a set of her most beloved back catalog highlights. Sure, a concert based off of songs from Tape, last year’s self-described “home recordings & rarities” collection, would have been a tad esoteric. But that Griffin chose to mostly play the heavy hitters from Children Running Through, Servant of Love, and 2019′s self-titled LP (perhaps her best) made Friday night’s set one for the ages.
Griffin and David Pulkingham
A song like “250,000 Miles” encapsulated what Griffin and her band did best. Introducing it as being inspired by a story of immigrants moving from Nepal to Dubai to build skyscrapers, Griffin’s framing and performance shone universal themes of homesickness and alienation atop shaky, dual percussion to match the song’s nerves. The PJ Harvey-esque blues stomp of “Flaming Red”, Griffin on acoustic, Pulkingham on blistering electric, Longoria on thumping snares, mirrored the physical strength of the circumstances under which the song was written, Griffin training for a marathon, wanting to get in shape after snatching a record deal. She deftly balanced humor and terror on “Coins”, one of the “weirder” songs she left off of setlists when opening for The Chicks last summer. Inspired by her experience waiting on creepy, cheap Harvard Business School bros at a Pizzeria Uno, the song was funny until it wasn’t; the descriptions of a “young man with all the answers” leaning into the side of himself “hungry for power” foreshadowed the dire consequences of toxic masculinity we witness every day.
Almost eerie in its prescience was “The Wheel”, particularly in its references to Eric Garner. “Here’s a song about a man / About a man I never met / Here’s a song about a man / About a man I can’t forget,” sung Griffin. “Can’t” carried dual meaning: she’s unable to forget the tragedy of his murder, and she’s also not allowing herself to forget his story because similar ones keep happening. A few hours prior to the start of the show, the body cam footage of Tyre Nichols’ murder at the hands of the Memphis police was released. That Griffin performed “The Wheel” on Friday was, in all likelihood, coincidental, but it nonetheless reminded the crowd of the power of music to make us remember.
Parker MIllsap
Opening for Griffin was Parker Millsap in a solo acoustic set, which allowed him to continue his transformation from boisterous, clean-cut pop rocker to bearded, beanie-laden singer-songwriter. It wasn’t just his look: Millsap performed mostly new songs from an album coming out later this year, and even the older songs he did sing, like “Your Water” and “It Was You”, transformed into languid blues ditties. “Front Porchin’”, Millsap’s “Keep on Chooglin’”, was an undeterred ode to weed haze and chillin’ out, while “Before the Curtain Closes” allowed him to show off his always impressive vocal chops, increasingly sounding like a mix of Roy Orbison, Jeff Buckley, and Hamilton Leithauser. At one point during his set, Millsap joked, “I should apologize for tuning so much, but if there’s any place to put on a capo and tune, it’s here.” Judging by the new songs, he’ll be tuning a lot more in the near future.
