datamusicata

One of the best ways to learn to perform or to improve your stage presence and your performance is to go to see as much live performance as you can; all different kinds of music, theatre and dance.   Last Thursday, I took folk maven Roz Larman (www.folkscene.com) to Bob Stane’s Backstage at the Coffee Gallery (www.coffeegallery.com) in Alta Dena to hear Cliff Eberhardt (www.cliffeberhardt.com) perform.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Backstage or it’s founder, Bob Stane, created one of the most beloved clubs on the west coast; the fabled Ice House in Pasadena. A virtual who’s who of show business graced that stage during all the decades that Bob owned and operated that club. He always demanded an entertaining show from the performers and that’s what his audiences always got.

Bob has maintained that tradition at his new club, Coffee Gallery Backstage. It is an intimate room with a great sound system and not a bad seat in the house. And we got one of the more entertaining shows on the circuit in the presence of Cliff Eberhardt.

A truly wonderful guitar player who’s knowledge of the neck made every player in the audience want to go home and woodshed for six months. Effortless and with remarkable authority, he delivered two full sets of entertainment that delighted and humbled me.

And the guitar playing was just one aspect of this full spectrum performance. All, literally all of the songs Cliff sang were wonderful; so musical and full of sophisticated wordplay, profundity and intelligence He also made a couple of really familiar old standards wholly his own.

Speaking to him afterwards regarding his songs, he said that he listened to all the greats…Rogers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Lerner and Loew, Cole Porter…you get the idea. And while his songs were contemporary and rocking, their intelligence and compositional artistry were clearly influenced by the golden age of popular songwriting epitomized by the aforementioned composers.

And he was relaxed and funny. We laughed out loud throughout his seemingly off the top of his head monologues. It was such a pleasure to watch a performer who actually understood what his responsibilities under the spotlight were. I also spoke to him about contributing an article to datamusicata and he has graciously agreed, so look for an interesting and informative post from him in the coming weeks.

This is beginning to sound like a love letter, so let me close here with this: there are many, many guitar playing song writers out there right now, but if you want to see how it’s really done, go see Cliff Eberhardt. If you want to get a master class on how to entertain and enthrall a room, go see Red House recording artist Cliff Eberhardt the next time he is in your town.