Review: The Milk Carton Kids in Seattle
THE MILK CARTON KIDS BROUGHT THE LONG AWAITED RAIN - washing away a prolonged summer of wild-fire smoke, and ushering in fall with lyrical guitars.
Performing at the beautiful Moore, The Milk Carton Kids complimented the room with a bare stage; leaving only the black curtain behind them, haze, and lights to stage their performance.
Katie Pruitt opened with a set as impressive as the headliners, capturing the audience’s attention with only her guitar as company. She played a few of her prior releases and talked about how scary it was to write new music, “Your first album’s great because you get to cherry-pick all the best songs you’ve ever written, but then they want you to do all that again in two years, and you’ve run out of old songs to pull from”. The only reason to think she even had nerves was her mentioning them, her talent singing and playing guitar framed her lyrics so their emotive imagery could shine. Her new songs are really something to look forward to, “I’m done with white lies, white Jesus, and You” is a lyric I will have trouble getting out of my head. At one point she fingerpicked the strings of her guitar up where her left hand was placed and when the crowd cheered for her, she admitted “I’d usually only ever do that on an electric”, eliciting an even more impressed reaction from the audience.
It wasn’t long after Katie Pruitt’s set that Joey Ryand and Kenneth Pattengale, The Milk Carton Kids themselves, came out and started immediately into a few of their songs. Sharing an old timey looking microphone, their guitars nestled next to each other as familiar friends, swaying together in a slow dance of instruments. If you’ve never seen The Milk Carton Kids play together, it is like watching a pair of dancers, Kenneth’s hands flying across his guitar as Joey pulls him back to the melody, holding down the rhythm of the folk duo, the two maintaining harmony as if they can hear each other’s voices in their souls.
Along with being two of the most talented folk musicians working, the duo also makes a great comedy team. Every couple of songs, something would set Joey or Kenneth off into a familiar riff, laughing at a joke only they would know, sharing it with their musical partner and the audience in the same breath. Of course, it could all be rehearsed, as Joey jokingly insinuated after one meandering joke about his grandmother’s ghost haunting the sound board, but the two of them make every moment on stage feel as if it’s happening for the very first time. There were moments where Kenneth had to stumble away from the microphone because he was laughing, or one song that had to begin again when Joey wouldn’t stop winking.
Midway through the concert Joey shared how we might not recognize some of what they had been playing because it was off their new album including the first single, “Running on Sweet Smile”, had only just come out that day. Fans looking forward to the album can look forward to hearing Joey on the banjo. “He learned how to be real good at playing the banjo,” Kenneth said, turning to us, “he just hasn’t figured out how to tune it”, “I can tune it fine, it’s re-tuning it”. After a minute or so of tinkering Kenneth asked “Ready?” When Joey played what sounded like an intune chord, his partner in song muttered “whatever” and they began the next song with another chuckle together. For how sad much of their music is, you can’t attend a Milk Carton Kids show without plenty of laughter.
When they came on at the end for their encore, they told the audience they hadn’t decided what song to do, but as the audience yelled their catalog at them they announced it would be one with a dead main character. My favorite song of theirs is about how Kenneth imagined life would continue had he not survived cancer, far too morose for an encore. Imagine my delight when they played “Sea of Roses”, Joey cracking jokes about Kenneth’s fictional death, just as he had last time they were in town.
They invited Katie Pruitt on for the rest of the encore, played another few songs of theirs, one of hers, and several covers. “Storm Windows” by John Prine, “One Little Song” by Gillian Welch, and closing out with “You’ve Got a Friend” in Me by Randy Newman. They had picked up “One Little Song” that afternoon because “most of this encore is just music we like playing together.” The three of them swayed together onstage like they had been playing together all their lives. As natural on stage as you might find them anywhere else in the world. Whether Katie Pruitt becomes a regular in their music, or is just a fixture of this tour, the trio has plenty to share as they continue across North America.
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