A&E
Parsonsfield returns to Barn to entertain
By Alex Witonsky ’17
February 4, 2016
Tags a+e
Parsonsfield returned to a candle-lit Barn last Thursday after their first Hamilton performance three years ago in 2013. In the interim the band and the Campus Activities Board have stayed busy. Since 2013 CAB’s Acoustic Coffeehouse programming has included acts like Chadwick Stokes, Shakey Graves, Pearl & The Beard, Phosphorescent and Wilsen.
2013 proved an important year for the Connecticut fivesome. Back then, Parsonsfield was Poor Old Shine, a home-grown eclectic rock group that drew equally on folk and bluegrass. Now they can add “Broadway theatrics” to the mix. Since renaming themselves in 2013, the band has released their eponymously-named debut album under Signature Sound Recordings, attracted critical attention from the bigs and composed and performed the score for the play The Heart of Robin Hood, which nearly ran on Broadway in 2015. Recording in an abandoned Connecticut axe factory, (“We showed it a new way to axe,” said Chris Freeman mid-set, mid-plug) the band has a new album set to release in May of this year.
Band names change and so too does the class registry. It is only this year’s graduating class that has had the opportunity to see both Poor Old Shine Parsonsfield perform. Sadly, the author of this report belongs to the class of 2017 and can make no further comparisons between the Poor Old Shine of then and the Parsonsfield of now.
Thursday night saw a moderately attended Barn. A punctured tire prevented the planned opener from making it to campus. However, CartelrSanders ’18 stepped in at the last minute to perform a 4-song set showcasing his impressive vocal range and dynamics while Parsonsfield listened in back near the sound equipment.
When Sanders was done, Parsonsfield took the stage. Chris Freeman, frontman, vocalist, banjo-player and part-time accordionist inquired after the audience’s health and then, five feet back from the mic, started a claw-fisted pluck on the banjo. He slid up to the mic singing and opened the show with a bang. A small circle of students almost immediately began dancing near stage-left. Meanwhile, a student seated at an adjacent table with a scroll of yellow paper worked assiduously at long-hand calculations.
Behind Freeman’s banjo was Erik Hischmann on plodding, loud and syncopated drums which grooved nicely with Harrison Goodale’s double-bass. Max Shakun enlisted the help of his huge old-dutch beard to manage guitar and vocals while Antonio Alcorn strummed meditatively on the mandolin. They played loud songs and soft ones, strummy, rhythmic ones and harmonic ones. All were done well, but given the done-to-death themes, there was some level of play-acting throughout. But “Goin’ To Work In Tall Buildings” was the emotional high-water mark of the night. Dedicated beforehand to the class of 2016, this slow-crooner lamented the loss of youth and the prevalence of a capitalist social-economic format. Groans in the audience were general. It’s best to be the musician.
Though we have seen this music before, it crystallized the coffeehouse atmosphere, the one where you’re totally free to dance sillily, or nod and clap or scribble out physics homework; presentable, not-experimental, eclectic or americana, and oftentimes, staid. The stage antics of Freeman–standing on amps, genuflecting to the crowd, and corralling band-mates to stand in tableau-vivant, not to mention a painfully derivative encore are still entertaining because—even for audiences that have seen it all—there is still, somehow, soul enough.