Kaitlyn Raitz
Bowery Vault
Nashville
Dec. 5, 2023
Kaitlyn Raitz looked down at her cello and the pedal board to the right of her right foot and said to the audience, “This is the first time I’ve played solo with this thing on the ground.” She pulled her bow across the string and released one long note that she then caught with one of her pedals via the tap of a toe. The note continued as she layered a rhythmic line over top of it and began to sing. Those in attendance at the Bowery Vault on Tuesday night with a triple bill of local musicians Jordie Lane, Kaitlyn Raitz, and Breann Young, caught several lessons in trying something new.
Many people’s first thought of the Nashville music scene is that it is a hotbed of pristine and shiny country music at the Grand Ole Opry. Or perhaps their mind goes to the honky tonks of Broadway, where bands play note-for-note covers around the clock in almost every bar.
However, the larger reality of the state of live music in Nashville is that it is one big bubbling test kitchen for working musicians to try new things when they are at home off the road, either new material or new skills. On any given night, that kind of experimentation happens at the Bowery Vault.
Before the start of the show, Raitz, who performed second in the line-up with just a cello and her pedal board, turned to me and said, “This is the place to try things you’ve never done before. I’m doing a lot of things tonight I’ve never tried in front of people.”
She plays on the road regularly with big names such as Brandy Clark and Tyler Childers, as well as writing and performing her own compositions for cello, and she is a master of creating textures on her instrument. She mentioned that she often performs her music with four other cellists on stage with her, but on Tuesday, she took on all those roles using a combination of a pedal that could detect chord changes controlled by her foot and looping her own playing behind her voice.
Over the course of her 30 minutes on stage, there was only one break in the music, as she composed transitions to create somewhat of a played-through set. (“You don’t get to clap until I say,” she joked after the show.) Her songs were largely about forgiving yourself and easing up on unrealistic expectations, a fitting theme for the night.
Before Raitz, Jordie Lane opened the show. He said that he was asked to join the bill
only about 50 minutes before his set as a fill-in for Heather Bond, who had to cancel due to coming down with Covid-19.
Lane, who is rounding out his eighth year of living in Nashville, hails from Melbourne, Australia and can be heard at his weekly Wednesday residency at Nashville’s Urban Cowboy.
“I’m playing a bunch of new songs of mine,” Lane shared before launching into a song that seemed to be about the songwriting industry, with singer-songwriter Steve Poltz as a character and one lyric about writing something “so beautiful it’ll get me on some underground Norwegian blog.” It was an Easter egg wholly for other writers in the room. He also leaned on his knowledge of pedals to create textures that wrapped around his voice to fill up the room.
The Bowery Vault itself is a character in any show hosted there. It’s owned and run by two
women and covers are strictly forbidden; original music only. (This is not just a workaround to
avoid paying ASCAP fees, surprisingly.) It has almost a David Lynchian quality to it, with a full
curtain opening and closing between every artist, despite the stage being small enough to fit
into the shot above. Artists perform in front of a red velvet backdrop with a fog machine and
boots (that are for sale) lining the front of the stage.
“Mostly I see people I know play — that’s why I usually come, but I also discover new artists
because they always feature several artists, never just one,” said audience member Moriah Lee.
This summarizes the primary attraction of The Bowery Vault as an artist lab: it is mostly friends
watching friends, and is small enough that it feels full with only a few people in the room, so it
doesn’t need a big promotional push.
Breann Young closed out the show with a set that was the most Nashville of the bunch. Her set
was full of tales of co-writes and Music Row writers’ rooms, delivered in the punchline-country
style that is very much in the classic Nashville songwriting tradition. Again, fresh material was
shared; at one point, she pulled out some lyrics so she could play the audience a song she had just written.
However cliche the sentiment, Nashville holds onto its title as Music City because spaces like
the Bowery Vault, a working musician’s venue, still persist despite the encroaching tourism
industry of downtown. And as long as artists have quiet spaces to go and be musically messy,
good music will continue to be made.
