Crooner Eclipse
The Hotel Café Tour, Saturday at the Fonda
The McDreamies were in the house – doubtless tormented and pouting. The Hotel Café troupe is quickly becoming a phenomenon thanks to Chandra Wilson’s sex-crazed surgeons on Grey’s Anatomy, as well as Scrubs, Eli Stone and various other enjoyable middlebrow entertainments. That sort of exposure helps take the troubadours and torch singers out of their crappy apartments and onto the big stage for the fourth year. The tight-knit group – which includes Cary Brothers, Jim Bianco, William Fitzsimmons, Ingrid Michaelson, Jesca Hoop, Jesse Baylin and a rotating cast of others – is on its way to Europe to spread a heartfelt gospel, 15 minute sets at a time.
But first, it was time for two sold-out, six-hour love-ins (six hours!) in their hometown. Midway through the tour, the critics have been less than kind, but that stinks of laziness, and condescension. The whole Grey’s Anatomy thing has become an easy way to degrade the genre and dismiss it as Dawson’s Creek yearning.
Seriously.
If it was 30 years ago, James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot would probably be singing during those celluloid break-room screws and it wouldn’t make them less rele- vant. But then, I’m a girl, and what do I know besides how to pot plants and watch my stories?
So here’s the rundown:
The One Most Likely to Be Prone to Fits of SelfLoathing
William Fitzsimmons helped prepare the crowd for the marathon of maudlin music. “I make songs that make you want to call your parents,” he said. For a towering bearded guy, he was more akin to the Snuggle Bear than a burly biker. When he needed the band to back him up the bass player was nowhere to be found. “No one respects the beard,” he said. His songs are full of quiet guitar noodling in the best way, though. Fitzsimmons’ whispery soft croon lent a sexiness to his cover of
“Cecilia.”
The One Most Likely to End Up Linked Romantically to Ryan Gosling
Next up was Meiko, who got her start serving beers at Hotel Cafe. Now KCRW is playing entire performances, and she’s got a slot with her former drink ticket customers. Her song “Reasons,” which we previously thought was a Feist song, is impossible not to lose ourselves in.
The most heartfelt ditty was “How Lucky We Are,” originally called “Shitty Apartment” or something like that. The Sonny and Cher ideals translate into optimistic future-hunting, escaping said shitty apartment for a luxury resort hotel and marveling at their luck over morning coffee and the morning papers. One day, she says, there will be peace on Earth, too. It’s hard not to believe in a better tomorrow when it’s coming from such a songbird.
The One Most Likely to (Maybe) Go Easy on the Bourbon
Jesca Hoop is a recovering Mormon who worked as Tom Waits’ nanny and a homesteader and who fancies big Daniel Boone fur hats (even on a 162-degree day), elaborate cowboy boots, whimsical expression and fanciful arrangements. Hoop let us in on an intimate Hotel Café Tour detail: “This is my first tour,” she said looking over at the backstage area littered with her mostly male counterparts. “And now I’ve seen a lot of balls.” What would Brigham Young say?
The One Most Likely to Vow He’s So Into You He Can’t Function, and Then After You Sleep With Him He’d Bring Another Woman to Your Birthday Party
Jim Bianco’s gravelly Tom Waits-like speakeasy sounds, drenched in blues, jazz and irresistible pop, set the stage for his charms. “There are a lot of lovely motherfuckers out there,” he said, greeting Los Angeles. He introduced the song “I’ve Got a Thing for You,” a little ditty about being a semi-stalker. “Do we have any stalker-creepy lighting?” he asked the crew. They did!
Songs like “Goodness Gracious” are the sort that could turn any girl into a Rock of Love stripper thanks to multi-instrumentalist Brad Gordon’s pocket trumpet. And then it came time for his showstopper – his repertoire includes a crowd-crashing number, “Sing,” when the Cahuenga coterie descended on the audience singing the romptastic sing-along. Luckily, we knew the words.
The One Most Likely to Date a Hotel-Smashing
Rock Star
Jessie Baylin, with her shaggy dirty blonde rocker hair and scratchy, seductive tunes, reminded us of Christine McVie from her early days, although she’d probably rather be the new Stevie Nicks. At other times, she came off with the soul of a Sharon Jones. (But white, which would make her Amy Winehouse, but American, and without all the fuss and hooha, which again makes her Sharon Jones.)
The One Most Likely to Dance It Out
Then it was the anti-rocker, New York-bred Ingrid Michaelson, who is a bit melodramatic in verse, but she knows it. Michaelson got clap-happy over unconditional love in “The Way I Am.” Then she sang sweetly about fragility, saying we’re all “breakable boys and girls.”
Michaelson told the story of a boy whose heart she shattered when she was an asshole, self-absorbed co-ed, and how two years later in a moment of maturity she wrote him a song to make amends. She sent him a letter about it and he never responded, so fuck him. We visited her MySpace page the next day to try and remember which song it was, but we got distracted reading blog posts about what selling out means (her song “The Way I Am” was recently on an Old Navy commercial, which helped pay some struggling artist bills) and who would win in a fight between Mona from Who’s the Boss? and Blanche from The Golden Girls. She’s also oddly obsessed with the show Full House.
The One Most Likely to Secretly Want to Date Izzie Stevens Because She’s Hot, Not Because She’s Funny, Sweet or Cool
You might recognize Cary Brothers, who is not two men who share a surname, from the year you spent obsessed with Garden State. He unapologetically rocked the otherwise hushed stage, most notably “Blue Eyes,” the Zach Braff-friendly ballad. For this night’s rendition, the rest of the Hotel Café crew joined for the chorus, a big sloppy hug of melody.
The near-highlight of the night was when Michaelson joined Brothers for “If You Were Here,” the Thompson Twins song that made girls in the Sixteen Candles years hold out for their own personal Jake Ryan, and then went on to believe that there were Lloyd Doblers walking among us.
This pay-dirt paean was only topped by Michaelson, again, who did a stripped-down, ukulele-fueled rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep.” This time the creepy-stalker lighting didn’t seem so menacing. Just gorgeous.
Published: 04/16/2008
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