ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It’s difficult to imagine a better acoustic country performance than Thursday night’s show at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, featuring Nashville songwriter Lori McKenna and her friend Mark Erelli, producer of her latest album, “Numbered Doors.”
Accompanying themselves on guitar and with Mr. Erelli occasionally on mandolin, this duo produced lush vocalizations and spun stories about the songs’ inspiration that entranced the audience. They performed so beautifully, in fact, that the servers working their way through the dark club seemed to walk on tiptoes so as not to mar the moment.
“I have a writing room in the corner of my basement where I work, away from where I can’t bother everyone,” she told The Birchmere audience about her home in Boston. “But sometimes you have to cook dinner. The trying thing about songwriters is that we repeat ourselves over and over and over and over until we get the line right.”
Boy, did she get those lines right — especially on the 10 tracks of “Numbered Doors.” From the delicate opening chords of “Time I’ve Wasted on You,” Miss McKenna and Mr. Erelli cast a spell over the venue; her sorrowful vocals and his harmonizing had the audience cheering.
Of course, Miss McKenna is Nashville songwriting royalty who has written and co-written many hits, including Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush.”
A few weeks ago, Miss McKenna sat in Nashville’s hip Noshville delicatessen, where she talked about how “Numbered Doors” developed from what was to have been a five-track EP that she and Mr. Erelli set out to make.
“Mark called me after we recorded the first tracks and said, ’Why don’t we just keep going?’” she explained between sips of coffee. “We recorded it so it would sound very much like our shows sound.”
As Miss McKenna and Mr. Erelli sat side by side on the Birchmere stage — performing songs such as “Stranger in His Kiss,” “God Never Made One of Us To Be Alone” and “Good Marriage,” — she told the audience that what they were watching was similar to the recording sessions.
“Except when I made a mistake — played the wrong chord or my voice cracked — they let me redo it,” she said. “You’re getting the version with the mistakes.”
To which an audience member shouted, “That’s just how we like it, Lori!”
If there were any missteps in the instrumentation, which included frequent swapping of guitars and Mr. Erelli’s mandolin, it didn’t show.
And if Miss McKenna was thinking of the high-powered, critic-filled “intimate show” Little Big Town was playing that night in Nashville, she didn’t let that show either.
Miss McKenna seemed fully immersed in her 11-song set before inviting the co-headliners — Texas-based Americana artist Carrie Rodriguez and her touring partner, Luke Jacobs — back for a rousing cover of U2’s “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.”
“You make us all keep going. You give us our careers,” Miss McKenna modestly told the Birchmere crowd. “I wish I had a venue like this near my house. I’d be here every night.”
Although she clearly meant as a fan, many audience members likely wish it were as a performer.
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