Bobby Evers writesLydia Loveless & The Temple of Idolatry

Full disclosure: My entry point into this music is Star 102.5 The Lite FM. Allow me to explain.

You’re riding in a car with your mom on the way to the mall, or not even the mall, but a mall in another town because your town doesn’t have a mall. The radio in the car (no, mini van) is playing Sheryl Crow “Strong Enough” and John Cougar Mellencamp “Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First).” Because maybe you were a teenager in the '90s. Fast forward to Polar Vortex 2014. You recently ended a relationship and have had an emotional availability lately that reminds you of high school in an incredibly unhealthy way, and you think wouldn’t it be funny to make a Spotify playlist called The Lite FM and include all of the songs that would have been on a Lite FM radio station in the '90s, playing the best hits of the '70s, '80s and “today” ("today" being '96, '98 max)?

What ends up on the playlist includes the aforementioned Crows and Mellencamps but also Alannah Myles “Black Velvet,” Faith Hill “Breathe” and you find yourself with a new appreciation for all those Shania Twain singles that dominated every farm store in the rural midwest sophomore year. You got your Celine Dions, your Natalie Merchants, your Bonnie Raitts. You wonder where “Insensitive” by Jann Arden has been all your life. Never in your wildest dreams did you expect to love this music as much as you do, but you do, because it is now about you. You are proud of this Spotify playlist in a really big way, like, in a way you maybe shouldn’t be. The sincerity with which you now love Lite FM adult contemporary is a shame to you.

As we get older we grow nostalgic for the top 40 of our youth, not because it was that great, but because it is familiar and it takes you back to the place and the associations you have with that time. As my generation ages, we find the same to be true of us that baby boomers also experienced with The Big Chill soundtrack.'80s and '90s pop and Top 40 are where it’s at right now.

So take Lydia Loveless.

She has a voice that sounds like she listened to nothing but Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, and Melissa Etheridge in her formative years, and her band sounds like a beautiful combination of rock and country with just a gutteral edge of punk. The kind of country that’s less Shania and more whiskey and blood country, like the kind of country that would fight you in a bar. You wish she was Top 40 when you were sixteen but you might not have been able to appreciate her because you were trying to be so cool for all those Punk kids at your high school. I needed that context to love this the way I love this. And her lyrics are about heartbreak, unhealthy obsession, and drinking yourself to death. “Well Verlaine shot Rimbaud cuz he loved him so, and honey that’s how I wanna go.” What’s not to love?

But, so, anyway. Fast forward to 4/27/2014, and Lydia Loveless has become so word-of-mouth rapid-fire indie “It Girl” that she had to add a second sold out show at Schubas because the first sold out show sold out so fast. She also played a show in Urbana the night between, and during the day, playing an in-store at Reckless. The girl is busy.

Sean and I show up early and stand in the front row. The only other people in the room are some much older men who are even earlier than us, and they also stand in the front row. Loveless, 23, has said in interviews that her biggest draw has been men in their 50s and 60s and we dare not speculate on why that is. The safest answer is that, like me, she reminds us of an older style of music, but not even that much older.

The opening band, Fleeting Suns, advances on Schuba’s small stage. Immediately their keyboard player, Kelsey, starts bantering with Sean and me. This is a band that does amazing crowdwork, and their shtick is to be funny and endearing while also playing some uptempo, folksy country music that is rootsy and bluegrass and just the perfect thing for this show. They are exactly what you want an opening band to be, which, admittedly, is the hardest job in the world. Performing for someone else’s audience, an audience that is not there to see you, to stand as the last thing between a headliner and it’s audience and succeeding at making them give a shit about you, that is work. But they were entertaining and made me have fun with what they were doing in a way that almost no other opening band is able to do. Also, they are babies. Like, their drummer is in high school, seriously, and had a disarmingly eccentric demeanor to him, but it was clear why they keep him around. Dude can play. With their keyboards and upright bass, they played covers of House of the Rising Sun (sung by Kelsey the keyboardist, and the drummer taking over on the keys, to much aplomb) and the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt” sans all the swears.

