Entranced by L’Rain at Songbyrd, D.C.
Graphic by Lily Hartenstein
By Lily Hartenstein
There is one rule here, Taja Cheek (she/her) told the crowd as she took the stage. Do not speak. This moment will only happen once, and we must savor it together. Regardless of the rule she set forth, Cheek, the multi-instrumentalist known as L’Rain, rendered the crowd speechless in the set that followed. I could not talk even if I wanted to, my mouth agape under my mask as L’Rain and her band cast their potent spell.
I bought tickets to see L’Rain before I moved to D.C., excited to witness the performance of Fatigue, a project Milk Crate selected as one of the top ten albums of 2021. “She is going to be huge one day,” I breathlessly told my friend on the phone as I walked to Songbyrd, the small venue hosting her performance. “Like if the Grammy’s were still relevant, she’d be winning several in the coming years. I cannot believe I get to see her for less than twenty bucks.”
When I got to Songbyrd, nestled in the Union Market district of D.C., I was instantly taken by the homey, intimate vibe of the small venue. They had a small kitchen which served reasonably priced fare purchased at a bar selling reasonably priced beverages, a rare menu for a concert venue these days. There were maybe sixty people in the whole place, many of whom seemed to know each other, filtering in and out of the small crowd with a sense of familiarity. I’d convinced my friend Camille to come to the show with me, a long-time resident of D.C. who was just as pleased about finding the obvious gem of a place like Songbyrd as I was.
Before the music started, I gasped as I recognized another musician I love in the crowd, who goes by the stage name of Evil (they/them). This was the first indicator the show was going to be even better than I expected; who knows good music better than musicians themselves? I spoke with them and learned they also perform at Songbyrd periodically. Later in the evening, my stomach jumped into my throat as I recognized Bartees Strange (he/him) a few people to my right. Bartees Strange, whose debut album Live Forever (2020) is a masterpiece I am certain will become known as one of the most influential albums of the decade, was one of the sixty people in the crowd with me! I felt like I had stumbled into some secret world of elite musicians, disguised as a friendly crowd in a cozy venue.
Stumbling into a secret world was a carrying effect throughout the night. When opener Khari Lucas (he/him), the musician who goes by Contour, took the stage, he carried a book of radical poetry which he read as instrumentals swelled behind him. During his set, he switched between a keyboard, a guitar, and his Macbook, all the while singing stirring lyrics with his incredible voice. Lucas’s sounds were complex and layered, his voice mingling with sampled sounds so it all blended together into a cohesive swelling of beautiful noise. A lone man on stage, he delivered a powerful performance, before ducking his head humbly and stepping off stage.
Then, Cheek walked on, accompanied by four other musicians. None of them were wearing shoes. They passed each other knowing smiles as Cheek approached the mic. They knew what we were in for; I, despite all the anticipation I held for this performance, did not. “Am I in a trance?” Camille whispered to me as the instruments swelled, forcing a small gasp from my lungs. The ensuing performance was an unending flow of waves of sound, spectacular crescendo after crescendo. The musicians swapped instruments with ease throughout the set, never breaking the stream of music seamlessly guiding us from one song to the next.
During one of my favorite songs “Find It”, the familiar melody descended into a gentle chaos, performing a sort of improvisational jazz which began to swell with noise until I felt the room was going to burst—at this exact moment, Cheek let out a raw scream, and the song fell right back into the refrain I knew.
Cheek is a rockstar, I realized. I knew, from listening to her recordings, that she was a talented multi-instrumentalist, an experimental RnB wonderchild. But as she switched between the bass and guitar, swinging her hair and screaming between the soothing lulls of her rich vocals in her leather jacket, I was witnessing a rockstar.
This must be what my parents felt when they followed the Grateful Dead around California, I thought. This is what it was like to see Charlie Parker improvise on stage at Birdland in Chicago. The ebb and flow of music the five musicians in front of me commanded had an effect that can only be called euphoric. I looked around me to see nothing but awe.
Even the musicians on stage were taken with their own effect. The guitarist to the right of L’Rain leaned into the curtained wall on the side of the stage, seemingly blasted back by the sonic waves. The saxophonist/keyboardist and the bassist/guitarist to the left were often seen crouching on the floor, overtaken by their own sound almost to the point of collapsing. The drummer smiled casually the whole time—he knew exactly how good he was. At one point, I swear Cheek herself had to wipe away a tear.
Towards the end of the set, Cheek asked us how we were doing, the first words spoken since the performance started. The audience had been cheering throughout the show—at moments I was so overwhelmed with joy I couldn’t help but let out a whoop—but we reacted in silence to her prompt, awestruck and speechless. “Did I break you guys?” she laughed. She decided an easy fix for our dumbfounded silence. “Okay, one, two, three,” she counted down, and we all let out guttural screams.
The band ended with “Two Face,” the song I consider to be the centerpiece to the collection of songs which makes up Fatigue, L’Rain’s only album. An ethereal track made even more sublime live, everyone in the crowd danced almost desperately, knowing it to be the last song of an unforgettable performance. And with that, the show ended, as if what we in the crowd had witnessed was anything less than transformative.