Descending is what it feels like when I head south. My wife and I descended upon Kansas City on Saturday afternoon, October 4. We were there to get away for a short weekend, to do a little shopping, a little sightseeing, just the tiniest bit of Kansas City-ing. But the underlying reason for the there and then of it was Peter Hammill’s performance at a bar called The Cashew. Anyone who knows me knows I have a deep and long-abiding love for Hammill’s music, and he’s anything but a fixture on the North American club tour circuit, not having been on this continent since 1999, and 1990 before that. (Take a look at www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk for an overall sense of the depth and breadth of the music he’s created solo and with his band Van der Graaf Generator since 1968, because I don’t want to be another blogger to spill over with the often-repeated accolades and over-the-top gushings that are meaningless until one hears the music.)

I was delighted when I got the news in August that, not only would Hammill be touring the US, but he would be playing right in the midwest, right in Kansas City! Kansas City is a place with some history for Hammill (or at least for his fans). In 1978 he played in a Unitarian church in that city – a stunning performance, beautifully recorded, becoming the Holy Grail of Peter Hammill bootlegs. Thirty years later, he would be playing, solo again, in a bar that had never played host to a musical performance before (although their website showed that just a few weeks before the Hammill show a U2 tribute band would be playing).

The performance space was to be on the third floor of the building (floors one and two were both bar spaces). The floor in question was apparently often rented out for party functions and on that afternoon a wedding – actual wedding, not a reception – was taking place. Thus the promoter for the show (who happened to be the promoter for the original Kansas City Hammill show in ‘78) was sweating bullets, since stage/audience area preparation and soundcheck would have to be delayed and rushed.

As the Hammill fans began to show up on the second floor of the Cashew, an air of quiet excitement began to become palpable, and the difference between Cashew regulars and those who had traveled hundreds of miles for this performance was ever more easily identifiable. People of all ages: college-aged kids, people like me who cut their serious music-listening teeth on Hammill’s recorded output just prior to the rise of the internet, and those who had been hip to his music since the 70s. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was some of the latter who seemed most childlike in their enthusiasm, clutching bags full of LP covers, posters, photos, and other ephemera for Hammill to sign after the show.

Eventually, the door at the top of the stairway opened, and we headed straight for the front and managed to get seats three rows back on the right, in a perfect sightline for the piano and the guitar stool. What we noticed as soon as we sat down was that the outer walls were actually garage doors, and they were open on our side. So we were sitting next to open outdoor space with only a few horizontal iron bars separating us from the outside — an open air experience! Occasional cab honkings and motorcycle engines from far below spiked the eager silence of the audience as we waited.

Hammill finally emerged in white and as he launched into the opener, an old, almost too-clever wordy piano-based tune from the late 70s called “The Siren Song”, I was transported. My wife doesn’t dislike Hammill’s music, but she’s never been particularly impressed either, despite my attempts to win her over, so naturally I was a little worried that she would hate the show. But once it began, the worry, in fact the realization that there was anyone there but me, popped up for the most part only between songs. It certainly wasn’t Hammill’s best performance, but a Hammill performance of any sort is otherworldly. His intensity leads one to resort to hyperbole in an attempt to describe, so I’ll just stay with the word intense to describe the show. Moving from piano to guitar and back again, we were treated to songs whose renditions were often as emotional as the lyrics were cerebral. It wasn’t all gloom and despair — Hammill has gone on public record many a time to say that he is a positive person; that the investigation of darkness in an attempt to understand it is in itself a positive act. And then there was the new song “Our Eyes Give It Shape” with the irony-free lyric: “I’m so glad I’m still here to see this / The break of day at the end of the long, dark night”.

For those of you reading who are familiar with Hammill, let me say that his rendition of “The Lie” was as scary as it could possibly have been — absolutely riveting. Definitely a high point among peaks.

As the concert began to move toward its conclusion, Hammill pulled out of his hat a surprise that stunned even, or perhaps especially, the most high-level fans: a song dating back to his first proper solo album from 1973. A long song, with multiple sections and dramatic changes, a song that was originally recorded with a full band and has only (to my knowledge) ever been performed live with Hammill’s band, Van der Graaf Generator. A song that fits the dreaded “prog” formula, with youthful lyrical overkill, and absolutely of its time. That song was “In the Black Room”. Hammill tackled it with the proper outrage, awe, wonder, and fury that it called for, and for those ten minutes the lyrics didn’t seem embarrassing. On the third floor of a building, in a secret semi-enclosed giant room in a strange city, fragmented lyrics like “Spiders / Mud boils / Children / Whimper in the human vortex / Faces glow of worms // Silence / Thunder / Omens” didn’t seem risible. (Well, my wife did laugh out loud at the “human vortex” line and it did become a running joke for the rest of the weekend, but besides that…)

A quick encore and it was over. I suddenly felt free of the fan-chains and I handed back to my wife the insert booklet for Hammill’s “The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage” that she had been holding for me in her purse, as I saw the crowd of men older than me queueing up by the stage with their bags full of lp sleeves. In 1999, in Ottawa, Ontario, I shook Hammill’s hand but I felt more of a connection to him this night in August 2008 for some reason. Older, I realize that it is actually all about the work and the music, not the man – an idea to which in 1999 I would have only given lip service. Connections are funny things, and easy to overdo.