Marc Delgado (photo by Alexander Yerks)
On Wounded Knee’s High in a Neon Dive, the California-born Woodstock resident singer/songwriter Marc Delgado’s sets his rich voice and evocative songs to a noisy noir rock, at times grinding madly like Crazy Horse (“Golden State”), at other times achieving a school-of-Wilco ambient and harmonically expanded roots rock (“Blackbirds,” or the somber and moody drive of “Life, Friends, is Boring,” a song named for and inspired by the poet John Berryman’s famous “Dream Song 14”). Delgado’s songs on this record are darkly mythic: spacious, fractured American landscapes and surreal character studies with numerous falls from grace and slanted redemptions. It is a dynamic and rocking record, but, in the mind’s ear, it is not at all difficult to strip these songs of the wrenched electric guitars and imagine them playing quite well in solo and chamber ensemble settings, as Delgado will do on Saturday, October 29 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in Woodstock.
Sharing the bill with Delgado is a kindred spirit in singer/songwriter Sandy Bell, whose songs lean toward the haunted, with sublimated undertones of rural blues and raga. The show begins with Bell’s set at 8 p.m. Admission costs $20, $18 for Byrdcliffe members. The Kleinert/James Center for the Arts is located at 36 Tinker Street in Woodstock. For more information, visit www.woodstockguild.org.