Anyone familiar with singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston has to expect a concert experience that strays from the norm. In this regard, Tuesday night’s show at the 9:30 club delivered.
The festivities started fairly typically, with the Philadelphia-based group The Capitol Years taking the stage to open the show.
Standard of most concerts, the few fans who had found their way into the club early did not really seem to want anything to do with the opening act. Both the audience and the band were there for Johnston. It was easy for the audience — which at a generous estimate, filled up about a third of the club — to overlook the band’s solid instrumentals. When they finished they were warmly received, but the real love was being saved for the headliner.
Sporting a “9:30 club Talent” shirt, a tattered pair of sweatpants and some old sneakers, Johnston took the stage, looking characteristically disheveled and wasting no time getting through a few of his songs. Johnston’s interactions with the audience were appropriately strange as halfway through his first song he asked the audience, “Are you still with me?” and got his answer with cheers.
Johnston is not one for banter with his audience. Besides politely thanking the crowd after every song, he basically stuck to burning through his songbook full of old and new tunes. He did, however, have one moment when he took some time to speak to the audience. Following the second song of the night, he suddenly said, “I had a dream a man was sentenced to death for trying to commit suicide.” This is the Daniel Johnston experience.
He followed his description of his dream with another song that he had to stop right in the middle. He chalked it up to nerves because D.C. was the first stop on his tour.
He then plowed ahead, finally getting comfortable with a cover of the beloved Beatles song, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” With the crowd singing along, Johnston appeared to be more at ease. Johnston continued to cover his favorite band with a rendition of “Help!” Before his Beatles obsession got stale, he returned to his originals — what the crowd was there to hear.
Johnston’s greatest strength is that his songs reflect his life at the time each song was written. Throughout his adult life, Johnston has dealt with manic depression and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Some of the darkness came through in one of his later songs, “Man Obsessed,” where Johnston opines, “The only way you could get her to look at you is to die/Why don’t you die?”
What is also memorable about a Daniel Johnston show is that it is a real experience of the person, not just the songs. The audience could see what type of person he is today: his voice is lower than his early days in the ‘80s and ‘90s from smoking, he has trouble hitting notes (which has always somewhat been a part of Johnston’s style), he forgets lyrics to his songs and he spent the show grasping the mic with hands that now constantly shake. For all his faults, no one seemed to care.
Johnston continued the concert with a classic song, a Beatles cover and a new song off his latest album, “Is and Always Was.” The new songs he showcased, titled “Fake Records of Rock and Roll” and “High Horse,” were strong, major progressions from his early work; he now has a significant musical backing, as opposed to just a single organ or guitar.
Johnston continued the trend of mixing in his oldies with crowd favorites like “Speeding Motorcycle,” a song that lands on the happy end of the Daniel Johnston spectrum. Johnston ended the set with another one of his own, “Rock ‘N’ Roll EGA,” a tribute to the Beatles and the entire genre of music.
The small but fervent crowd let him know how much they loved him. He reciprocated by coming back out for an encore. He played maybe his most beautiful and one of his most covered songs, “True Love Will Find You in the End.” The crowd sang every word with Johnston to end the evening on a beautiful note.
Johnston’s set could be seen as a bit underwhelming since he did not play many of his hits and decided to play more new and cover songs. But when it was all over, his time on stage felt all too brief. The crowd knew they got to see one of the fantastic singer-songwriters in the country. This was the great Daniel Johnston. He was raw, he was disorganized, he was off-pitch: he was perfect.
You can reach this staff writer at slindauer@theeagleonline.com.
