Frank Critelli and Shandy Lawson at Books and Company - Songs from the Sofa

Frank Critelli and Shandy Lawson at Books and Company - Songs from the Sofa
6/30/06

I've only been to a couple of these Songs from the Sofa performances, but this one was by far my favorite.
A lot of times when Frank plays, it seems like he's just having fun up there. He plays well, but doesn't really push himself. This time, though, he was really working for it. It was like he had something to prove. He played a couple of new songs. One he claimed as Johnny Cash inspired was particularly good. He also told a lot of stories.
Someone asked Shandy Lawson how he could write from so many different perspectives, all seemingly older than he is and he explained it away as "All lies," but certainly it's more than that. I feel no shame in admitting that my opinion of him has changed completely. I've listened to a lot of Townes Van Zandt and read a biography of Steve Earle in the intervening time between when I first saw him and now. If Johnny Cash can write songs in the persona of a prisoner without ever going to jail and James Joyce can write a first-person stream-of-consciousness novel about an aging Jew, then I guess Shandy Lawson can write the songs he does. Frank Critelli describes him as a short story writer. I think that's pretty right on. Think Flannery O'Connor or Tim O'Brien. For some songwriters, the songs seem to be chisled from stone, labored over and crafted; for others, it seems like they float in through the window, fully formed. Like Townes Van Zandt, Shandy Lawson seems more like the latter. Unlike Van Zandt, Lawson's songs favor realism to abstraction. He played a Steve Earle song - Ellis Unit One - and that brought it all together for me. I could really see what he was going for then.

http://www.myspace.com/frankcritelli
http://www.myspace.com/shandylawson

I took pictures:
http://flickr.com/photos/oldangelmidnight/sets/72157594189501187/
and videos are on the way:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=oldangelmidnight