The first band member to come out on stage was under a foot tall.
It did not play an instrument. But it sat next to Jake Minch the whole show wearing a blue suit and a broad smile as if the fuzzy stuffed monkey was simply happy to be included.
As Jake Minch neared the end of his “George On Tour” at the Songbyrd Music House, on August 22, he brought with him a dream-like atmosphere accompanied by a personable performance.
In his Bedroom
In the age of monetizing attention spans, audiences are not expected to let their mind wonder while a band plays the opening song.
Through a simple stage decoration, Minch promotes this mindset.
The outside of the concert venue was drowned out by the hectic DC traffic; however, the audience members let the soft lullaby-like keys carry them to a nostalgic place far from monotonous drive-thru lines and elevators rides.
One fan, Isabelle Jones, was captivated by the soft welcoming environment of the show.
“It feels like you are with him in his bedroom,” Jones said. “Since the album is so much about him growing up and leaving home it was nice that it felt like you were watching him create it in his home.”
As Minch and the rest of the band wandered on stage the venue was dark. The dark, however, was warmed by two table lamps on stage.
The yellow glow of the lamps and the soft melody brought me to a restful living room suspended between the feeling of watching staticky video recordings of my childhood birthdays and the sound of light rain tapping on the windows of my mind.
“It was so intimate and cozy,” a fan said. “The environment just felt like his songs.”
Playing a song with no G string
Minch’s songs swayed back and forth between soft and loud.
Each song ignited a childlike wonder in a room full of young adults.
The song that left the most impact on me was “whose you are.” The first half of the studio version of the song takes the form of an acoustic tune that could be played around a campfire.
The live version was not only louder but also included a harmonica in the outro. The crowd’s energy once the song was over brought a smile to Minch’s face.
“I think that’s the best ‘whose you are’ we’ve done,” Minch said.
Although many individuals compare Minch’s music to Bright Eyes, I found that the live performance of “Say Uncle” transformed the crowd into a The Front Bottoms mosh pit with less punching.
A larger part of Minch’s personable performance comes from the quiet moments between songs while he tunes his guitar. Which comes with risks as many musicians know.
After breaking the G string while tuning, Minch showed adaptability and humor before playing “Fingers and Clothes.”
“This song is about playing a song with no G string,” Minch said.
The whole crowd is singing now
On March 11, I saw Minch perform for the first time. Only five months ago Minch was up on the stage at the Songbyrd with just one guitar and a handful of songs.
Minch explained to the crowd that as an opener, the first song he would play was “strip mall.”
“I would get super nervous before shows,” Minch said. “So, it’s (strip mall) not super hard to learn so if someone was singing along in the front row it would be a signal flare to calm my nerves.”
When hearing him play “strip mall” in March, the crowd sang with hesitation. But singing the same song to a crowd full of fans sounded like a makeshift choir. The kind of makeshift found in the colored over lines of a three-year-old’s drawing. Not perfect, but uniquely complete and full of love.
Whether the audience was crying while holding a loved one or springing into the air with excited smiles, Minch’s stuffed monkey sat quietly. The monkey looked at the crowd with innocence.
The ice that clacked in cocktail shakers and Minch’s lyrics about growing up were the remnants of the adults that drove to the venue. All that was left was a contagious innocence. An innocence that was not even a foot tall.
