Artist: The Jack Stafford Foundation
Where: NXNE- June 18, 2010- The Cameron House
Who: After a lucrative but unfufilling career as a copywriter and a stint as a fashion designer in Amsterdam, Jack Stafford has reinvented himself as a "troubador" from "no fixed abode England".
What: As a solo artist Jack Stafford calls himself a reductionist but he is much better described as a sardonic contemporary storyteller. His music is topical in nature and delivered in humourous punchlines with a voice that lends itself to the gritty realities it exposes.
Performance: The Jack Stafford Foundation opened up with an introduction that involved the crowd as a choir on stage. He invited them up, taught them the lyrics to the chorus and cajoled them into singing with fervor. In breaking the divide between entertainer and the entertained, Stafford found a sympathetic crowd for his world weary numbers The Hard Way and Claustrophobia and also an enthused audience for his sarcastic wit in 20 Century Baby and A.D.D.
In between numbers he quipped about the behaviour of the crowd and told the stories behind the creation of his songs. The relevance of his material to trendy news headlines and contemporary social issues, like A.D.D, the obesity epidemic, dysfunctional governments, relationships and families, provided an instant connection between Stafford and the small niche crowd he had gathered off the street. He was a welcome relief from the previous artists at the festival, as he went beyond the topics addressed by the others, mainly relationship woe, to address an edgier perspective on the banalities of the everyday existence in western society.
What is really unique about him as an artist is how the context of his life as a muscian is applied to his product and how he reflects his sarcastic and amiable personality in his craft. His lyrics reflect the ennui he succumbed to as a fenced in office copy writer, to the wanderlust he felt as a fashion designer, the rollercoaster ride of loves won and lost and his current fulfillment as a couch surfing troubadour.
But while Stafford's stark and humourous deconstructivist lyrics are good, he is just not much of a vocalist. His limited sonic range and tonal dexterity became evident by the third number, when his novelty wore off. In the studio versions of his songs he buffers his handicap with back up vocals and additional instrumentation. In his live performance, reduced to the merits of his voice and acoustic guitar, his limitations are made painfully apparent.
He could play in a bar for a song or two but a steady diet of him would be hard to take. It would be a welcome act anywhere in between more serious muscians as an audio palate cleanser or audience cheerleader.
For ten months Jack Stafford has been living out of his backpack and guitar case during his North American tour, No Fixed Abode. After examining the bare contents of his entire travel pack, which consists of an iphone, two pairs of shoes, three interchangeable pairs of clothes, a swimsuit, a ziploc baggie of vitamens, travel sized toiletries from motels, an Irvine Welsh novel of short stories and a tiny travel guitar that looked like a distorted ukelele, I asked him if he'd seen the movie Up In The Air. He said he was very much like the Natalie Keener character, at the beginning of his tour he carried his own pillow, for his "bad back", but quickly realized that he was carrying too much baggage. He has since became adept at shedding all of the non-essential comfort items, like girlfriends, pillows and shoes that require socks.
Song to listen to: Claustrophobia and
