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Should Amos Lee ever become an icon and find himself wondering how to carry his legend into and beyond middle age, experience will have given him two very different models to consider.
Lee had the rare task of opening for Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan Sunday night at Bridgeport's Arena at Harbor Yard. If, after finishing his warm-up set, the relative newcomer listened from the wings, he heard two masters use two distinct voices: One was a well-rung bell that almost needed no microphone. The other creaked and broke, almost like a megaphone.
The former, not surprisingly, belonged to Costello — an artist who, over the years, has shown himself to be far more than the sneering yelper he played on his first few albums. Performing solo, with just an acoustic guitar, Costello unleashed a rich, expressive bellow, intermittently diving to the low end of his register and climbing back with unexpected falsettos. Costello opened with "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes," initially disguising the first chord with a fierce strum reminiscent of The Who's "Pinball Wizard." Despite the lack of bass, organ, and drums — extras that gave his early tunes such fizz — he coursed with jittery energy, sometimes dropping a knee or jerking away from the microphone.
In his short set, Costello offered several of his more popular tunes, including "Veronica," rendered less sprightly without Paul McCartney's bass, and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," which had folks on their feet. Similar in sentiment was the closing "The Scarlet Tide," which focused its anti-war lens on a single soldier's wife.
If Costello demonstrated how a voice might ripen and sweeten over time, Dylan showed the salty reverse. Either because he's burned himself out, as non-fans maintain, or because he simply enjoys messing with people's expectations, Dylan brutalized his melodies, as has become his standard practice.
Hearing him sing favorites like "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat" was like watching a junkyard sculptor try to hammer Michelangelo's "David" from an old car bumper.
Whereas Costello let his songs stand on their own, Dylan and his ace sidemen found mystery around every turn, vamping hard on a semi-recognizable "Highway 61 Revisited" and charging through a chopped-up "Summer Days."
Lee, then, faces a question that may well have crossed everyone's mind: Is it better to keep fans smiling or guessing?
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