Show Review: Keegan DeWitt at Next Big Nashville 10/10/09

So let’s face it — Nashville is a place for music. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. So if you’re an artist and you’re playing a show in Nashville, then what do you do to keep your voice from drowning among the thousands of others belting, rasping, screaming, and rocking some serious vibrato across the city day and night? Well, if you’re Keegan DeWitt, then you show up to your Next Big Nashville showcase wrapped in a cream-colored, cable-knit sweater with perfectly coiffed hair, a lone guitar accompanist, and absolutely zero pretenses.

You come to have certain expectations when you go to a lot of shows in this town, and seeing DeWitt for the first time is enough to make a person cock their head to the side and go, “huh.” And I mean that in a good way.

If you live in Nashville for any length of time, it’s easy to grow jaded. In fact, it’s almost a rite of passage here. But my first impression of Keegan DeWitt setting up on stage with no hint of skinny jeans or swoopy hair was surprisingly refreshing. And sure, at first I was unfairly influenced by the blue eyes and boyish good looks — darn those blue eyes — but when he dove into his first song, DeWitt was no longer just a pretty face. His voice, reminding me a cool (and I mean very cool) Randy Newman, and the crisp, upbeat guitar tones took us to another place. The dimly lit sanctuary/venue of the Anchor Fellowship Church, with the Nashville skyline shining through the ceiling-high windows, melted away, and we were on the front porch of a mountaintop cabin where DeWitt stood tinkering on his guitar for all us city folk. The blues poured out from his shiny acoustic instrument, off the stage and across the wooden floors mingling with audience members, connecting everyone to the same peaceful melody.

And yet for all the reminiscence of a small-town American musician, DeWitt has a studied air about his sound that only a world traveler could possess. The Portland, OR native has been taken to some pretty amazing places due, in large part, to his impressive musical prowess. “Telephone,” written for his time in Paris, could very well have jumped right off a movie screen where two lovers on opposite sides of the world pined for each other as he sang: “Sleep on the telephone; I know I’ll never reach you.”

And the pace of the show and the feel of the atmosphere didn’t waver when DeWitt switched gears to sit down at the keyboard. The maturity in his lyrics against a backdrop of playful but heartfelt piano chords was enough to make any hardened music lover revert back to their innocence.

You have to give DeWitt credit where credit is due. Nashville doesn’t want for singer/songwriters. So walking into a weeklong music festival specifically designed to showcase the many up-and-comers is not for the faint-hearted. But with an elegance to his sound that still clings its grassroots edge, DeWitt makes you feel as warm and fuzzy on the inside as he looked in that sweater. His is the perfect October music that would sound just as good in any other season… so long as you have a steaming cup of hot apple cider in your hands.