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Battle cries
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Melissa Ferrick has now pressed five discs on her Right On Records label, releases produced on her own terms and in her own time, and she’s all the more confident for it. Playing to a full house at the Somerville Theatre Saturday night, she proved she needs no assistance marketing herself, her sound, or her understated beauty. She pours every last drop of herself into a performance. What’s more, her stage voice is substantially bigger than her studio recordings would have you believe. When she really lets go, the wail that erupts from her slender frame is somewhere between a lust-fueled Etheridge-esque battle cry and the rasped, pleading desperation of Janis Joplin without the booze and the tragedy. The result exudes sexuality, complete with gyrating hips and kicking legs. Playing her guitar in chunky and percussive hammer-on hysterics, she put softer folkies to shame. Saturday night’s set pulled from her entire catalogue, with an ample number of new songs from The Other Side, which she’s been recording at home in Provincetown. She opened with the thunderous "North Carolina," plowed through a rougher-than-the-studio-version performance of her local radio hit "Everything I Need," added a tongue-in-cheek Jeffersons-themesong ending to "All for Me," and hit an anthemic peak with "Freedom." During the last third of the set, she was backed by drummer Brian Winton, who plays on the 2003 live disc 70 People at 7000 Feet. Winton helps Ferrick stay organized with her timing, adding color and backbone to her stories about overcoming fear, longing, jealousy, and failing relationships. The stage banter grew more confessional over the course of the show. What began as a nervous rattle spiraled into her admission of having attempted to bed Winton (who apparently said no in the interest of preserving both her sexuality and his job); somehow that inspired the contemplative "Nebraska." And in the course of segueing into "Welcome to My Life," she trailed off into a hilarious dissertation about the difficulties involved in bringing women to orgasm that rivaled Margaret Cho’s famed bit on the same topic. Anne Heaton opened, with guitar and harmony support from Frank Morato Jr. Her memorable vibrato centered her somewhat choppy compositions, which spanned folk-pop ballads and blues with a dash of Broadway sprinkled in. Although she has talent, the eclectic mix of styles never quite jelled.
BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN TREACY
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