Sons of Town Hall Sjoske Buursink photo

This week’s column is rather unusual in that the performance being supported is unlike anything I’ve ever covered before: a folk duo that not only sings but also acts out a mythic back story that will transport the audience at One Longfellow Square across time and space.

CONCERT INFO

SONS OF TOWN HALL
TIME: 8 p.m.
DATE: Wednesday, Oct. 9
VENUE: One Longfellow Square
ADDRESS: 181 State St., Portland
TICKETS: $20 advance, $25 at door
PHONE: 207-761-1757
WEBSITE: sonsoftownhall.com

Are you curious? You better believe that I was when I called David Berkeley at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to find out more about the Sons of Town Hall who will be gracing that venerable venue’s stage on Wednesday, Oct. 9. I began our chat this way …

Q: This whole thing has intrigued the heck out of me …
A: It became all the more intriguing when you realized that I was half of the band (chuckle).

Q: How long have you and Ben Parker been together as Sons of Town Hall?
A: We formed in 2016, I want to say, of course, cut off the last few years during COVID because my partner’s from London and I’m based in Santa Fe so we had a pretty hard stop during the pandemic that took many years from us.

Q: On your website it sounds like this is like a play where the two of you are characters, add in the fact the songs you sing are very Simon and Garfunkel-esque. Can you take me through the logistics of all this?
A: Yes, it’s a lot to take in! First let me say that Ben and I both have, and in my case, continue to have, solo careers, so we’ve been making music on our own for a long time. So when we got together to figure out a vision for this project we wanted to do something different than just standing up there with our guitars because we’ve done that, we do that.

So the project evolved from being a small-themed project to something that’s become much more theatrical and immersive, It’s not fully a play in that nothing is scripted and neither of us are actors, but we are taking on characters, we have a mythic origin story that we formed after a bar fight in a London pub in the late 1800s, and decided to build a boat and sail it across the world basically to escape troubles and debts, and just find new fortune and adventure.

And on that boat we basically began writing songs as a way of surviving the elements and bonding together, then we continue to sort of roam the land looking for work and running away from more trouble because we seem to get ourselves into one problem after another. So the show basically is us singing songs that you don’t need the back story, the songs hold up on their own, we hope, but we stay in character and we describe these adventure that we go on that lead to the writing of songs. And the result is that audiences end up feeling like they’ve been transported into some strange world …

Q: How so?
A: We look like we’re back in the Victorian era, we’re wearing a top hat and a bowler and shabby Victorian clothes, and we deliver the stories deadpan, we believe what we’re talking about and audiences oddly kind of fall in and believe it, too (chuckle), unsure of whether we’re meant to really be back a hundred years or more, or whether we’ve just somehow have maintained a sense of a different time and are living a life that is simpler. We tell people that our boat is parked wherever the nearest harbor is and often people want to go see the boat.

Q: And that’ll be easy in Portland, that’s for sure.
A: Well, that’s even when we’re playing shows that are ‘way inland they somehow think that we sailed there (laugh) and people kind of leave not sure of what they’ve just experienced, but they feel very moved by the whole thing. There’s something that’s very appealing and maybe needed right now in the escape we’re offering, I guess.

Q: Yeah, with all that’s happening around us at this time, the chaos, divisiveness and stress that’s being generated, we need a good dose of escapism to get through it.
A: Yeah, and there’s a lot of hope in what we’re doing, we have a lot of affection for each other and I think that’s really contagious to the audience, but also the audacity of it: to dream and be weird, and we dance a lot on stage. The show is very interactive, in fact we basically encourage people to sing through the whole show with us, we teach them parts. It’s a very uplifting experience which I think is important … it’s triumphant.

Q: Who are you in this show, what’s your character in Sons of Town Hall?
A: (Chuckle) My persona is Josiah Chester Jones and my partner, the British man, Ben Parker, is George Ulysses Brown.

Q: Now should I write this as me interviewing Josiah about the show or would you prefer me interviewing David Berkeley?
A: That’s always the big question. In the beginning of our time together, we tried to keep character always when we talked to press and we encouraged press to do that. There’s something cool about that but I also feel like it’s a little confusing to audiences. So we started saying things like, “Josiah Chester Jones played by David Berkeley” in our press releases and so I think perhaps it makes more sense to talk about me as David Berkeley explaining this role and this show that we’ve created, I suppose.

Q: Yes, I think that will help tremendously in getting this across to my readers.
A: We find it’s hard to explain it to people, but you’ve just got to get them in the door and once they’re there, they love it. It’s just that sometimes they don’t know what the hell they’re reading about if it’s not presented properly.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article?
A: You know, I think that I would just urge the emphasis on the songs and the quality of the harmony and the lyric because for us we get excited about the story. I think that it is a huge part of it and it’s what sets us apart, but I really think that if the songs weren’t good this would just be shtick, it wouldn’t work. I’ve sung with a lot of people over the years and there’s something very rare about the blend of our voices, and I think that’s really what carries this whole thing because there’s a magic there that allows the magic of the story to work. So I would want that to be in there, but otherwise I feel like we covered most of it, as long as you’re able to explain it somehow (laughter).

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.