In Nashville, the city I still know best, dozens of musicians are trying to do exactly the same thing Joe Pug is doing. Every night a singer-songwriter with a boyish grin and a gentle drawl can be found playing somewhere to a crowd of maybe ten or twenty respectful listeners, garnering Bob Dylan references and singing about heartache and soul-searching. So how is Joe Pug, with his debut album Messenger barely out of the gate, filling up venues with eager fans that cheer with recognition at the first chords of each song and sing along to every chorus? What makes Pug worth the fanfare?
There’s no denying that Pug has a certain charm to him. The 25-year old Chicagoan was in high spirits at the Canopy Club on Wednesday night, and he fed off the energy from the sold-out crowd as we strained to see past the mostly-male, mostly-tall music lovers who made it out to the early show. Between songs, he flirted with his audience, telling us how he disappointed his first five-year-old fan with his dirty mouth, then pausing to reflect and spitting out, “Fuck him” to laughs and cheers. In his interactions with his charmed audience, Pug played the part perfectly. He teased his bandmates, offering his drummer’s eHarmony profile up as incentive to visit the merch table and goading guitarist Andrew Harrison forward during his solo with a “Don’t ya’ll think he can do fucking better than that?”
But while Pug the musician intrigues me, Pug the performer baffles me. Where does this Maryland-grown man get his drawl and his ya’lls? Where’d he pick up his Manuel Cuevas-inspired shirts and his southern affectations? It’s as if Pug’s enthusiasm for the iconic songwriters who came before him has pushed him to emulate them as much as possible; he fits the genre so smoothly that I’m left curious as to who Pug really is.
But when the banter ends and the songs start, the wry, mischievous Joe Pug disappears. His eyes close, his muscles tense, his face strains with effort. The audience grows quiet, reserved. We smile, we sit back, we listen. This is the Joe Pug I believe. This is the Pug that I love to see perform.
Wednesday’s show pulled heavily from Pug’s newly released album, Messenger, including the gently rolling title-track, the sweet, understated “Not So Sure,” and my favorite thanks to WPGU’s frequent airplay, “Speak Plainly, Diana,” which was first released on 2008’s Nation of Heat EP. Pug brought out the band midway through to support him throughout the full-fleshed songs, with Pug himself adding in lively harmonica on “The Door Was Always Open.” Pug closed the show on a quiet note with “Hymn #101” before returning to the stage for a brief encore.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Pug’s live show this past week as well as his performance at Pygmalion, I can’t help but groan at the persona that’s forming around him. Pug’s online biography is cringe-worthy: while a talented, skilled musician, Pug has hardly proven himself enough to earn a “deserved spot among the finest songwriters of his generation.” He’s promising. He’s delivered some beautiful music. But instead of trying to write him into the history books, I’d rather enjoy Pug’s music for what it is, appreciate what he has to offer instead of jumping to call him a visionary. Pug is a musician that could have a long, complete, rich career ahead of him. But try to dub him a groundbreaker at 25, and we’ll never have the chance to find out.
During the show, a girl behind me sighed to her friend between songs, “I just love him.” Two guys nearby swapped opinions on the best of Pug’s releases and expressed their relief to have heard of him in time for his Urbana show. The crowd hollered their enthusiasm for Messenger, and Pug offered his thanks in return. And during “Hymn #101”, the audience filled in under Pug’s warm voice, a hundred quiet murmurs singing along with the words that touched me most in Pug’s music: “I’ve come to test the timbre of my heart.”