Jeff Myers & The Made of Steel Strings Band

The lead singer and front man, Jeff Myers, tall and gangly, walks on stage with a stickered up nylon string classical guitar and a pint.
Curly wisps of short hair and a Gettysburgian chin beard, he folds himself up into a finger picking pretzel and somehow holds down his part of the stage from a rickety stool.
He is dressed in what can only be a Joe Namath style polyfibered multi-colored button-down shirt that appears perpetually ready to slip off the shoulder, not entirely ineffectually, and a grill full of teeth whose character rivals that of the shirt.
He seems all attitude and he totally looks the part.
He is followed by a shorter man, known by Matt McLeod (as well as many other names that come out through the set) packing a steel six string, who carries on his visage, a look of intense determination that this reporter associates w/ soldiers and pro atheletes.
He sports a shirt available only in the far out and forgotten corners of the Red Desert in Wyoming (or any other place where cattle rustling might still be an issue) and printed in the style of winning gamblers and/ or out of work law men. Complete with pearly snaps.
Enter the fiddle. She is the sweetness, the perfect touch of femininity to counteract the almost hilarious display of 70's testosterone.
A relaxed smile and a quick laugh, MJ Harris ties the three of them together, personifying Lebowski's rug as she turns a duo into a band and lightens up the intensity of the other two individuals.
And I thought I was coming here for the music.
A quick preemptive glance around shows a bar in full swing and scores of people lingering outside the Cafe Amsterdam's front doors, under a mellow Fairfaxian evening, finishing up smokes and greetings.
By now, people have begun to settle in and reaarange tables and chairs, for what must ineveitably become a small dance floor.
The lights are indifferent and the sound is not the best, but nobody seems to mind.
Some quick retuning, some banter amongst the band, last second slurps from the pints, and Jeff says a big hello to the crowd.
He seems at once familiar with everyone in the show and talks to the room like all of us together embody an old friend and the evening is just a matter of a brief re-aquaintance. Then he annonces the song.
A self proclaimed love song called "Castle Walls."
Then the first notes come through.
Simple, haunting harmonics from MC Loud (one of his many alii) lilting out over the crowd, easily followed by backing chords from the classical.
A little nudge from the fiddle, and like some ancient piece of time-tested machinery, the whole place starts to move into electric motion.
As soon as Jeff sings out the first line, you can see precisely where the music comes from.
Not from the styles or the attitudes or the beer or whatever else may have been ingested before the show, but right from the heart. And it is pointed at anybody in earshot.
The lyrics are carried by the simple tune, still being worked out and expanded by the band.
The right crescendo at the right time, leading into a light draw from the melody by the ever supportive Matt McDreamy, w/ MJ Harris following through with backing vocals to bring everything back to chorus.
"It's not anything you did or did not do/ It's just the way I feel around you/ Like somethin' lost inside of me found you..."
Jeff means what he sings as sweat already begins a trickle from his brow.
But it's not all nice and frou-frou. The song is a ride in and of itself, through a chivalrous man's internal struggle with whom and what to save in a world that may itself need saving, with personal consideration for his own needs as mainly an afterthought.
And even through the personal musing, you still get the sense that it is entirely for someone else.
The self sacrifice, the restraint, the song standing alone, it's not the band anymore or the singing.
It is us...
All of us. The whole damn wheel of life and death.
Another cursory glance around the room has me wondering if one of the hippies spiked my IPA w/ the good ol' LSD.
I doubt it.
It's just here. Whatever it is that comes and touches the senses, lifts the heart and lifts the glass, the spirit of togetherness that only nomads and fools seem to desire or comprehend. It is here.
And for a moment, just like the song says, "we're not anybody else's/ We're just ours..."
There's more to the show.
The music changes from folkie stuff to songs that Matt McSandyC (I have no idea) can really get his capable hands into.
They kinda rock with acoustic guitars.
Who knew?
They are joined throughout the night by various artists w/ a special sit-in by the bartender on piano on a tune aptly named "Ferris Wheel."
The importance of the crowd participation is quite clear in such a small room and by now the air itself is sweaty and hot.
For a local free show in a town where music seems to thrive in every corner, Jeff Myers and the Made of Steel Strings Band is a fine time.
In the end, you feel it in your head, your chest, your feet. Dancin' don't lie.
I left the place humming a tune and wondering about the next one and how much longer they'll be free.

-Jalen Shear
The Show Report c.2007
- FreeWriter's Monthly