Planet Dust
By Vanessa Moore
A Review of Joel Cage and Richard Shindell at Colatina Exit, Bradford, VT.
Performance date: February 24, 1999

Two men held the stage at the Colatina Exit the evening of Feb. 24. Although they both created music in the same way... on guitars and with their voices... two more different methods of doing it could probably not be found.

Despite a flurry of nerves at the beginning of Joel Cage's opening act, the thumping of his heart did not override his frenzied fingers. He set a fast pace early on and didn't let it go, but as each song formed, the separate strains of emotions became dominant and steered the music.

Cage's voice held the urgency of a man who has asked the same questions and relived the same scenarios over and over, yet he never lost the conviction of his words, pounding his hand against his guitar for emphasis.

Then, when he had said all he could, he'd throw himself against the back of his chair and relinquish the power of the microphone, leaving the reverberations to continue just a little longer.

For Richard Shindell, his relationship with his music made it appear as if he were unwrapping a precious nugget that was often hinged upon one word... "swelling" for example. Throughout the song, the audience would hold very still, thinking, "where is his mind traveling with this?" and then, with just the use of a couple syllables, he would reveal the connection, leaving the crowd on the crest of a hill, suddenly confronted with the vastness of the ocean.

Prayerful songs for truckers, women afraid of missing the face of lost grandchildren in the crowd, the insult of being dumped and discovering the ex had taken the Halloween candy, no one would have guessed this was where his almost Irish voice was taking them.

Shindell stood still before the microphone. He didn't thump anything. He shook his guitar for emphasis instead. Did he smile? I can't recall. He admitted he was prone to disaster songs but he still possessed the faculty of an ex-seminary student to uplift his audience when they were ready for it.

Although I said these two men performed their craft differently their... "creation theories" were uncannily similar. "my writing process is kind of like a cloud of cosmic dust that solidifies," explained Cage. "I keep clarifying it and shaving off the barbs. For me, I'm trying to use the least amount of words to say the most."

"A lot of times," Shindell said after his show, "songwriting is like planets forming. The ideas circle and they're pulled in with gravitational effort. It's neat. If they stay hazy for long, it's frustrating. You can't just put it together. They must synthesize."