The back of the house at the Belmont on Tuesday night resembled Austin on a typical Friday: loud barflies with little to no attention span. From the middle of that throng, you’d have no idea a SXSW showcase was unfolding. A few yards up, down the stairs into the slightly lowered pit, Kevin Morby had the first few rows’ rapt attention.
Despite the layered instrumentation he’s deployed over three solo albums, the former Babies frontman, onetime Austinite, and now New Yorker took the stage armed with only an acoustic guitar. And “Destroyer,” from 2016’s Singing Saw. On that, Morby took to the piano for a ballad, synchronizing his voice with simple down-board progressions on the bridge, which was punctuated by a sax solo from an unknown player who emerged from the side of the stage and quickly disappeared.
Morby’s sound is like that, fleeting – now you hear it, now you don’t.
His earnest guitar strumming, insistent in its speed, fills in tailor-made melodies. Fractured guitar chords, played one string at a time in fast succession, developed into “I Have Been to the Mountain,” and “All of My Life.” Morby’s intense focus spiked both with an energy that’s hard to pull off in a solo SXSW set.
For the past year, the Lubbock native has closed his live shows with a tribute to another Texas son, Townes Van Zandt. Thus it was a cover of “No Place to Fall” clarifying the real power of this performer: a voice built for storytelling. Like TVZ, Kevin Morby demands close listening.
So long as you’re not in the back of the bar.This article appears in March 10 • 2017.