Ari Hest

Last night I went with some friends to see Ari Hest at Joe's Pub, a small venue (ie, less than 200 people) downtown. I have no idea how I was originally introduced to his music, but I have had a few of his songs on my iPod since freshman year of college. Well, I didn't have an iPod freshman year, but you know what I mean. Regardless, I happened upon the fact that he was performing, so I got some people together and went.

It was great. It was just him, solo, no band. Piano. Guitar. Folk rocky amazingness.
And it was even better because it wasn't perfect. For his first number the microphone wasn't on, so he kind of joked about it and said he would go play his guitar and they could fix the piano mic. But in the middle of his second song suddenly a noise was coming out of the amp that should not ever meet human ears. You know what I'm talking about- one of those horrid feedback screechy something is dying a horrible death sounds. So again he made light of it and was like, "Alright, I'm just going to take a little break while the sound people fix all this stuff, and hopefully they'll get it figured it out and I'll be back in a few."

Calm. Cool. Collected.

Like any good Brooklynite. :)

Anyhow, the show continued 10 minutes later, some old stuff, some new stuff, a few forgotten lyrics (At one point he goes, "I've totally played this song 9,000 times, why can't I remember this line??"), but both he and the audience rolled with it. We're all human, afterall.

I really really wanted to hear "Consistency." It's my favorite song, and I figured he might not play it because it's old old, and he was playing mostly new stuff. So in a moment of ballsy-ness, when it was dead silent, I loudly said the name of the song. My one word declaration was met with dozens of cheers and claps. Ari looked in my general direction and smiled, saying, "Wow, I haven't played that song in years... *pause*... Well, what the hell, I'll just play it now. But you can't blame me if I mess up the chords, it's been a long time. I wrote this when I was seventeen when I was kind of obsessed with Dave Matthews Band, so it kind of sounds like their stuff."

In that moment I can't quite explain how excited I was. The whole song both he and I had huge smiles on our faces, and I'm not sure who was having more fun in those 3 minutes- him or me.
My $20 ticket was entirely worth it, for those 3 minutes alone. The rest of the concert was great. I absolutely love his voice, it's just exactly what I love to listen to. And piano. And guitar. Yea, I'm sold.

Thanks Ari. Maybe we'll run into one another sometime in Brooklyn and I can tell you that I was the girl who asked to play Consistency. And then maybe you'll ask me to be your female backup singer/harmonizer and fulfill my lifelong dream of touring in a band...

Maybe.