All photos courtesy of Daniel Jackson.
I could watch Jenny Lewis perform every single song on each of her solo albums as well as those of her other bands, Rilo Kiley, Jenny and Johnny, and still never feel satisfied. So when I tell you her 8-song set opening for Beck at the Bayou Music Center was definitely not enough, you understand my plight. For me, there is never enough Jenny. Recently in Houston, radio station KROI (92.1 FM) has decided to play all Beyoncé, all the time. While this news excited plenty in my city, I could barely work up a smirk. Don’t get me wrong, I like Beyoncé, who couldn’t? But what I need is an all Jenny, all the time radio station, which right now is basically my car. Jenny is my Beyoncé and I worship her accordingly.
Walking into the venue, I could see Jenny standing on a colorful rainbow and star-spangled box. A petite, blunt-banged redhead in a shiny, black pantsuit, she owned the stage. Together her and a custom, dreamy pastel guitar commanded the audience’s attention with ease. She’s ditched the cutesy low-cut dresses and high-waisted short shorts for a sophisticated and sexually ambiguous style. With her new look, this former child star/Rilo Kiley frontwoman is telling us she’s moved away from being indie’s darling and is asserting herself as a serious songwriter with a disregard for gender. Jenny Lewis is a brand and she no longer cares whether or not you find her sexy.
I could feel the killer bassline from “The Next Messiah” in my heart, replacing its beat as the bass thudded forward. When the drums kicked in I wanted to belt out lyrics, jump around, knock over people around me with the fervor and excitement usually reserved for the confines of my vehicle, where I’ve listened to one of my favorite Acid Tongue tracks more times than I can remember. Unfortunately for me my neighbors were not as hysterical as myself and a mosh pit in honor of Lewis’s bounced-check writing father did not ensue. That didn’t stop me from whipping out into some pretty impressive air guitar during the breakdown. The best part of the almost 9-minute song is the call and return between Johnathan Rice, “I’m gonna give my love to you, one day you gotta bring it back” and Lewis, “I want to tell you I love you.” It was sweet to watch the lovers on stage, singing back and forth to each other before the song exploded in “oohs” from Jenny and a big sweep of back up vocals from the entire band as they all sang “he’s the next messiah” along with her.
Next came Jenny’s stand-out and Beck-produced single, “Just One of the Guys.” The audience perked up. As she began singing, I recalled the same sentiments I felt when I first saw the video. A 50/50 mix of astonishment and respect for her ability to remain so straightforward and confident while singing about a topic that most women won’t even allow their brains to think before it’s drowned in prescription meds or alcohol, let alone sing aloud while celebrities run around in track suits behind them. That’s one of my favorite things about Jenny, she’s brave enough to say what we’re all thinking, seeing her do it right in front of me made her so much more powerful. It’s a special person to get up in front of a massive venue of people and lament the fact her friends are having babies and she’s not. These aren’t pleasant thoughts she’s singing about, these are the deep, dark, and flawed thoughts we’ve all tried ushering away with another drink and yet there she stood in her boots, under a fiery mop, letting us know she’s just another lady without a baby and she’s cried about it in a restroom or two. Sing on, Jenny.
Floating across the stage, Jenny began “I used to think you could save me, I’ve been wondering lately” and my heart drops. With each of Jenny’s solo albums, there is always one song above all others that is most relatable to me, with Voyager, it is “She’s Not Me.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she sang “but she’s not me, she’s easy” which is my absolute favorite lyric on the entire record, perhaps of her entire catalogue. In that one line, Jenny and I become part of the same team. We become the “difficult” ones and I love her all the more for not only knowing it, but embracing it and even being proud of it. As she holds the note in my favorite lyric with ease, the feeling of the audience around me starts to shift, they’ve been in caught in Jenny’s spell, and if they didn’t know much about her before, they do know. Her open heart, lyrically-driven songwriting will do that to a person and I couldn’t help, but feel my heart to swell. The guitar solo keeps me from weeping and the backup singers and I sing along in unison.
Before I could get too carried away, Jenny announced this was the last show of her tour with Beck, thanked everyone for coming and gathered her tour mates in a close huddle center stage. They all abandoned their instruments, a few remembered their bottles of Shiner, standing alongside them, Jenny strummed her guitar and started “I went to a cobbler to fix a hole in my shoe, he took one look at my face and said ‘I can fix that hole in you.’” I’m not sure if she ever went to a cobbler to fix her shoes, but when she sings it, I can’t help thinking it’s morbid joke about a soul in need of repair. At the chorus, her band chimes in and together they chant “liar” again and again. When she mentions tripping on acid, a few approving shouts echo from the balcony overhead. The band harmonizes with Jenny again when she coos “we built ourselves a fire.” Although the title track from Jenny’s second solo album, “Acid Tongue,” feels sad at its core, there’s something about the six-person pack wrapped around each other on stage, the steady strum of Jen’s guitar, and the commiseration on display in front of me that made the song about quitting drugs and loneliness seem hopeful in a way I’ve never heard it before.
Filling the venue with her warm spirit, I could see how easy it is for a shelter of people to crowd around her, not just on a stage, but in her life too, friends to make her forget, lovers to keep her warm at night. But deep down, when Jenny says she’s tired and lonely, I believe her. Those feelings don’t ever go away, lonely people will always be lonely whether they are all by themselves or performing a show for hundreds while clustered with their closest friends. As devoted fans, there are parts of us that want our favorite musicians to be happy, but there are some artists whose thoughtfulness, sadness, and dissatisfaction make their music what it is. Jenny will always be one step ahead of me, singing about feelings I am still processing, like a big sister who has been through it all, she commiserates with my emotions on such an honest level. The transparency she uses to tell those familiar stories urges her music close to my heart and while she gathered her band closer for her final song on that Thursday night, she drew me and the entire room closer to her too.