Free Lunch: Shawn Mullins at World Café Live in Philadelphia
January 27, 2006
By Maureen Palli
It was a little freaky to listen to a DJ - live on the air – while she was standing right in front of me. Mid-day radio host Helen Leicht’s voice seemed detached from her body as it floated across the WXPN airwaves and through the speakers of the venue.
On the last Friday in January, Leicht welcomed us to the free noon concert at World Café Live in Philadelphia. The crowd of business men and women on their lunch break, students from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel campuses, and thirty and forty-something mothers was exactly the demographic the state-of-the-art venue, built in 2004, was designed to attract.
Located next to the WXPN radio station studios and named for the syndicated radio show “World Café,” the venue is spacious, clean and smoke-free. It’s a listening room for “grown-ups” who haven’t given up their love of live music but aren’t thrilled about the idea of having their feet stick to the floor.
Shawn Mullins sauntered on-stage with his band saying he just woke up. Doing his best to impersonate Steve Martin, he quipped: “There will be a delay in the show. I’m just waiting for the drugs to take effect.” With a black and gray striped ski cap pulled down to meet the frames of his eyeglasses, a scruffy beard and torn-up jeans, he did indeed look like a middle-aged man who had just dragged himself out of bed. But when he started pickin’ on his guitar and began to sing, he was more like a little boy bounding out of bed on Christmas morning.
Mullins’ delivery of James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here,” was a highlight of the performance. The power-packed political song takes a swipe at the rich-get-richer epidemic now raging in America and Mullins delivered it with heartfelt angst. It’s been five years since Mullins has put out a record of new solo material and his performance of the love song, “Blue As You”, the rocker, “Beautiful Wreck” and his own “Solitaire” coupled with the traditional “House of the Rising Sun,” gave the Philadelphia crowd a lush sampling of his upcoming 9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor release.
Since it was a live radio broadcast, Mullins couldn’t bitch or moan when the microphone screeched feedback. Instead, he looked dead on at the sound engineer and silently dragged his index finger across his throat. Strings snapped and Mullins had to tune his guitar a few times, but the band from Georgia filled in the gaps with a little jazz. David Patterson got a laugh out of the audience when he played “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on his electric guitar.
When the show was over and the crowd started to leave the building, I hung around for a few minutes and watched the band pack up their instruments. Mullins was nowhere in site, but bassist Pat Blanchard, drummer Gerry Hansen and multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook were all on the stage. A small group of women were hanging around engaging Blanchard in conversation. One woman had a small child with her and another was about eight months pregnant. I laughed to myself as I watched the mid-day concert-goers. Long live groupies in all shapes and sizes!
As I exited the venue onto Walnut Street, I was thinking that although Philadelphia may not be the music mecca of the world, it’s cool to live here and be able to see a free concert on my lunch break. Even so, while walking to my car humming a Mullins tune, I had “Georgia on my mind.”
