As autumn begins to fall, I find myself in an unsteady state, somewhere between the rising dread of lost daylight and the untamed joy of undressing forests and breath-stopping winds. A dichotomy of being that certainly has more shades of gray, but it’s hard to see past the splitting.
And so, in the way of the modern person, my hours become filled with activity, to avoid my mind’s intrusive preoccupations.
Most importantly, I get lost in song.
So many people have to fight to find the light, to see those little glimmers of hope in the daily shadows. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster (henceforth, Pete) and Spencer Thomas have a unique gift for doing exactly that.
Having both released new records this year, they shared a band on an east coast tour, hitting small clubs and homes up and off the coastline, finding homes in small towns and cities alike. I caught them twice, lucky enough to have their songs engulf me in the incandescent Club 603, to carom off the wide-open cathedral walls of York’s Central Market. Two kinds of beauty, two kinds of shows.
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Take Care
Pete’s record, Take Heart, Take Care has the kind of songs that burrow into your mind’s eye as easily as a loving mother’s smile, with phrases that do more than express ideas, they teach. Empathy, perspective, and the ever-loving, goddamned importance of caring for yourself. He doesn’t shame any but the inhumane assholes wielding positions of power like a billy club at the top of the capitalist food chain (“Flies On Shit”); instead, Pete focuses on the little glories of being alive, the importance of pushing forward. Maybe we can say, “It gets better”, but I’m not sure that’s the moral here; I think it’s that, “It might get better and you have to find out” mixed with a little “this world is beautiful if you just get a moment to look around”.
I think, if we hold onto our deepest sense of honesty, Pete’s songs are like Flannery O’Connor stories, replete with epiphany. It’s in the little moments, sometimes after crisis, but mostly just in the quiet parts of the song, when his yearning voice cries out, heavy with faith. And my God, when he sings, “time, time is the mender / whose strange mechanics / yet untold / bid us rise entwined together,” on “Take Heart, Take Care”, his voice burdens the poetry with emotional depth that quickens in the throat. It is hard not to cry a little, but harder still not to hope.
Hang Tough
Spencer’s new record, Hanging Tough, caught me by surprise. In retrospect, I knew Young Valley and could hear some of that connection, but this record. Something altogether different, he channels late-70s Springsteen and filters that sound through the south, his own experiences. Spencer, much like Pete, has a gift for turning soul-shadows into something a little brighter, though he doesn’t shy from his own depression, letting his lyrics hide behind major chords and tiny glimmers in the cracks between the pain.
If you’ve ever felt that anhedonia, that pervasive sense of nothing, Spencer identifies it throughout his songs – on “Lift Me Up” and “Hanging Tough”, in particular – but makes sure we all know there’s more to life than darkness. He finds poetry easily, too: “white wine flows a river / then a whiskey and I’m undone” or “sunsets burning our backs / you’re waving for a taxicab / rain you know of a place you wanna go.” Heavy imagery burns through his songs.
Then he belts out a song like, “Real” or “Traveling Angel” and you know it’s likelier than not to be okay. There’s that needed beauty, that moment of something that reminds the pit at the core of your soul isn’t a sign of emptiness. It just needs filling.
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Taking Heart, Hanging Tough
That first night, as we walk into Scott’s house, GR is smoking a cigarette on the steps. A hello and a thank you, we slip past into the house to say our hellos and stake our spaces. The crowd tumbles in steadily, filling the living room with stories and and the clack of beer cans on wood. The band walks out, Pete picking up the bass, Spence sitting at the keys, and he slides into “Dark Tonight”. Remember, up there a few sentences ago when I compared him to late-70s Springsteen? This is the song. This is the one for your late-night drives, your midnight rambles under the stars. It owns a little loneliness, a lot of heaviness.
“Harder Than It Used to Be” came a few songs later, the comedown after the rock and roll punch of “Company Man”. A song inspired by the terrors of immigration control going on in our country, the wanton disregard for human life on a massive scale, the destruction of families in the false name of safety. It rang truer than the Liberty Bell ever will. Spencer ended his set each night with album closer “Father’s Son” and a duet of Petty’s “Walls” with Pete. Singing Petty with a crowd is a kind of shared prayer, a rock and roller’s “Our Father” in the pews, incense traded for the distant scent of cigarettes and spilled beer.
Pete followed both nights, setlist consistent. At 603, he had a subtle sense of energy and urgency; at Central Market, Brooklyn had gotten to him the day before, laid out on the evergreen concrete in a quietly fluorescing nap before the show. Either way, he traded songs for smiles, jokes for laughter, and joy for joy. “Plenty Wonder” and its call to love. “Educated Guesses” and the reminder to remember your mother as she was. “Poor Relations” and its quiet urging to keep moving forward. The heavy prayer of “Take Heart, Take Care” and its cry for devotion. And that finale of “Held My Own” reminding all of us that we have done what we have done, that we’re still alive and well enough to draw breath.
What more can we ask?
