It\u2019s late autumn or early winter or maybe almost spring. The crowd is sparse because the college kids didn\u2019t come out, or because the show starts too late, or maybe because the show starts too early. Outside, someone needs some change, someone needs a cigarette and someone is talking about their band or a friend\u2019s band or a band they heard once. The bar is sticky with spilled Jameson\u2019s from shots knocked back too quickly, whatever New Glarus seasonal is sloshing from the tap, and wilted limes discarded from a Captain and Coke chugged for a rush just before the live music kicks in. The sound man is texting, the bartender flirting, the doorman fidgets.<\/p>\n
Was that the night I met Jeremiah Nelson, at the Slipper Club on Main Street in Madison over a decade ago? Or was that another night \u2014 standing on Mifflin after a show at the Momo, or sitting on the Mickey\u2019s patio during his Honky Tonk Tuesdays residency?<\/p>\n
Plug into the Madison music scene at any point in recent history and you\u2019re bound to have heard Jeremiah. He is prolific: instrumental in every sense of the word, known to morph into a producer or graphic designer or session player when situations warrant. His lyrics are profoundly poetic whether crooned along with a soaring violin riff or warped against crashing waves of sound. Traversing the Jeremiah Nelson discography is like getting lost in the city you lived in once, a long time ago; utterly familiar in one sense, yet fully resonant with a vaguely hopeful feeling that only ever happens by accident \u2014 going forward without understanding, finding the way without a map.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaunting\u201d is a word that comes up a lot, but Jeremiah Nelson is no ghost. He is the living, breathing evolution of what it means to be a true musician today or 100 years ago. There is a Jeremiah who plots notes onto lines and parses words to fit. He may noodle a melody on the guitar until it forms a feasible track. There could be a dog or girl or day or job that inspires a chorus. Over the years, albums emerge like clear lakes steadily fed by tributaries of Midwestern moments. But there is also Jeremiah sculpting sound and rhythm into something resembling a vessel, then filling that vessel with meaning and leaving it, unexplained, somewhere someone might find it, study it and fill it with their own meaning. Rather than letting tributaries carve their predictable path, he will dot a majestic soundscape with digital relics. He\u2019ll carefully chisel away at rock and folk and pop and all of their worn tropes and half-buried meanings until something resembling \u201cmodern music\u201d emerges.<\/p>\n