A vet and a novice are paired for a great night at the Varsity.

On Friday night, July 20, Baton Rouge’s Varsity Theatre presented a low-profile, high-quality show pairing up-and-coming Austin singer-songwriter Sarah Pierce with veteran Baton Rouge musician Duke Bardwell. The mostly middle-aged patrons, thoughtfully accommodated with chairs and candlelit tables, made up in enthusiasm (quality) what they lacked in numbers (quantity), and included at least one celebrity in Bardwell’s cousin, New Orleans blues singer Luther Kent. At $10 a head, they got more than their money’s worth.

In addition to an hour of Pierce (about whom more in a minute), the audience got 90 minutes of Bardwell and his four-man band, whose exclusive use of mandolin, fiddle, washboard and two acoustic guitars enabled them to create the curious effect of playing bluegrass while seldom playing anything of the kind. Whether unplugging a song from Bardwell’s 1999 album Angel’s Wings (“It’s Real”), revisiting his days in Cold Gritz and the Black-Eyed Peas (“Bayou Country”) or debuting a track from the forthcoming album by Bardwell’s right-hand guitar man Ron Cliburn, the ensemble demonstrated a rare and enviable versatility and lightness of touch.

Bardwell’s set contained no references to his stint as Elvis Presley’s bassist (unless Cliburn’s muttering “Thank-you-very-much” at one point counts), but his decision to perform an evocative version of “Jesus on the Mainline” as his penultimate number was certainly something the King would have appreciated.

He would’ve appreciated Pierce, too, but, given his proclivities, perhaps more for her photogenic cheekbones and onstage charm than for her sensitive story-songs.

One could forgive him. In this day of young-women singers uglifying themselves beyond the call of feminist duty in a self-defeating attempt to stay ahead of what they wrongly perceive as male-pattern expectations, the musical talents of an attractive, frequently downright nice, frontwoman can get overlooked, sometimes even by the frontwoman herself.

Take Birdman, for instance, the latest of Pierce’s several albums. By the time one reaches Pierce’s lullaby-like rendition of “What a Wonderful World” (her encore at the Varsity) at disc’s end, an acute sense of having missed something begins to set in.
Where, one wonders, are the peaks on this obviously competent album, the upward swings of an admittedly — and admirably — steady graph?

Pierce’s live show goes a long way toward answering the question. Powered by the drumming of her husband Merel Bregante (downplayed on Birdman) and awash in the soulful organ playing of her Italian keyboardist Stefano (missing from Birdman altogether), the sympathetic sketches “Marjorie” and “Anything Goes” take on
muscle while the quizzically spiritual “High Holy Day” verges on epiphany.

Interestingly enough, the most impressive aspect of Pierce’s Varsity performance was her renditions of songs made famous by others (Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms,” Patsy Cline’s “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray”). Is it unkind to wonder whether her true gift lies less in self-expression than in the vanishing art of interpretation?

E-mail Orteza at arsenioort@aol.com