The Avett Brothers at The National

The Avett Brothers – July 10th, 2009

By Manuel Enrique Garcia

Standing outside of the venue chomping on an apple, a middle-aged teenager walked up carrying a guitar case and a harmonica-holding device around his neck. Him and his father lowered the door of a flatbed truck and opened the case to pull out a banjo, not a guitar that the carrying case would suggest. The teen stood there strumming the banjo, not in any delicate musical fashion, but more in the fashion of a toddler stumbling upon the instrument and slapping its fingers against the strings. In his mind, the teenage boy wearing the trucker hat and collared shirt with holes and khakis with a stringing hem must have said to himself, “The Avett Brothers play the banjo, therefore I must bring my father’s banjo that I don’t even know how to play and stand outside of the venue! Surely all who pass will look at me as a real musician, a walking wonder of the musical earth!”

Inside of the venue the early-in crowd is pushed against the stage, fearful that their spot might be taken if they just take a few steps back. The crowd consisted of all types, but a large majority being mid-thirties professionals walking around carrying plastic cups of booze, the same group of individuals that might have be seen jumping up and down and swinging their arms on the latest Dave Mathrews Band concert DVD. Before the opener came on stage, everyone was socializing, meeting up with their friends, and also running into people they haven’t seen in a while and forced into an awkward conversation due to politeness. The collective crowd grew into a mush of warmth and the lights were lowered. Three people came on stage and yells are expelled from the audience. Thao with The Get Down Stay Down started playing without an introduction and the crowd’s eyes were focused on the girl with dark hair and a blue lively dress that fluttered every time she swung her body from side to side.

The music appeared folk-rooted with Thao Nguyen’s dry raspy voice singing behind slow drumming and a slightly audible acoustic guitar. But by the movement of her hair when she stepped back from the microwave to shake her head loose, something told me that things are going to pick up. Catchy lyrics with a dance-like folk related grove (attaching the “dance” part based on the urge rolling through my body to dance, but not actually doing it because I then realized that dancing is not included in my many talents). Whether the crowd was already familiar with their music, or because they were enjoying the new sounds they were exposed to, the Richmond crowd was cheering and hollering and showing the type of appreciation that is often not there for the opener. At one point, Thao confessed before starting another song, “Richmond is better than the shit in Norfolk.”

Thao Nguyen’s voice is raspy and the type of voice you might have heard if you were alive and well in the 1950’s. The music is upbeat, sounds that will immediately create images of cars full of bodies traveling down the highway during a summer day with the windows down. A few girls were dancing, borrowing slick moves from their dancing extravaganza previously used at the last Gwen Stefani concert. Thao with The Get Down Stay Down played with great energy that sent the crowd moving and practicing their yells for the headliner, gaining new fans in the process.

The venue began to fill, holding true to the promise of the SOLD OUT sign plastered on the ticket window, the same sign that caused many to walk up and down the street with their heads lowered asking complete strangers if they were selling any extra tickets. Everyone was anxious, drinks were being consumed quickly, and then Carolina Girl approached me.

“Are you from North Carolina?” she asked with her big brown eyes looking straight at me, her bare chest also staring at me with a tiny thin string holding up her red top. I whimpered out a pathetic “No” and then she lowered that smile of hers.

I then proceeded to ask, “What made you think I was from North Carolina?” I wanted to know what about my appearance made this mid-thirties drunk gal think I am a fellow Tarheel. Maybe all this time I’ve been dressing and acting like someone from a state not my own; a betrayer to the Commonwealth.

“Oh I just want to find someone from their stomping ground, that’s all.” An awkward pause followed where she swayed and bopped her head while holding the clear plastic cup filled with giant ice cubes and the sweet nectar near the bottom.

“Have you been to this venue before?” she asked. I nodded my head and then looked at her neatly spread out tan without the orange ring around her face, wondering who she was and how much alcohol was shuffling through her body.

