Eddie from Ohio hit the McNeil Room Saturday—a show well worth the wait. The show was a reschedule of EFO’s originally planned appearance at RPI last spring, cancelled because of band car trouble.
Defying classification into any single genre, Eddie from Ohio has a huge following in the folk community, but they avoid labeling themselves as folk. They move fluidly from style to style, blending gospel influences with the rhythmic underpinnings of pop, and incorporating blues-inspired harmonica and guitar to round out their instrumental sound.
Robbie Schaefer on lead guitar and Michael Clem on bass provide the bulk of the band’s instrumental might, contributing occasional lead vocals in addition to Clem’s rhythm guitar and harmonica. Julie Murphy Wells fronts the band, singing lead and occasionally adding the tambourine to Eddie Hartness’ signature percussion. All four members of the band sing strong harmony.
Saturday’s show opened with their signature "Old Dominion," a tribute to their home state of Virginia, and moved through two sets, mostly drawn from their most recent album release, Quick. EFO is a live band more than anything else, and they easily outshone their recorded performance on the CD itself. A fairly small venue like the McNeil Room is definitely the preferred way to see this band, as their casual stage presence was a huge part of the show, and the same songs sounded much better on Saturday than they did at their 10th anniversary show at the Wolf Trap, a D.C. venue near SPAC in size.
Wells provided a center of warmth to the lyrics that really came through in the music, conveying it with both vocal and facial expression. Her performance grew steadily better through the first half, recovering from a slightly distracted opening, peaking early in the second set with tremendous energy that seemed to leave her tired through the end of the show.
Wells, Schaefer, and Clem participated in much more stage banter than at the Wolf Trap show, which Wells and Schafer attributed to having more time, and a much less structured show than in July. Also, as Schaefer pointed out, "you relate to a crowd of two hundred … in a different way than you do to one of seven thousand."
A few of their songs deserved particular mention. The stage rendition of "Let’s Get Mesolithic" had a life in it that they would have been hard-pressed to capture on the CD, and made it stand out as even better than their Wolf Trap performance. Having less than half the McNeil room between you and Eddie’s bongo set and the others’ antics lends a certain je ne sais quoi to that song.
On the flip side, Saturday’s performance of "Tommy the Canexican" (a hilarious, strongly recommended song from Quick) fell flat, sounding as if it might have been sung in a different key or with less rich accompaniment than on the CD.
In the second set, they moved into a performance of "Oh My Brother," from I Rode Fido Home (Virginia Soul Records, 1995). Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the group was informed that radio stations were being swamped with requests for the song. In response, Eddie from Ohio has made the MP3s of both "Oh My Brother" and "America the Beautiful" available for download from the Web
(http://www.efohio.com/). The unique appropriateness of the song brought the audience to a very un-RPI-like silence, ended by a long and well-deserved ovation.
Wisely, instead of following with another song, they broke for Eddie’s drum solo. Before hearing Eddie’s drum solos, one might well wonder just why the band is named for the quiet drummer in the background. From a simple rhythm played with his hands on two conga drums, Eddie built up to an all-out assault on his drum kit, sending fragments of drumsticks behind him.
Eddie from Ohio is a very unique group, applying down-home southern harmonies to subjects having no place in an archetypical southern town. Even more surprising than the sidelines into comedic folk is the sophistication of topics in several of their songs—the first person point of view of a Mexican illegal immigrant hoping only to hold out long enough for his son to be born in America in "Cándido & America," for example. When asked about this, Wells first quipped, "Robbie reads a lot," but both pointed out that they are fairly close to Washington D.C., and while they avoid politics in their music, they are nonetheless exposed to a cosmopolitan influence.
In all, Eddie from Ohio is a group well worth seeing whenever you get a chance, and their performance in the McNeil room more than lived up to their reputations. Let’s all hope that Mother’s can get them (and other bands like them) here again!
