Daniel Johnston spooks the Variety Playhouse
by Joeff Davis
Daniel Johnston performed Thursday night at the Variety Playhouse. He greeted the audience by telling a story of a dream he had about a man being sentenced to death for trying to commit suicide. “In the back of the courtroom the man was saying, ‘No, no, no,’” he said. “And that man was me.”
It seemed like a strange way to greet an audience, but it set the tone for his two sets of
depressingly uplifting and cathartic music.
“Basic purity” is how one audience member described it. But it felt terribly amateur at first. His guitar playing sounded simplistic and his singing (if you can call it that) painfully weird. But as the show progressed and his confidence grew, the lyrics he sang painted a stark truth. And the voice he sang in breathed a sincerity one rarely feels at concerts.
Johnston performed two sets. During the acoustic part of the show, he played a couple of songs alone on guitar before being joined by an acoustic guitarist. Throughout the set, his
tightly gripped fists shook at his waist as he spoke, read and sang his lyrics from a beat-up music stand. His songs were constantly punctuated by shouts of “We love you Danny!” from the audience, with members emotionally singing along.
“Where am I,” Johnston asked at one point. After being told he was in Atlanta by shouts from audience members, he replied: “Is that a state or a town?”
In the second half of the show, the opening band the Hymns joined him. The Hymns, a good looking band of hipsters who jumped around the stage with typical rock ‘n’ roll antics, formed a sharp contrast with Johnston who wore a stained gray t-shirt and black pants, and rarely opened his eyes to look at the audience.
“I love him because he has been through a lot and I can identify with that,” said one audience member during the break.
After returning for the encore, Johnston wished everybody a Merry Christmas and ended on a hopeful note singing “True Love Will Find You.”