I had a busy day yesterday, which closed with a visit to a folkie open mike I visit occasionally in Fall River. (For you non-locals, that’s in Massachusetts about a half-hour east of Providence.)

It’s held at the Narrows Center For The Arts, a venue in an old mill down near the waterfront, close to Battleship Cove where the WWII battleship Massachusetts is on permanent display. Great (REALLY great) sound and a good eclectic lineup of performers in a given season — Robert Fripp just played there as did the Mekons; folks like Dave Alvin, Marcia Ball, Richie Havens… you get the drift.

The Wednesday night open features a particular kind of vibe that will likely be familiar to some folks here: pseudo-genial cutthroat competition for hot guitars and licks among middle-aged white guys who can finally afford their Martins and Taylors and custom shop Gibsons so they can sound just like the heroes of their youth, Mississippi John Hurt and Tom Paxton chief among them. The host is a nice old-style folkie who used to write with Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary — again, you can probably picture what I’m talking about here. Think “A Mighty Wind” and you’re on the right track. But there’s tons of good guitar playing, and the place has high quality standards for the most part, so overall it’s a good time.

We (we being Duende) like to play there because we stand out and it gives us good shakedown time in front of audiences not comprised of poets. They also pay their features well, and we’re angling for that at some point — paying the dues comes with the territory there, so we hit it semi-regularly.

I frequently tweak the folkies by bringing a vintage guitar with me and playing during breaks and such, then never getting on stage with it. Last night, I brought the ancient Stella with me and passed odd down moments running a bunch of drop-D fingerstyle riffs in the back corner. Love to watch people try to figure out what kind of to-drool-over instrument I’ve got; the blues guys in particular get all wet when they see it. If there’s anything more seductive to a stereotyped “white boy lost in the blues” than a beat up instrument from the 20s, I don’t know what it is. I hadn’t had it out of the case more than a minute last night before one guy was all over me wanting to check it out. ( I admit it, I can do the sword fight with the best of them when it serves my purpose. I’m not proud of it. But it’s kinda fun to feed into the frenzy, and more to the point, it got people waiting to see what we’d do.) Of course, Faro running riffs on either the guitar or the bass gets their attention too.

It was a long night, and we went late in the evening. Things went fine and we got a couple of folks all excited about our shit, so it worked out well for us. We’re all about expanding Duende’s reach to audiences other than poets lately, aiming at working music venues as well as the slam/poetry circuit. This is good practice for that.

But that’s not actually what I’m here to tell you about. No, not at all.

No, I’m here to say that last night I heard

THE WORST FOLK SONG EVER WRITTEN.

“The Legend of Don Gato” is an epic, seven minute retelling of the sad tale of Don Gato, a cat who breaks his leg jumping off a shelf, is tended by his distressed owners, is finally sent to be euthanized, and then is brought home in a monumental funeral procession where, heralded by the pervasive smell of tuna fish, he suddenly comes back to life to the joy of the assembled mourners.

Yes, I’m serious.

And so was the penulitmate performer of the evening, who sang it. Dead serious, no sense of irony, deeply felt, etc., etc. Furious sincerity delivered by an overweight guy in his late thirties with long black ironed-straight hair in a sleeveless rawk t-shirt, in a huge baritone voice with prog-rock operatic pretensions, accompanied by rapidly strummed acoustic guitar. The closest I can get is to say “Robert Goulet tone meets Tiny Tim vibrato meets Geddy Lee histrionics meets the acoustic sound of Boston.”

Yes, I’m serious. I could not detect one shred of humor here. Jack Black wishes he could come off this sincere when he does his schtick.

ETA: theklute has revealed that this is a COVER. Lyrics in the comments below.

The remaining crowd was…bemused. After that, the drunk who couldn’t play his signature tune on request was a complete let down.

Oh, dear. It’s way too easy to make fun of this stuff. I’m reminded of sateenduraluxe‘s standup comic friend who saw a poetry slam and characterized it as being a place where people poured their souls and trauma and passion onto paper and then delivered it to strangers as if it were a Limp Bizkit tune.

I bet someone’s said something like this about me at least once.

I hope I was at least this funny to them.