Mike Farris – Listening Room (Mt. Pleasant, SC)
If you want instant access to something that will get goose bumps going, then do a search on YouTube for Mike Farris’ cover of “Green, Green Grass Of Home” during the Porter Wagoner tribute at last year’s Americana Music Conference. That one performance, captured in perpetuity on the web, seems to have attracted more attention for Farris than the several albums released by his old outfit, the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies, ever did. More than a few folks in the standing-room-only crowd at the Listening Room on this night admitted to being there simply because of that four-minute web clip, and expectations were high.
Openers Danielle Howle and Mac Leapheart warmed up the crowd with a short set of originals, including Howle’s lovely “This Kind Of Light” and Leapheart’s amusing “God-Fearing Devil”. Hootie & the Blowfish guitarist Mark Bryan (who produced Howle’s latest disc) backed the duo on mandolin.
When Farris hit the venue’s small stage, he began his set not with a song from his recent solo release Salvation In Lights, but with a cover of Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents” (with Bryan sitting in). The performance immediately proved that for once the hype was justified. Farris’ ten-feet-tall voice belies his physical size.
Back in the mid-’90s, Farris and Bryan were labelmates on Atlantic, and Farris joked that while he watched Hootie’s career explode, precisely the opposite happened for the Wheelies. “You were always smiling in your videos while you played guitar,” said Farris of the easygoing Bryan. “There he is, twenty million albums later and still smilin’!” Bryan took the ribbing in stride, and even came to Farris’ aid later in the show when a talkative audience member failed to take any previous hints to zip it.
Farris performed songs from his new gospel-oriented disc such as “Can’t No Grave Hold My Body Down”, “Precious Lord Take My Hand”, and “Sit Down Servant”. “Folsom Prison Blues”, a song that has been done to death in the wake of Johnny Cash’s passing, somehow felt fresh coming from Farris’ vocal chords. The same was true for his take on Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and the Staple Singers’ “Take Me (I’ll Take You There)”.
The crowd simply ate it up, singing along with “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” to Farris’ delight. He even dusted off a Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies tune, “Gypsy Lullaby”. And yes, he did indeed perform “Green, Green Grass Of Home”, giving that tune every bit of care and power he could muster.
Farris sings as if his body was genetically predetermined to do so. Perhaps that is in fact the case; few artists can sing so naturally well and make it look so effortless.