My car rumbled along the Maryland highways, enduring the terrors of Washington DC’s 295 to 695 stretch of road, the already poor driving of our nation’s capital apparently exacerbated by last year’s quarantine. Playing on the stereo, feet feverishly flicking between the brake and the accelerator, we sing along
So if not now, then when?
Shut up, jump in
Both feet, deep end
If not now, then when?
and we wondered, maybe necessarily, if this could speak to the day, the weekend, the sense that moving to a life post-covid is a thing that’s real (at the least, here, in this place, this time).
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Life and this world are so often governed by the narratives we present, as people, these tidy little things that can soften the years’ sharpest edges. So, here’s a quick one: Joe Pug is a (brilliant) singer-songwriter from PG County, MD who famously abandoned college at UNC, drove halfway across the known world to work as a carpenter in Chicago, settled into the folk scene, and laid the foundation for a career in song with Nation of Heat. He kept going, building a beautiful, complex architecture all his own.
But like all stories, it’s entirely true and a little bit bullshit. Joe Pug is and will always be one of my favorites – his lyrics are insightful and incisive in a way so few writers can ever begin to imagine – but what makes them so wonderful is the way they mirror true human existence. He walks the line between honesty and rosiness, never exactly saying everything is gonna be alright, gonna be clean and orderly. Life is a messy thing, profoundly nonlinear, and I think Joe’s songs embody this spirit in a way that comforts me deeply.
Sometimes, I listen to songs because I need someone to lie to me. Sometimes, I listen to songs because I need someone to tell me some truths. For Joe, I get both.
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He came out wearing a grey suit and a wide smile, bright blue eyes shining under the spotlight. An earlyish show with no opener (if anything good in the music world comes from covid, let it be earlier starts), Joe had divided the stage into segments: a mic for standing, a mic for sitting on a stool, and a mic hovering over a shiny black piano. He spent the most time at the center – admitting partway through he’d broken the planned order established with the sound guy – singing and telling stories.
He opened with “Hymn #35”, its contradictions taking on different textures in the wake of covid; in a time when we have all been both unsafe and safe, loved and unloved, secure and insecure, this felt like the opening reading at church, the one that primes the faithful for further reflection.
He slid smoothly into “After Curfew”, its chords, notes, and words as electric as a soul. When he sings, “You are not fragile,” it’s a line that contains multitudes. It could refer to the story implicit to the song; it could be an admonition of the listener, to revisit the way they think and feel about themselves (it may be true that those of us who seek this kind of music view ourselves as fragile, maybe even already broken); it could be that Joe is singing to himself, to his child, to his father, to the soldiers, to those bowed in pews; it could be none of these things and just a hopeful prayer offered in the darkness, a little lie we tell ourselves so that we keep going.
“You are not fragile”. Tattoo these words into your blood and breathe it into existence. It doesn’t matter if they’re true. It only matters if you can believe it.
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I think this last year has cracked so much of what it means to be human in the nowadays, with nearly every industry and role having taken a new direction, at least in some kind of way. Throughout and following quarantine, Joe Pug has played weekly songs (even enduring a brief name change following a possible-maybe-kinda-copyright-mistake-thingie), played shows over Zoom (hard to express how these were actually cool and uplifting and not just a weird thing), kept The Working Songwriter podcast in motion, and put together an album, The Diving Sun (released in March). All while living the life of a family man who’d periodically post videos and messages about his grilling/smoking experiences and apparently shared his “best coleslaw recipe” with BJ Barham of American Aquarium (typing this sentence made me imagine a tour with these two sharing the stage, and now I want something I didn’t know I could want).
Which is all just to get to the point of saying that Joe Pug kept busy in quarantine, but damn if it didn’t feel good to see him sing his songs. He enthralled – as he usually does – with his well-honed musical acumen, comedic chops, and storytelling that involves the audience almost as directly as possible. I can’t say that any particular record featured more and less than the others, and as is always true with a Joe Pug show, he sang what needed singing.
About halfway through the set, he memorialized the night with renditions of “Sam Stone” and “Mama’s Eyes” in memory of John Prine and Justin Townes Earle. I was ready for neither and cried quietly in my seat. He made us laugh afterwards, sharing that he didn’t know how to move forward from such a sad duo of songs, so he’d keep singing more sad songs, slipping into “First Time I Saw You” before all but opening the night to requests.
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During covid-life (quarantine and that lengthy post-quarantine period that wasn’t quite), one of the most missed truths of living was seeing folks who live outside your immediate circle. When we bought our table, we immediately invited our friend JJ, who we last saw in-person when Joe Pug played Boot and Saddle in Philly (RIP). So she drove down from York to make it just in time, and as much as I loved the show, I think being able to share it made it that much better.
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Joe played just 3 of the 8 songs from The Diving Sun, and the last was requested during the encore (“Crescent Bridge”, which I wanted to hear, too). He ended the set with the roller coaster run of “If Still It Can’t Be Found”, “I Don’t Work In a Bank” (along with a lovely preamble about being a doomsday prepper), and “Hymn 101”. It’s a rare thing to have cause to for hope in despair, to laugh uproariously, and then to sing a prayer with however many people settled into their tables at The Hamilton.
He graciously came out after the show to talk while his father slung merch behind the table.
Something about saying hello just felt like something extra special.
