Richard Swift Tribute embraces the songwriter in song and in spirit

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Mynabirds' Laura Burhenn performs at the Richard Swift Tribute at the Masonic Lodge

The heartfelt tribute to the beloved Richard Swift on Thursday night at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever was a lot like the late musician’s life: an abundance of love, well-timed laughs, musical whimsy and wizardry and, ultimately, profound sadness.

Swift, a singer-songwriter, producer, sideman and svengali, died in July at age 41 from the effects of alcoholism. Thursday’s tribute — proceeds benefited his wife and children — featured an assemblage of indie luminaries with whom Swift had written, recorded, performed and/or toured. Or, as Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado noted dryly, “Pitchfork’s wet dream, the musicians in this room.”

They included the Shins’ James Mercer, Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan, Nathaniel Rateliff, Cold War Kids, Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado and Sam France, Gardens & Villa, Mynabirds, Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson, Lucius, Pure Bathing Culture, Harley Cortez and funnymen Tim Heidecker and Nick Thune. Emotionally, they held it together better than many in the crowd (populated by many friends and collaborators from the time Swift lived in Southern California), who alternately smiled and wiped tears from their eyes as they heard Swift-touched music.

That is, until Jurado absolutely lost it at the end of “The Novelist,” the title track of a mini-album Swift once said “subconsciously ended up being about Jonathan Swift,” the 18th century writer to whom the songwriter could trace his lineage. Jurado choked up as he reached for the falsetto on the last line, “Try to write a book each time I speak.” Jurado had said he would try not to cry on this night, and he almost made it. The room sobbed along with him.

It was but one heart-rending moment on a night full of them. However well-meaning, tribute concerts such as these are notoriously unwieldy and uneven, but Thursday’s moved along crisply, and moreover it sounded almost luxurious — from the performers to the mix. The participants credited Rado, who was the event’s de facto musical director, but it was praise he deflected. And besides the music, Swift’s exploits as a visual artist were saluted via projections that backed the band.

If there were a “show” to be stolen, Denver singer-songwriter Rateliff made off with it, inhabiting the Swift’s voice on “Broken Finger Blues” — “You did that shit right!” somebody in the crowd called out — and then turned even more powerful on 2005’s “Mexico 1977.” The former song appears on Swift’s posthumous album “The Hex,” which was released in September on what would have been his 21st wedding anniversary.

The midsection of Thursday’s tribute was anchored by performances of almost all the songs on “The Hex.” Foxygen’s France nailed the title track, Bazan solved “Selfishmath” and Jurado did the same with “Dirty Jim.” Gardens & Villa’s Lynch let his vocal flag fly on “Babylon,” and the Fruit Bats’ Johnson did likewise on “Nancy.” Mercer, with whom Swift played in the Shins for five years, sang “Nancy,” and that part of the set closed with Bazan, abetted by the Gardens & Villas guys, hushing the room with the album’s closing ballad, “Sept20,” and its closing lyrics, “All the angels sing / Que sera sera / Death do us part / Sickness and health.”

Not to be ignored, though, were the sublime vocals of Lucius. The duo of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig sang pristine harmonies (Swift’s music has lots of them) most of the night, and during “The Hex” took the lead on the girl-groupish “Wendy.” Backing Lucius on vocals were Swift’s three daughters.

All was not solemn, though.

Cold War Kids ratcheted up the energy with a three-song set including “Minimum Day,” recorded with Swift at his Cottage Grove, Ore., studio. After “The Hex” set, Heidecker took over, saying, “In the spirit of Richard Swift, I’m going to change the mood drastically,” and then performed a hilariously profane song called “Hot Piss,” about drinking one’s own. Comedian Thune (that’s Swift’s music in his “Folk Hero”) had cracked up everybody in the room earlier.

The night began with five artists performing songs they had recorded with Swift: Harley Cortez’s “Whitman,” Mynabirds’ “Numbers Don’t Lie,” Pure Bathing Culture’s “Ivory Coast,” Gardens & Villas’ “Black Hills” and Lucius’ cover of “Christmas Time.” The show wound down with some Swift songs, notably Pure Bathing Culture’s Sarah Versprille taking on “Would You” and Mynabirds’ Laura Burhenn doing “Most of What I Know.”

The whole gang assembled onstage for the finale, “Lady Luck,” with Rateliff and Johnson trading verses on lead while everybody reached for the song’s arching falsetto. At the end there were the hugs of spent emotions … along with the distinct feeling that rather than attending a tribute, you just spent the past two hours with Richard Swift himself.