Then she wandered around, later appearing out of thin air to ask me if any of my friends were from North Carolina. She attached herself like a leech to one of my friends and they bantered for ten minutes, a conversation that was probably filled with slurred words about Carolina and the life of a woman in her thirties[i].

Lights are lowered; the crowd screamed and there was no room to move around. The Avett Brothers took the stage and a defining roar followed. They opened the show with “Laundry Room”, a slow beginning where the crowd sung along to the chorus, then picked up speed with all the members strumming their instruments as if they were in some sort of contest. From that point forward, the show was a mixture of songs from all their records. Softer songs were followed by songs that made everyone jump and shake their hips of all sizes while bumping into strangers[ii]. In-between songs, most of the talking was done by Scott Avett and he only spoke about how beautiful Virginia was and how grateful they were for all the cheers and support. There was a general lack of the sort of talk where a band member decides to toss in his stand-up routine and gather a few laughs. As the songs progressed, the band members released such energy that transcended into the crowded and infected all those present. Scott and Seth Avett, Bob Crawford, and Joe Kwon[iii] played as if it was the first show they played in years, showing that they truly enjoy what they do every night.

There is something that is felt at a show that is often indescribable and better left unsaid. The actualization that hundreds/thousands of people are all gathered in the same place to listen to the same band, to rub elbows with strangers and sing along as if they were gathered around a campfire. The events in each person’s day each led them to the same place to share in the admiration of a band, to steep their souls into music. The Avett Brothers managed to play a show where this indescribable feeling was the strongest it has ever been. When the crowd sings together, when you can hear each word by the hundreds of voices as if they were another member of the band, something rolls through your body that sends shivers down your spine. A sense of unity is experienced, that no matter who those strangers were and what they’ve done with their lives, we were all there together, right at that moment enjoying the same exact music. When you look at the face of the person next to you singing along with their favorite Avett Brothers’ song, you begin to notice the reason why they are belting the words out of their mouths as if something was pushing down on their chest and they had no other choice. They do not sing along just because they revel in the melodies, but because the lyrics mean something to them, something that has been personalized and attached with chains to such emotions. That is the beauty of The Avett Brothers and their music; the honest lyrics that speak about the emotions we all feel and are often too afraid to express. And there is no better way to understand the importance of their music then to watch them play live and glance over at the illuminated faces of the crowd. When Seth Avett was on stage by himself singing “The Ballad of Love and Hate”, the girl next to me was wiping away tears from her face because those words meant something to her, the very words he was singing reminded her of something dear. There were moments when I would look around me, heard the music and saw those lively bodies on stage and felt that there was no better place to be on that night.

They left the stage and the crowd began one of the most perfectly fitting and professional encore chants the East Coast has produced. Everyone was yelling, straining their vocal chords and there was this general uproar that made me believe that the venue was going to collapse within a few minutes. The noise became deafening near the end of the chant for more songs, the yells and screams and yelps and yowls and howls reaching a point where my eardrums were about to burst. It was the loudest I’ve ever heard Richmond, a moment that made me proud to be in this fair city that is usually known for producing dull lifeless crowds. The Avett Brothers ran out onto the stage and played three more songs to a very loud and mostly drunk group of people. They ended the show with “Salvation Song” and it felt like they were playing their farewell show. All four of them wrapped their arms around each other and sang without any instruments the chorus that flowed smoothly out of each mouth in the crowd and made it appear that the world wasn’t filled with such tragedy and that there was some hope cultivating somewhere.

“We came for salvation. We came for family. We came for all that's good, that's how we'll walk away. We came to break the bad. We came to cheer the sad. We came to leave behind the world a better way.”

[i] Carolina Girl was tearing up the dance floor during The Avett Brothers, twice leaving the crowd and coming back with brand new cups of flowing alcohol at the brim.

[ii] Near the end of the show, the girl behind me found it necessary to dig her knee into my ass. It felt like there was a dog let loose in the venue. This occurred until she turned around to leave once the show was over.

[iii] Joe Kwon smiled throughout the entire show, singing along even though there wasn’t a microphone near him. He would often carry around his cello while headbanging.