I’ve waited to hear Lisa Cerbone since 1995. That was the year Bob Hair signed me up for the CMJ sampler and I got a CD in the mail every month.
The wait was worth it. She sang and played for two solid hours at the Three Whistles coffeehouse in Arlington, Virginia, on August 7.
I felt I was seeing and hearing a lifetime of experience with her acoustic set.
To call her songs folk music does not give them their due. Cerbone dispenses with structural hooks of commercial music and relies on her consistently bright soprano and guitar dexterity.
Me, I just amazed at someone who can sing while playing up to the 15th fret like she can.
She seems to have recorded more with electric instruments early in her career, and some of those songs lean to the fun side. Her recent work leans to the quiet side, like Written in the Stars and Tomorrow from the album We Still Have Sky.
Love Grows Slow is an arresting electric guitar song from the album Ordinary Days that I will play again.
Loss is a theme of modern acoustic music and Cerbone explores the territory.
Her performance is somewhat comparable to the songs of Natalie Jane Hill or Aimee Mann, but two octaves higher.
Cerbone is Baltimore-based so those of you in the DMV will have opportunities to see her.
