Entering the empty stage, David Ford began to shake his maracas into the microphone. He stepped away and lowered the maracas, but, as if it was somehow coming from behind the scenes, the sound continued to echo. He then briefly vocalized into the mic and -- same as the maracas -- after the vocalization was over, it eerily continued. At this point, hushed murmurs throughout the crowd could be heard: "What is he doing?" "How is that happening?" What it took the audience a few minutes to understand was that he was looping each sound individually to create a rich texture of music to fill out the entire room with his first song of the night, "Go To Hell." It was truly a mark of high showmanship, but David Ford did it with such grace and understatedness that not only was it entertaining, it was also endearing. Throughout his entire performance, he commanded the stage while also performing with an air of self-consciousness and an honest-to-goodness "Gee shucks I'm so glad to be here" attitude. With his album already having been released in the UK to great success and recently having been released for digital download here in the States (available physically in April), this is a man who is headed swiftly up that daunting hill to stardom. His enthusiasm for performing shined through as he told the crowd that he was glad to be in Philadelphia: "the birthplace of the Constitution and Will Smith."
As he thumped on his guitar, looping tracks again to perform his fifth song of the evening, "State of the Union," I heard someone in the crowd make the comment, "Who pissed him off?" Agreed -- some of his songs definitely have an underlying angry tone to them, but he does it in such a way that it comes off as honest, true feelings, not an overgrown bout of teenage angst.
It's easy to start to fall for David Ford after listening to the album Songs For The Road. But after seeing him in concert, David Ford is officially our favorite new musician.
Luckily, David will be in Philly in the near future, at the TLA on April 24 (with Sara Bareilles and Rachael Yamagata). This Phillyist will certainly be there; you should be there too.
Photo via David Ford's website photo gallery
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