McCutcheon’s quiet riot stirring on DVD

By Tristan Lejeune

Published: November 9, 2008

There just aren’t enough extended dulcimer solos these days.

Wisconsin native and Virginia favorite John McCutcheon released a new live DVD this year, recorded in March in Ann Arbor, Mich., and around three-fourths of the way through the aging hippie hammers out his song “Leviathan” on that percussion/string instrument and the crowd catches its breath in its collective throats.

It’s so quiet at parts you can barely hear it, so sweet it should be condensed and put on the sugar and honey aisle. The track is less than four minutes long, but DVD remotes just might have something to say about that. It sounds like electronic composer Ray Lynch doing his best Johannes Brahms imitation, or maybe the other way around.

It’s the kind of joyous noise performers just don’t make any more, and that’s its strength and its greatest flaw.

McCutcheon has been performing his particular brand of homey protest acoustic for well over 30 years now and, like that endearing dulcimer, it can’t help but seem like an antique.

“John McCutcheon Live” is new this autumn, but feels like it might have dust collected on the cover. The let’s-end-all-wars monologues are peppered with topical references to Bush and Baghdad, but is there really someone out there who thinks the most relevant folk music is being performed in Ann Arbor?

In an age when songwriters from k.d. lang to Kanye West are more than happy to grab a mike and scream about what makes them sick with this world, is there anyone left who still hears the whispers?

Even Bob Dylan spews his rage these days; you can’t get him to play “Blowin’ in the Wind” for love nor money. So does anybody outside of the NPR set still pay attention to old-fangled numbers that sound like deleted scenes from “A Mighty Wind”?

Well, they should. McCutcheon may have lost all his hair, but his smile is still as warm as a summer sidewalk and the songs he sings make sense because he’s not trying to furiously vent social anger, he’s trying to gently stir it up.

Songs like “Not in My Name” or “Forgive Us” rely on audience interaction because McCutcheon wants to hear people sing back to him that they crave peace and justice, not just absorb it and walk away.

And songs like “Puppies” require that folksy soft touch. The a cappella charmer goes from the insanity of Leona Helmsley to the cruelty of Michael Vick, and then to Guantanamo Bay and Darfur, all the while hoping “we might become the people / that our puppies think we are.” Awww. It’s hokey as heck, but it’s sincere, and, like the rest of the set, it’s best listened to in sweatpants with a cup of tea nearby.

John McCutcheon is hopelessly square, and getting more so. But of course only square pegs can fit square holes, and he’s found a need he clearly enjoys filling in. Groovy, man.