Once Loveless came out, it was clear she was not far in age from the opening band, but carried with her what appeared to be a wealth of life experience in the stormcloud over her head. She wore a leather jacket and heels, and let her shoulder length hair fall in her face. The spirit of the stage banter also carried over into Loveless’s band. There was a palpable love-hate tension happening and they would frequently humiliate each other on stage. At one point her guitarist did an impression of her responding to interview questions that was monotone and nasally and very hilarious. And she would give them shit about not knowing the titles of her songs, and about how they were the best musicians but terrible people. It was quite droll.

They started with “Blind,” a Ke$ha song that was released as a Record Store Day 7” whose b-side is “Mile High” which Loveless characterizes as her favorite song she’s ever written. It was about 4 or 5 songs before she began playing songs off her new album, Somewhere Else. And then it was just hit after hit of favorites from that album. “Hurts So Bad,” “Wine Lips” “Chris Isaak” and my personal anthem of The Polar Vortex, “Really Wanna See You Again” (which was written on the setlist as “Really Wanna Sex U Again”). And she would do the thing that’s so great about live shows, where you know how it’s supposed to be sung and she would specifically sing the vocal parts at a different rate or a different part than on the recorded version, so you’re not just getting a rehashed version of the record. You’re getting a spontaneous and creative interpretation of her own material that is alive and full of the blood that pumps through the spirit of the album. You feel it in your throat and your chest and you want to spread it around and give it to others.

At one point the drummer of Fleeting Suns came back and asked if anyone had seen his pink hat he left on stage. At first they thought he was just a fan, and Loveless commented that wouldn’t it be funny if the dude had thrown up his hat and was now trying to get it back. But once they realized it was the drummer of the previous band, they actually stopped everything they were doing so they could all look for it. It was an earnest nature that was so endearing and charming that it made us laugh delightedly. Didn’t find the hat though. But the bass player, a hulking beautiful figure with hair that could only get him a job in a rock band, started saying, “Has anyone seen a full beer? On the stage? I had a full beer up here a minute ago and now it’s gone. Can you help me find it?”

The set list ended with “Head” (which deserves its own essay, because let’s hear it for all the songs advocating cunlingus in the last year [or at least that’s my chosen interpretation of it]) but the set continued with “Somewhere Else” and the band departed for a moment before she came back out to play solo on the electric guitar in what was technically the encore, but she vocally disapproved of the ritual of leaving the stage, pausing, and coming back. And the encore was every bit as amazing as the set. She played “Everything’s Gone” and then someone in the crowd asked if they learned “Killing Moon” yet, because they were asked to cover it (I am assuming for AV Club Undercover, fingers crossed) and they did, the band came on, with their ancient wooden cello (or upright bass with a cello’s bow), and they played "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen, and it was resplendent. The set ended with “Crazy” and she smashed the symbols with her guitar and started plucking the dude’s lapsteel and then, drinking a beer, held up two fingers, less like a rock star, and more like the most hilarious drunk at the diva party as she sauntered off stage.

After it was done Sean asked “What now?” and of course what now means, steal the setlist taped down on the stage and go find her and talk to her. She wasn’t at the merch stand and she wasn’t at the bar or in the room behind the bar or in the restaurant but we did find Fleeting Suns and I was able to tell them how much I appreciated that they were good, and how appropriate they were, a kind of rootsy bluegrass country band opening for Lydia Loveless, who embodies country in only the way a true rock star can. As Sean continued to talk with them, I made my way to the front of the bar and looked outside. And there she was, much shorter than me, talking to some hipster in a baseball cap.

Awkwardly, I sidled up to the corner of the angle they created and the dude broke away and she gave me a side eye and then turned to me. And I said “Hi! That was really great!”

And she said “Thanks” or something, I can’t really remember because my brain was not processing what was happening due to all of the idol worship.

“Your album is really really great. I went through a pretty bad heartbreak this winter and your record got me through it.”

And then she said she went through a pretty bad heartbreak when she wrote it, and then she hugged me. Like, with her arms. I also told her that I was a DJ for CHIRP Radio and how we love her record at the station, and Jim K popped out and we talked about the sold-outness of the show and how it was great she added a second show, around which point I said something to the effect of “OK, thanks again, I’m gonna go and let you continue living your life” because, you know, when you love something, you act like a big damn weirdo who thinks songs are about you, the way you did when you were sixteen, and you say graceless and awkward things because of your extreme vulnerability and go back to living in a fantasy where people are like characters in movies and Spotify playlists are the soundtrack.