Several years ago, Andrew Bird found himself taking shelter from freezing rain in a crowded Amsterdam bar on a February night. The singer-songwriter beloved by fans for more than two decades for his inventive compositions, elastic performance on violin and guitar, and elliptical wordplay (not to mention his uncanny whistling skills) was struck by the intimacy of the candlelit space. A woman squeezed in next to him and exclaimed, “Oh, gezellig!” — a Dutch expression that translates roughly to, “How cozy!” Thus was born Bird’s idea for his Gezelligheid, a series of wintertime shows in a more casual, stripped-down format than his usual touring setup.
“These shows are designed as a seasonal salve of sorts,” he tells the Scene by phone. “I try to create that kind of warmth. And instead of looking to me as a persona onstage, I was trying to create a different way of listening to music, where you let it envelop and wash over you.”
Now in its seventh year, Bird’s Gezelligheid has become a tradition at Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church. Following the release of his latest album Echolocations: River (an all-instrumental violin collection, improvised while standing ankle-deep in the Los Angeles River), Bird is bringing the program to Downtown Presbyterian Church on Friday and Saturday for its Nashville debut. First-time Gezelligheid attendees can look forward to a mixed program in which Bird spotlights his violin playing on instrumentals as well as songs with lyrics. He’ll be accompanied by upright bassist and guitarist Alan Hampton, and he’s keen to leave himself plenty of room to work off the cuff.
“The tunes I’m choosing have sort of a melancholy darkness that I also associate with warmth,” says Bird. He’s quick to point out that for him, the word “melancholy” conveys a broader scope than you might expect. “To most people, it means ‘sad.’ But what it really means is that mix of happy and sad.”
You can hear exactly what he means in “Left Handed Kisses,” a bittersweet duet with Fiona Apple from last year’s studio album Are You Serious. Even when Bird is at his most direct — like when he discusses his wife’s bout with cancer elsewhere on Serious — his songs are nevertheless approachable from different vantage points.
Bird chafes at being confined, even by his own material. Though he’s had classical training, he prefers not to use sheet music. He sees his songs as mutable, and their meaning sometimes shifts, even from one night to the next. For him, success is making a song unique every night he plays it.
“I can inhabit it and not have to pinch myself to be present,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll keep messing with songs well after the record’s out, and I might get to the point where I just say, ‘You know what? I’m feelin’ it how it was before I started messing with it,’ and go back to the less complicated version of that.”
This sense of flexibility comes to the forefront at the Gezelligheid shows. Even when Bird and Hampton simplify arrangements, a song can actually expand.
“Going back to when I used to play classical music,” he says, “I like the Romantic composers, but they were telling you exactly how to play it, and how the dynamics should be at every moment. It’s very descriptive music, whereas the Bach was just a blueprint. The stuff that has the longest shelf life is the stuff that’s more like a blueprint. That also holds true for the songs I’ve written over the years.”
“I haven’t told myself how they should be done,” he continues, citing “Why,” “Capsized” and “End Lull” as examples. “The songs where every measure’s accounted for tend to fall out of favor for me.”
Unsurprisingly, physical setting heavily influences the tone and spirit of the performance. It’s telling that when Bird talks about this aspect, he attributes willfulness and desire to the spaces themselves.
“Those spaces want to hear more linear sound, so violin is perfect,” he explains. “You sing differently in those spaces, and layering works, but attack is not good in those spaces. Drums or anything super high-end, bright or attack-y gets amplified in those spaces, and it’s not what the room wants. Which is really what Gezelligheid and Echolocations is all about — reacting to your environment and playing what the space is asking for. Sometimes you just need two chords, some very strong lyrics, and then freedom to do what feels right at that moment.”
Email music@nashvillescene.com
