Numb butts, spilled beer & The Everybodyfields

It’s pretty unusual to show up mere minutes before a concert begins and be forced by your own lateness to sit in the front row, but that’s what happened to me on Saturday night. I drove up to my hometown to see The Everybodyfields at Barking Legs—which usually plays hosts to dance troupes and Pilates classes and theatrical performances, thus the strange setup that greeted me and my dad and my boyfriend Joe when we slipped into the 186-person capacity room just before the opener took the state. There are four rows of folding theatre seats across the back wall, benches lining the walls and filling up a small annex off to the side, and a narrow carpeted area circling the stage wide, low stage—and that’s where we ended up along with the rest of the night’s stragglers, sitting right at the edge of the stage, cross-legged like first-graders at summer camp. Only at summer camp you don’t have to worry about knocking your neighbor’s beer over with your elbow.

The Everybodyfields are from Johnson City, a few miles northeast of Chattanooga. They’re really young but play songs that are so beautiful and intense and heart-wrenching and wonderful that it’s scary. Sometimes they make me cry, sometimes they give me goosebumps, sometimes both at once. Twangy and folky and honest, they sing about their own broken hearts and those of others—friends and farmers and rodeo riders and moonshiners—with equal grace and emotional thwomp. Technically, the band is just Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews, who co-write and sing, trading off acoustic guitar and bass. But when they play live, they’re joined by a pedal steel player and a keyboardist/guitarist to round everything out.

Chattanooga loves them—it seems like they’ve played a show in town every few months since their first album came out in 2004—so Friday night’s show was totally different from when I saw them at The Earl in Atlanta back in August, when people seemed more interested in what was going on at the bottoms of their PBR cans than whatever was happening onstage. And beyond not having to strain my ears over the aimless chatter of disinterested East Atlantans just to hear the music, this semi-hometown show was better in every single way. The crowd was warm and excited to be there, settled into their seats and hanging on to every note; the band obviously felt at home, too, and the night unfolded into an hours-long event. The band took requests, shared wardrobe secrets, told stories, and played two rambling sets that touched on all three of their albums and included a Lionel Ritchie cover (and profuse apologizing for the Lionel Rictchie cover, even though they obviously liked it-- they claim they had to learn it for a wedding they played recently, but who really needs an excuse to cover some Lionel?). And then they still came out for an encore.

The summer camp storytime vibe endured for most of the show, though after the second set my dad stole a spot in the corner of the annex. But Joe and I lasted til the final encore, when we slid back into some seats on the front row after some of the crowd inexplicably vacated. (Guess it was kind of a late night for Chattanooga.) It sounded better from five feet back and three feet up-- and I was finally able to sneak a photo without feeling like a first-row stalker weirdo. Our rear ends were certainly happier, but truth is I would probably sit in any number of uncomfortable positions to see this band, so as long as everyone else keeps quiet and just lets them do their thing.

Related links:
The Everybodyfields at MySpace
Paste: Band of the Week: The Everybodyfields
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