Concert Review: Bonny Light Horseman @ The Howard Theatre (6/16/24)

Bonny Light Horseman (Photo Credit: Jay Sansone)

Happy Father’s Day!

Bonny Light Horseman came to DC to bestow the gift of traditional folk music, returning to The Howard Theatre on Father’s Day, June 16th. Their last foray to our great city was also at The Howard in 2022.

Bonny Light Horseman formed in 2018 as a folk supergroup, with Anaïs Mitchell (also a solo artist and creator of the musical Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (also of Fruit Bats, and formerly of The Shins), and Josh Kaufman (also of Muzz, and has collaborated with Josh Ritter, Craig Finn and Taylor Swift). Other backing musicians that joined them were JT Bates on drums (also a member of the opening band, Alpha Consumer) and Cameron Ralston on bass. Both Anaïs and Eric took lead or shared vocal duties throughout (and Josh a couple times). Eric also gave the banjo a whirl on a few songs, and put the harmonica to the test as they closed out the show.

They kicked off with a traditional cover of “Blackwatersite”, before strumming the introspective “The Roving”, both which appear on their first self-titled album. The latter speaks to witnessing the roving of your lover’s eyes as their love fades away from you and shatters your heart.

They are touring for their third album together (a double LP), Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free (via their new label Jagjaguwar) just released a week before the show. The album is rooted in the spirit of traditional folk music, while digging into the raw emotions of love and loss, hope and sorrow, and the vulnerability of change. Developed in 2023 at a pub in Ballydehob, Ireland called Levis Corner House, where the energy and sense of community of the pub became the main source of inspiration for Anaïs, Eric, and Josh to first write and then start recording the album. They finished the recordings at Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York, where they recorded their first two albums.

The first song (of the eight they performed) from the new album was “I Know You Know” sung by Eric, telling a former lover that you know they feel the same way as you when they said, ‘Love is rare, love is wild and hard to find.’ Now you’re sorry for what happened, but the conundrum of ‘I’m a fool if I love you and a fool if I let you go’ is tearing you apart.

One of the strongest reasons to check out Bonny Light Horseman if you haven’t, is the entire enterprise is musicians doing what they love, nothing flashy, nothing over the top, just a primal plunge into music in its rawest form. The stage set-up was simply instruments, and the backdrop was a simple white sheet with images that could have been clouds, and highlighted different moods as the stage lights switched colors. At one point the crowd all shouted ‘Woo!’, and Josh told us to ‘up the ante on the woos.’ Plenty of wooing ensued.

Midway through the set, the triumvirate of Anaïs, Eric, and Josh sang the chorus in unison for another new song, “Singing to the Mandolin”. Anaïs’ soft voice lilting out the verses hushed the crowd (not that we were boisterous or anything to start with) so every note was a pin drop and the melody held us in a tight embrace. Some people were moved to subtly sway (the mark of any good folk song). It was one of the best songs they performed that night.

“The Clover” was a world debut, they had never performed it live before, and gave me Fleetwood Mac vibes. Near the end of the main set, “When I Was Younger” stood out with its beautiful hook, that culminated in a guitar solo and the triumvirate all belting ‘aaaaahhhhahhhh’ into the vast of The Howard Theatre’s space.

After the banjo heavy rush of “Sweetbread”, they left for a spell and returned for three songs in the encore. It started with the big, bright bluegrass sounds of “California” before switching gears to the final song from the new album, “Old Dutch”. Its slow contemplative notes resonate as the lyrics from Anaïs deliver an earnest plea to someone, that has ‘lit a flame and let a wildfire start’ inside you, to learn their intentions, but they are scared or trying to run away. Love lingers and is a feeling that you cannot shake. The song’s title came from a voice memo recorded in a church of the same name, in Josh’s home city of Paterson, NJ.

They ended the fine evening with their namesake song, “Bonny Light Horseman”, also from their self-titled first album. Both the band and the song comes from the time of the Napoleonic Wars, where the term means the most agile and handsome rider in the cavalry. But it is also a lyric taken from a folk song titled “Broken Hearted I Will Wander”. The song is an elegy to a slain lover during one of those wars, putting the blame squarely on Napoleon’s shoulders. The song wound down in perfect fashion with the help of Josh’s mouth harp.

As the Howard Theatre crowd shared impressions and streamed out, it was clear we could put the blame squarely and deservedly on Bonny Light Horseman’s shoulders for the good and sometimes heartbreaking (lyrically not literally) time we all had.

Scroll away from this post and navigate to your favorite music buying situation and treat yourself to a copy of Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free. And their self-titled debut. And their second album, Rolling Golden Holy. Treat yourself, you deserve it.

Setlist