The space is dark, dense and sprinkled with onlookers as David Dondero takes the stage at East Atlanta rock ’n’ roll bar The Earl, clad in a flannel shirt, jeans and scuffed-up military-style shoes. When he sings, his voice is eerily similar to that of Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, who once said of Dondero, “It was hearing his voice that made me comfortable with my own.”
Dondero’s latest album, The Transient, was a bright spot in 2003. With its affecting, introspective indie/country-blues rockers, it explored the mysterious terrain between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Normally, when I hear the word “transient” I think of strange loners blowing through small towns, locked in an endless cycle of motion and adaptation. But the songs Dondero plays tonight are thoughtful enough to hold my interest from beginning to end. The Transient’s title track is enchanting as are most of the songwriter’s tunes, which are often narrative, Kerouac-tinged ditties about life on the road.
Dondero performs a song about Joseph P. Strauss (aka the chief engineer who planned and oversaw the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1930s San Fransisco) entitled “Double Murder Ballad Suicide” in which he lectures the crowd about the true color of the Golden Gate bridge: orange vermilion.
A soft pink spotlight surrounds him as he sits alone onstage with his acoustic guitar. The small crowd begins dwindling halfway through the set. But Dondero presses on with more tracks from The Transient— “Living And The Dead,” “Ashes On The Highway” (by fan request) and “Less Than The Air” among them. He plays an unexpected Charlie Pride cover, “Kiss An Angel,” also at the crowd’s request. Overall, it was a low-key night, but it made for an intimate acoustic experience for all who decided to stick around.