YOUNGSTOWN — A visit from a pair of Rusted Root members to The Stone Jug stage may have been a perfect storm.
While a driving rain storm had already descended upon the area by the time frontman Michael Glabicki and guitarist Dirk Miller began their performance Friday evening, the intimate outdoor venue also seemed to provide the right atmosphere for stripped-down renditions of songs from Glabicki’s catalog that largely included Rusted Root material.
Shows in venues such as The Stone Jug, Glabicki noted, are ones where an artist can establish its best connection with the audience.
“You can kind of see people individually being moved. You can kind of see their energy being shifted. You can feed off of a more intimate energy field,” Glabicki in a phone interview last week. “It’s like an atomic bomb going off. It’s this powerful energy within a small space.”
Having been a jam-band favorite of the Western New York music scene for multiple decades, it was no surprise that intermittent bouts of pouring rain did little to dampen the powerful energy of the audience.
As the duo plugged away through Rusted Root essentials such as “Send Me on My Way” and “Martyr,” the audience reciprocated the freewheeling nature of the band’s performance in the form of clapping and occasional dancing.
Glabicki would attribute that connection with the audience to the “vibes” that the area gives off.
“It’s a little bit isolated up (here) and it’s got its own vibe to it. I think the people are open to music…in a unique way. And I just kind of always feel like I’m sort of in my next-door neighbor’s yard having a concert,” Glabicki said.
While playing in a duo configuration, Glabicki and Miller were able to cover a lot of musical ground to fill out the sonic landscape of their performance as much as possible.
Glabicki was essentially triple-tasking at any given point in the show between singing, guitar playing and playing kick drum with his right foot.
Meanwhile, Miller would provide additional layers mostly with a clean electric guitar, slide and, of course, the very distinguishable penny whistle on “Send Me on My Way.”
Having performed together for two decades since Miller joined Rusted Root, the two put their strong musical chemistry on full display as they would play off each other on extended jam sections of Rusted Root material, particularly on the song “Rain.”
Glabicki’s powerful vocals shone through and displayed his wide vocal range that spanned anywhere between the lowest vocal octaves on a newer composition, “1988,” to an outright falsetto on the song “Heaven” from Rusted Root’s 1996 album “Remember.”
That perfect storm subsided approximately 75 minutes later as the rain mostly subsided and the duo capped off their 13-song set with a rousing performance of “Ecstasy” that brought nearly every member of the audience to their feet.