Review: McCombs’ folk lends itself well to Saxaphaw venue

Saxapahaw—emphasis on the first syllable—is one of those towns with an apparently comprehensive single website. The kind a realtor probably made, that advertises its quaint farmer’s markets and “cottages for rent.” The River Mill Village, a complex beautifully converted to commercial and residential use, sticks out from its one-horse town surroundings with an eerie, Lynchian aura—the building looks lifted from the set of Twin Peaks.

I used press passes to bribe a driver for the 50 minute trek from Durham this past Friday, to see Cass McCombs. The singer-songwriter had a fairly attention-grabbing year (compared to his relatively obscure stature in years past) with the release of two excellent albums marked by unsettling ambivalence. McCombs takes a while to sink in, but when he does, he sticks like a crooked shank in the gut.

The show started about an hour later than originally slated, giving us the chance for ample time in the Eddy Pub, upstairs from the Ballroom. From the outside it looked promising and after an hour mixing among white-haired patrons, middle schoolers in Hot Topic garb and everyone in between, it left an impression as one of the coolest bars I’ve visited in North Carolina. For 45 minutes, we camped out on some benches with our local draughts, transfixed by a three-piece ensemble fronted by a pretty woman singing in Portugese and playing musical saw and accordion, among other instruments.

The venue was only filled to one-third its capacity, which made for easy migration to front-and-center. Of course, it’s not a venue easily stumbled upon, at 30 miles from Durham and 17 from Chapel Hill—and several of those down Highway 54, a slightly terrifying venture in the nighttime rain and fog, but reportedly beautiful in daylight. But its stature’s growing. The Mountain Goats show coming to the Haw River Ballroom a week from Saturday has already sold out, and Megafaun’s April 14 show will likely draw well too, thanks in part to the town’s recent, credit-boosting write-up in the New York Times travel section.

Frank Fairfield opened the show with an hour-long solo set of American Folk Anthology-type tracks centered by his excellent banjo picking and distinguished moustache. My fellow concertgoers were unacquainted with McCombs, which was somewhat concerning. It can be hard to enjoy concerts listened to with “worried ears,” the kind of scrutinizing paranoia one gets that a companion listener won’t appreciate one of your favorite artists. McCombs’ music could fall prey to this phenomenon; on record, his music is classical, understated, and full of sardonic poetry and humor that takes more than a few listens to fully understand, let alone appreciate.

Fortunately, everything in his arsenal was made more vibrant in the Haw River Ballroom—and what we witnessed was “The Cass McCombs Band,” not a one-man show. The music lulled the crowd into a hypnagogic hush that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but admiration. He pulled most of his material from his pair of 2011 releases and performed highlights like “Robin Egg Blue” and “County Line” fairly faithfully to the recorded versions. Disappointingly, “AIDS in Africa” and “You Saved My Life,” two of his most staggeringly depressive songs, were left out—lying in wait, I’d hoped, for a spellbinding encore that never materialized. The too-soon ending was obviously lost on the McCombs newcomers, but general consensus was that we’d get ourselves back to Saxapahaw on the next promise of the magic mix of singular sound and place.