Elvis is in the building
Elvis Perkins that is. And with record labels courting, he's about to take his anguished songs about life, death, and 9/11 to a much bigger audience
NEW YORK -- Elvis Perkins is a man of few notes. Last weekend at a Lower East Side bar, neither fancy picking nor clever chord changes cluttered his songs, which are warm and measured and strangely serene. Strange, because so many of them were cobbled from unfathomable chaos.
And yet everything about this early-evening set in the tiny Rockwood Music Club was geared for comfort: the softly pumping harmonium, the singer's thick muffler and mug of tea, his lovely, quivering voice.
And, of course, the songs. They unfold slowly, furtively taking root and blooming without fanfare. Such simple grace and understated force materialize rarely, so when a musician like Perkins arrives, with barely a career to call his own, all you can do is nod and tell a friend and pray that he picks a right-hearted record label. They are, as we speak, taking numbers.
Let's dispense with the vaguely useful reference points early on: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Jeff Buckley. With his backup trio, known collectively as Elvis Perkins in Dearland, there are echoes of the Band and John Lennon. During a late-set performance of the '60s pop hit ''Runaway," the ghost of Del Shannon appeared, and he was happy, if mystified.
Perkins's upbeat encore was striking because his album is powerfully otherwise. ''Ash Wednesday" is a collection of chronologically sequenced songs written before and after the death of the musician's mother -- actress and photographer Berry Berenson, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, which flew into the World Trade Center on 9/11. His father, the actor Anthony Perkins -- best known for his role as Norman Bates in the film ''Psycho" -- died of complications from AIDS in 1992, when Elvis was 16.
The album's title track is an elegy to the day after the attacks and Perkins's life after the loss. It occupies 6 1/2 gently devastating minutes in the middle of the album, which is not widely available. But that will soon change.
SAMPLE ELVIS PERKINS Check out audio clips at www.boston.com/clips.
Perkins -- who declined to be interviewed until his contractual ducks are in a row -- signed with a booking agent in February and chose a pair of managers last week. Mike Martinovich and Ben Weber (who manage, respectively, My Morning Jacket and Nada Surf) currently spend substantial quantities of their day fielding phone calls from labels, both indies and majors, that are interested in signing Perkins. Representatives from three record companies were at the Rockwood Music Hall for the recent show.
The loss of both parents to ''two of the greatest tragedies of our time," as the blurred, typewritten liner notes of ''Ash Wednesday" point out, is woven indelibly into Perkins's work. It's also the reason the singer-songwriter, who just turned 30, has performed fewer than two dozen shows of his own music.
Though Perkins has been writing and playing for more than a decade -- with home recordings making the rounds of the underground -- those years were also spent grappling with tremendous sorrow, and only recently has he mustered the will to go public. Since relocating from Los Angeles to North Smithfield, R.I., where his Dearland bandmates (and longtime friends) Brigham Brough, Wyndham Boylan-Garnett, and Nicholas Kinsey reside, Perkins is making up for lost time. He'll spend the next month traversing the Eastern Seaboard, stopping tomorrow in Boston at the Paradise, where he opens for Ambulance LTD, and again on May 7 opening for Eef Barzalay at the Middle East. Perkins is also scheduled to perform this summer at Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
If you're curious how such anguished songcraft will go over with an unsuspecting audience, rest assured not all of ''Ash Wednesday" is heart wrenching. (You can hear several songs at www.myspace.com/elvisperkins.) In fact, the first six tracks, which were written prior to 9/11, are positively winsome. At the club Perkins played two of them: ''While You Were Sleeping," a delicately frayed catalog of fuzzy family snapshots, and ''Without Love," a genre-defying tune that flirts with folk, jazz, and Eastern European flavors. ''Sleep Sandwich" is similarly organic and elegant, but when Perkins reached the third verse, the packed crowd was transported to the singer's post-9/11 reality.
''It's morning in heaven again," Perkins sang. ''LA is lost in the clouds/ So I sing goodbye to skylines and I will sadly sing you off to our next episode/ I'll make the most of my time machine/ I'll build a theremin."
Who knows if Perkins has actually made his theremin, or if it's overanalyzing to note that his dream instrument is designed to be played without being touched. He is, finally, building a musical life. Here's hoping it's a source of pleasure and strength for him. It surely is for us.
Elvis Perkins opens for Ambulance LTD tomorrow at the Paradise. Doors are at 8; show starts at 9. Tickets are $10. 617-562-8820.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. 