live: anais mitchell

The first time I interviewed folksinger Anais Mitchell was just before the release of her beautiful 2007 LP, The Brightness, and she mentioned that she had written a folk opera based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that had already been performed live a couple of times in her home state of Vermont. Three years later, Hadestown has finally surfaced in record form — but instead of Mitchell’s original cast, the version out on Righteous Babe Records last month has characters voiced by Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon (Orpheus), Ani DiFranco (Persephone), the Low Anthem‘s Ben Knox Miller (Hermes) and Greg Brown (Hades), and produced by Todd Sickafoose, who’s played bass with Ani for years.

Hadestown tells the story of Orpheus saving Eurydice from Hades’s Underworld, but set in a post-apocalyptic American depression town (sound relevant?), through a cast of some of folk’s most unique voices. On Friday night Mitchell and the “Hadestown Orchestra” (comprised of many of the musicians who have been with the project from its first performances in 2006, including Michael Chorney, who arranged all the music) played the show from start to finish at Joe’s Pub, and while there were no surprise guest vocalists, it was still a truly special evening and incredible to see this years-long project performed in full.

Mitchell is a dynamic performer with a gorgeous voice that’s girlish in the same way as Joanna Newsom without actually sounding like her (even if you hate Newsom, give Mitchell a chance). The only part that might have been a slight struggle for some of the crowd was that Mitchell had to voice all the parts, so it was more difficult to tell whose character was singing what (I found myself whispering excitedly to my friend, “Justin and Ben sing this song!”). It looked exhausting — when the band did take breaks for Mitchell to get the audience up to speed on the plot, she seemed, understandably, almost out of breath.

Even with only one lead voice, plus backup help from a few of the band members, it seemed that most of the crowd already knew the story. That particularly added to songs like “Our Lady of the Underground,” in which Persephone is running a speakeasy behind her husband Hades’s back: The record has fellow drinkers cat-calling and whistling, which, at Joe’s Pub, was provided by audience members without any prompting, and they also sang along to big chorus numbers like “Way Down Hadestown” (which was reprised as an encore). She might’ve had most of the vocal weight on her shoulders, but the orchestra was right on to support her the whole set — cell, viola, string bass, trombone, drums and guitar — especially because something went wrong with Mitchell’s guitar a few songs in (still not totally sure what happened; maybe a broken string?) and she stuck to singing and picked up Chorney’s guitar on a couple of songs. “I don’t need a guitar to have a good time!” she said. Whether or not she played her guitar didn’t matter — it was the effort of everyone on stage together that brought the big idea of a girl from Vermont to life, and it was amazing.