There was little cause for argument from the start. At Mockingbird, the roots music hall in Staunton, a nearby table ordered s’mores and creme brulée as I finished a plate of fried oysters—the cole slaw side is not to be missed—and opener Mary Gordon Hall, of Batesville, took the stage. Hall trilled a short set of well-crafted songs, inviting the roomful of friends to sing along. And then she introduced Jesse Winchester. “He’s one of my top five songwriters,” said Hall, holding up her hand to testify. “I traveled to Richmond to see him open for Jimmy Buffett in the ’70s, and I couldn’t care less about Jimmy Buffett.”
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Jesse Winchester’s status as a draft-dodger kept him in Canada for a decade, where he collaborated with Todd Rundgren and members of The Band. A “songwriter’s songwriter,” his tunes have been covered by Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris and Joan Baez, to name a few. He lives in Charlottesville. |
Reputation precedes the “songwriter’s songwriter,” a Memphis native who dodged the Vietnam War draft and moved to Canada. He started writing songs there—his first was “Brand New Tennessee Waltz,” later covered by Joan Baez—and collaborated with musicians like Robbie Robertson of The Band, who produced Winchester’s first album. Winchester moved to Charlottesville in 2006 and released an album last year, his first in nearly a decade.
Winchester took to the stage alone with a classical guitar, in a green v-neck sweater over a blue oxford, dark olive slacks and a well-worn pair of loafers. A white, wispy beard hung from his chin like the first signs of refrigerator mold. His cheekbones and nose form three competing focal points in his expressive face. In a gruff Tennessee accent, most of Winchester’s banter was lost to the microphone set at folk levels. But while singing, his whispered delivery gave the noshing audience pause. During “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding,” from last year’s Love Filling Station, Winchester screwed his head around the point he’d fixed his eyes on at the back of the room, his voice dribbling down a lovely descending melody: “Oh, those sweet old love songs / Every word rings true / Sham-a-ling-dong-ding means sweetheart / Sham-a-ling-dang-dong does too.”
Later, “That’s What Makes You Strong,” from 1999’s Gentleman of Leisure, demonstrated his power as a songwriter. “If you love somebody, that’s what makes you need somebody,” he sang. “If you need somebody, that’s what makes you weak.” As Winchester threaded the idea over the course of three minutes, the woman in the Jesse Winchester t-shirt beside me was moved to a sobbing state beyond pure bliss. When things grew too precious over the course of more than 20 songs, no sappy sentiment—no eskimo kiss—went untempered by irreverence. “There should be some kind of law against having nothing but twigs and seeds,” he later sang to whoops and hollers.
But plenty of it was “right down the middle.” In “Nothin’ But a Breeze,” which Jimmy Buffett covered, he sang, “I’m the type of guy who likes it right down the middle / I don’t like all this bouncing back and forth / Me, I want to live with my feet in Dixie / And my head in the cool blue North.” Amid the clamor of plates being cleared, Winchester forced out a raw vibrato with a quivering jaw. As the food grew cold, the beer warm, and glasses of wine evaporated, he dropped the guitar and stood to yelp a gospel tune, guiding his compact frame through a frenetic dance as the audience clapped along. Even the nonbelievers, if there were any, were posessed by something.
