As evidenced in this interview last week, Richard Buckner is a man of few words, yet even that is a few more than the full Cactus Café got by way of acknowledgment from the notoriously opaque songwriter Friday night. Not that anyone was disappointed by the lack of banter – the audience was entranced by the nearly 90-minute continuous song suite that rarely broke from Buckner’s familiar morose intensity.
Local rising star Leatherbag opened the night with a stripped down set, featuring only frontman Randy Reynolds with guitarist Geoff Dupree. After witnessing the full band’s inspired and blistering set the week before at their taping for Austin City Limits’ new Stage Left Web series, the return to Reynolds’ sparser songwriter roots proved equally revelatory with his new music. Opening with a delicate version of the title track from last summer’s Love and Harm, Leatherbag’s tunes were given a different shade with the sparser set up.
The new songs from his fresh Everything I Once Knew EP, as well as a few still unreleased, continued to mine Leatherbag’s recent turn towards a New Sincerity, from “Power of Love”’s unironic timbre to the Tweedyesque “Stand Close,” while closer “Caroline” even hearkened Townes Van Zandt’s poetic love ballads.
Richard Buckner, on the other hand, took the stage as unassumingly as his bearish frame would allow, tuning his guitar against the house music and abruptly launching into opener “Blue and Wonder,” from 1994 debut Bloomed. The seamless flow continued through “…And the Clouds’ve Lied,” “Figure,” and “Tom Merritt,” with Buckner alternating between his forlorn laments and bitter spite. Disheveled with graying sideburns and unintentional scowl, Buckner delivered his unbroken set with a voice sounding appropriately bruised. He had the appearance of a bar stool lifer and the songs drifted together like a drunkard’s rant, shifting suddenly from deep regret to furious condemnation.
As he spurred through his catalog, spanning nearly every album, the crowd attempted spattered applause, but Buckner clearly intended the set to be uninterrupted, never acknowledging the audience and looping his three guitars while changing instruments. The solo arrangement worked to Buckner’s advantage, however, pushing his grizzled voice to expose the raw emotion of tunes like “Straight,” “The Tether and the Tie,” and “Canyon,” as well as the delicate ache of “Gauzy Dress in the Sun” and “This Is Where.” Closing the set with “Loaded at the Wrong Door,” he left the song to loop, raised his glass of red wine, and promptly walked out the Cactus’ back door, ending the set as unexpectedly as he began.
This article appears in May 8 • 2009.
