Crabtree and Delmhorst

Special to the VJ by Kathryn Preston

Crabtree and Delmhorst bring a musical storm to Steve's

Steve’s Guitars impresario Steve Standiford, warmly hailed the return of acoustic musicians Melissa Crabtree and Kris Delmhorst to his intimate venue on November 19.

Crabtree, opening for the crowd with local guitar wizard Frank Martin providing accompaniment, did much more than just warm up the room with her thought-provoking, Woody Guthrie style of quietly revolutionary musicianship. She exhibited a wild-woman/tomboy quality that pushes the boundaries of what society considers feminine, a quality that seemingly runs in her family tree. “Anna Lee” breathed life into the spirit of Crabtree’s great aunt, exiled by the family for being a lot like Crabtree herself. Honoring her aunt’s legacy, she sang: “No one could ever whisper your name, but I can feel you winking at me from the picture frame.”

When she’s not touring, Crabtree is a river-runner. “Cat Fishin’” was written on the Delores River in Colorado, and displays what the over-thirties crowd might describe as a Nancy Sinatra, walkin’-boots-attitude toward life.

With the tune “A Message from a Soldier,” Crabtree embodies the mythological role of the “messenger.” She interviews a soldier headed for Iraq: “We started talkin’ ‘bout the Patriot Act. He said ‘I guess they got together to stab us in the back. But I should probably be careful ‘bout what I say cause if the colonel heard, he’d have ‘em take me away.’” Crabtree literally becomes the channel through which the soldier’s spirit can be heard.

There was a whole host of strong feminine spirits sharing the stage with Crabtree. Her vocals and finger-picking invoked the spirit of Janis Joplin in “Me and Bobby McGee” as well as Helen Reddy and “Delta Dawn.” The audience also heard an accomplished balladeer, the likes of Michelle Shocked.

Her reverence for free-flowing rivers is paid homage in “Muddy Waters:” “I have dreams, they’re always changing. My life always needs rearranging. But I feel at ease when I see the flowin’ water of the muddy Colorado.”

With the message that we must all aspire to create and sustain the world we want to be a part of, she is walking her talk, having toured the country in a bio-diesel automobile, and having produced a CD to promote the use of fossil fuel alternatives.

While Crabtree sings of man’s relationship to the Earth, her fellow Sagittarian Delmhorst sings of the relationships between men and women. Like Wuthering Heights set to music, Delmhorst’s lyrics probe the darker moments of relationships: “I’ve been dying this whole evening to just reach out for your hand. I’ve been trying to keep believing that I might understand. I know words fail you, and I know sometimes I do too.”

Even more tempestuous is “Hurricane,” evocative of Stevie Nicks’ “I have always been a storm.” Delmhorst sings: “Blow me down and leave me lying in your wake. Let it rain, let it pour, let it roar away. I’m holdin’ out my tongue for a taste of rain.”

In “Bobby Lee” there’s a sense of suffocating in a relationship, and the imagery is downright biblical: “This cave’s too dark for me…. I was only trying to roll the stone away.”

Emblematic of audience response that night, the man next to me started growling during “Waiting Under the Waves.” He said it was a reaction to the seductive Tori Amos-like way Delmhorst manipulated her breath.

Moving in circles and spinning are common themes for Delmhorst, conjuring images of a cyclone. In “Lullabye” she croons: ‘You have turned in circles all your life so your shadow wouldn’t show.” Likewise, in “Weathervane,” she sings: “I too can move the prairies. I too can move the sea. I’m gonna take that motion, take it right inside of me. No more spin around, spin around, spin around.”

“Little Wings,” a celebration of human moments in a corporate world, was dedicated to Steve Standiford, owner of the musical venue that evening, for sharing his warm and an authentic space for music-making.

Delmhorst left us with these words of wisdom: “No matter what you bought or sold, the only thing you’ll have to hold is the love you’ve loved and the truth you’ve told.”

Amen.