Sleepy LaBeef’s prowess as a performer is legendary among rockabilly and roots-rock fans. He can ignite an audience seemingly at will, but his success is virtually impossible to analyze in terms of technique. Onstage he appears stolid, almost reserved most of the time, peering out at the crowd from under heavy, drooping eyelids. Even so, the passion that pours from him can elevate a crowd of drunken cowboys or bright-eyed baby boomers with equal facility, and his devotion to the country and rockabilly music tradition verges on the fanatic. LaBeef, whose career dates back to the 50s, has endured dead-end recording contracts, the destruction of his tour bus and vintage record collection in a fire, and periods of professional and personal uncertainty with unflappable dedication, optimism, and a well-developed sense of irony.
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The result can be musically schizophrenic, but it’s almost always satisfying–and part of the fun of a Sleepy LaBeef show is the knowledge that he’s almost sure to do something you’ve never heard him do before. He’ll test his crowd with a mini-medley of tunes, trying a verse or two of a lugubrious country weeper and following it up with a high-charged rock-and-roll barn-burner, then segueing unexpectedly into a country ballad by Lefty Frizzell or Tom T. Hall. Somehow it all hangs together, even when he jumps from song to song so fast that you barely have time to recognize the tunes. After a while, when he’s gauged the room and found the right niche, he begins to stretch out a bit more, teasing and expanding his music into subtle new dimensions.
Recently Chicago listeners had a rare opportunity to see LaBeef tailor his material to three distinct venues–FitzGerald’s in Berwyn, the Lincoln Avenue Street Fair, and Lounge Ax on Lincoln Avenue. True to form, he crafted sets that were perfect for each audience; the subtle differences among the shows perfectly illustrated the essence of LaBeef’s genius as a performing musician.
Much more effective was Freddie Hart’s “Drink Up and Go Home,” a delightful anticountry country tune that satirizes the music’s self-indulgent pathos while paying affectionate tribute to its compassion. LaBeef’s resonant baritone attained a satiric edge as the band loped along behind him, perfectly fusing tenderness and harshness. By the time LaBeef tore into Tony Joe White’s backwoods anthem “Polk Salad Annie,” the audience was his. His rendition was somewhat rote–he mimicked White’s spoken “Chomp, chomp, chomp” interludes virtually verbatim, and the song charged along with a little too much energy to evoke the funky swamp atmosphere that made the original such an oddball classic–but still the crowd exploded into applause afterward.
About the only low points of a Sleepy LaBeef show occur when he lets his sidemen sing. His current bass player, David Young, has the prototypical C and W voice–nasal, largely affectless, and flat. After being bathed in the glory of LaBeef’s voice, one nearly cringes when Young takes over the microphone.
