John Fullbright + John Moreland, Night 2
Mercury Lounge
December 21, 2024
As Christmas approached Mercury Lounge, the taxidermied cowboy opossum twinkled, hanging by her claws above the bar, furry hindquarters lit extra-white among the tinsel.
She loomed over the bartenders handing five dollar Coors Light to the firemen, mechanics, roofers and working artists in the audience. She watched Big Fish the bouncer work the door and quiet the crowd. She saw Costa the sound guy and Ken Pomeroy walk in with her zoomer folk collaborators. She listened to Zach Bryan (yes, that one) and his rowdy pals strike up chants of “John! John! John!” between songs, first for Moreland, then for Fullbright. As two of the state’s premier songwriting talents proved why their two consecutive nights’ worth of shows sold out so quickly, she hovered.
Combined, the Johns have put out 10 albums of original solo material since 2011, seven for Moreland and three for Fullbright. Not one of these records is bad, or even middling. As artists they’re both outsiders who’ve managed to attract national attention without having to move away from their home state. The two share a special talent for tender songwriting in the Okie vernacular and have written their grandmothers into their songs. The similarities probably don’t end there.
The differences in style and presentation are vast. Moreland is all right-brain: a wandering mystic born on the wrong side of the tracks. Fullbright is the left brain: a storyteller obsessed with economy and able to flood scenes of small-town life with pathos, tension, humor and drama. If a tractor ever fell over on you, Moreland’s song about it would probably wonder if you were always doomed to this fate. Fullbright’s would send your one true love running out in the rain to collect your last words.
It was remarkable to see Moreland and Fullbright hold the crowd’s attention without accompaniment. Playing solo meant a night of mostly old songs from Moreland. His earlier records In The Throes and High on Tulsa Heat feature a lot of his fingerplucked guitar playing, punctuated by the occasional harmonica solo. The setlist underscored how much of a return to old form Moreland’s latest record, Visitor, is. He played two songs from it—“The More You Say The Less It Means” and “Visitor”—that melded in seamlessly with the others.
This choice played into Moreland’s strengths. He’s a nimble guitar player who has mastered the art of dynamics. He’s also tough on himself. One sour note (the only one I clocked in the set) on “Hang Me In The Tulsa County Stars” sent his head rolling upward, and when it returned level there was pure venom on his face. That he played one song from Big Bad Luv and none from LP5 and Birds in the Ceiling didn’t seem to register as an issue with the crowd. Personally, I’d love to hear him settle into the groove on “Love Is Not an Answer” with a full band. Or anything from the dreamy, atmospheric A-side of LP5, for that matter. “Blacklist” showed up deep in the set, which I think is the song I would point to as quintessential Moreland. Its imagery is a blend of Catholicism and the Bruce Springsteen songbook, all bound up in particularly masculine forms of reflection and vulnerability.
After a break, Fullbright settled in behind his piano and played for about as long as Moreland did. Three or four songs in, I noticed Bryan in the back leading the “John!” chants again. They’d made Moreland visibly uncomfortable, but Fullbright chuckled them off for the fratboy humor they were. When Bryan says “I like out-of-tune guitars and taking jokes too far,” we should believe him.
Over the course of his set Fullbright played the first four songs from his latest record, The Liar, which are each fabulous in their own way, seasoned with good humor and charm. It’s hard not to smile at lines as daring as “I got a piano I can sing to” or “maybe reckless hearts come in pairs.” And if you need a prime example of him in a self-effacing mode, look no further than “Social Skills,” which I’ve seen him play before with full commitment and a backing band, belting it out like a Japandroids song.
Eventually Fullbright switched from piano to guitar and played a handful of the songs from his Grammy-nominated first studio record, From the Ground Up. The set was constructed around a showstopping centerpiece in “High Road,” a sad love story that ends with a tractor falling over on a guy. (I wasn’t making that earlier part up.) When the music stopped, we all looked at each other like we’d just gotten off a roller coaster.
It’s hard to imagine the last 14 years without the presence of these two huge songwriters, still just in their 30s. If you struck their 10 albums from the record, the cabinet of recent Oklahoma songwriting would look bare. That they chose the Mercury Lounge as the setting for an intimate hometown show speaks volumes. I wonder how the night registered with Bryan, bopping around with the boys in the back. He’s a bonafide country star now, his commercial success beyond question. But when you’re in the Mercury Lounge, the taxidermied cowboy opossum’s gaze falls upon us all one and the same.
