A Moment With Shotgun Tori
Singers, Red Wine and Blue Light, Alma Road
Written by Dan Corder
Last night I fell, sodden and panting, through the open door of Alma Road Café. The street that I left was quiet, but for drops of rain hitting the tar. The evening was dark. The rainclouds saw to that too.
I had run through the streets of Cape Town to Alma to see Shotgun Tori.
The Alma Road Café is a beautiful little place with sky-blue walls and shelves covered in odd pots and boxes from a past decade. It exists to give budding musicians a space for live performance. So single-minded is it in its aim that, until recently, nothing else was supplied. Visitors from the neighbourhood were politely asked to bring their own wine and chairs, unless sitting on the floor was ok with them.
Two large, dusty speakers are fixed to the wall, one to the right of and the other opposite the low, carpeted stage. Richard, the manager, rests behind the sound desk during performances, his expansive grey hair stretching reassuringly out from each side of his head. His introductions are as warm as the café, everyone is ‘brother’ or ‘bugger’, and he takes every opportunity to damn America-spawned Idols-esque music.
I collapsed into a plastic blue chair at a long, candlelit wooden table, and enjoyed the hubbub of a room built for thirty at a squeeze. Wine flowed, spaghetti filled and the guitars, signs and pictures on the walls endeared.
Opening for Tori was soulful and bearded Jon Shaban, whose deep, powerful voice seemed to leap at us as he sang of good, evil, the world and a man in the sky. He was supported by the raucous strumming of his guitar and, later, a young woman with a smile that infectiously painted the faces of the room with imitations. Her knees bounded on unmoving feet to the tune of the guitar and the audience couldn’t help but clapping with the end of each song.
Between sets we met at her small table in the corner of Alma and Tori told me about her tour and her plans for the future. We talked about her first full album and the last time we had seen each other and then the lights dimmed and I went to my seat, she to the stage.
Leather jacket, barefoot, strumming forearm tattooed with a woman and a Leonard Cohen quote, small smile, soft joke, and then the music.
The first time I saw Tori was at a poorly attended art exhibition by developing artists for the Kalahari. She stood at the mic, whooping, serenading, jumping, stomping, throwing back her head and throbbing up and down, her body curled around a black guitar. I bought her EP and enjoyed it as a poor relation of the live delirium and a reminder of that performance. That was the night I missed Die Antwoord and Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Cape Town Stadium. I sold my ticket. I tell people it was to pay rent. I didn’t want to go, really, which is strange, seeing as I adore both acts.
Not so strange, in hindsight, given who I ended up watching that night, for free. And I paid rent that month.
Back at Alma, under a soft blue light, Tori sang of cocksure but woefully inadequate lovers, daring kisses snatched from those off-limits, and forlorn memories of break-ups, make-ups and ache-ups. Her voice whispered and raged with the lyrics. Each song was saturated with energy, emotion and unexpected tonal leaps and drops.
At the end of each song, a lull and the applause.
Maybe we were so wrapped up that we didn’t notice it had ended for a while.
Maybe, we didn’t dare to clap. As much as it is the done thing when showing gratitude and admiration, it seemed so loud and harsh. Too brash, too exuberant. Inappropriate.
Maybe we didn’t want to break the spell.