Remembering David Berman and a special Houston show

Silver Jews performing live for the second weekend of ATP (All Tomorows Parties), on May 18th 2008. Frontman David Berman played Houston after he was told cooped-up Houstonians wanted to get out of the house after Hurricane Ike. less Silver Jews performing live for the second weekend of ATP (All Tomorows Parties), on May 18th 2008. Frontman David Berman played Houston after he was told cooped-up Houstonians wanted to get out of the house ... more Photo: Edd Westmacott/Photoshot/Getty Images Photo: Edd Westmacott/Photoshot/Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Remembering David Berman and a special Houston show 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

My fondest memory of David Berman was a show he played in Houston in September 2008. Local fans of his band Silver Jews who made it to the gig likely remember it just as fondly. The band was supposed to play the Orange Show, which was still without power after Hurricane Ike raked through the city. The concert was cancelled. And then it wasn't, when Walter's on Washington offered it a home. Berman and members of the Delta Spirit, also on the bill, manned the phones at the venue, trying to drum up a crowd and offer some sort of escape for a couple hundred people who were itching to get out of the house after the storm.

Berman never did a lot of interviews, but he called the Chronicle that day, hoping to nudge people out of the darkness to hear a few hours of music. "I can't imagine any show I'd rather do right now," he told me.

"The promoter asked if maybe people needed something to do," Berman said. "And I don't know. I guess we thought we could be a small part of a big reconstruction."

The concert felt like a big deal at the time. It came just two years after an infamous show at the same venue, when a noise complaint led to the interruption of a Two Gallants show by the police. The ensuing melee involved broken instruments and kids getting tasered. Those were tenuous times for indie rock and Houston. Artists would routinely skip town for other destinations. So there was something heartening about a revered figure like Berman not just playing here, but playing here despite logistical challenges, and doing so with enthusiasm.

Berman died Wednesday at 52, ending a life full of torment and poetry and poetry drawn from that torment.

By musical standards, Berman wasn't terribly productive, though he was also a published poet, essayist and occasional cartoonist. He made six albums with Silver Jews between 1994 and 2008 – all of which I would recommend highly. Then Berman went quiet until the release of "Purple Mountains" by his new band Purple Mountains earlier this year. The record felt like something I needed. I'd not heard his parched speak-sing voice in so long that I allowed myself to be enveloped in the record without really paying attention to the graveness within it. I mean, it opened with "All My Happiness Is Gone." Further down Berman offered "Nights That Won't Happen."

LOOKING BACK: Memories, and a farewell to Houston music venue Walter's, on HoustonChronicle.com

His struggles with depression don't fit the cliché of "well documented" because he was a fairly private guy. Sure, those struggles found their way into song. But for the most part he chose to let the songs speak for him. Which made our short chat before that Walter's gig all the more rare a moment to me.

I hadn't read the transcript in a long time. And I'm struck at what felt like his despair at the time at political events of the era. He still kept his humor in tact, referring to "the absurdity of the times" more than a decade ago. I asked him about the cover of his then-new album, "Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea," which had a bunch of Babar elephants plunging off a cliff into the sea. But in the back of that piece of art, some sunshine beamed down onto the water.

"That is the hope on this record that maybe is not on the other records," Berman said. "The sunshine coming back around to the sort of cyclical view that I maybe lacked earlier in life. I don't think we need music that says everything will be all right. It should display a struggle with characters taking a position of defiance. It really is a Jewish perspective on suffering that it's necessary. Something to go through to make you better. Experience is gained from it. We're so soft as Americans, I worry if the luxuries we've grown used to are all taken away, how quickly it would turn into 'Lord of the Flies.'"

I certainly don't know that Berman found our culture to have finally yielded to the primitivism presented in William Goldman's novel. But through my eyes, well, our times feel that way -- often. When we talked he was irritated by the commercializing of music and consumer culture – trends that haven't bent back to his preferences in the decade since. He referenced "kids" on multiple occasions, mostly about ways he felt two post-World War II generations failed 21st century youth.

Years ago Berman revealed his father's role as a prominent lobbyist, doing work the songwriter found objectionable. So he had a weird personal connection into a political tempest he despised.

"Poetry can never counter propaganda," he said. "A song might be able to."

Which meant I felt lonelier the decade Berman wasn't writing songs.

"I feel hopeful and I don't feel hopeful," he said. "I think I feel hopeful out of defiance. Almost because of my earlier self who maybe saw my own life and prospects for survival as negatively as I see my country's at this point. I still allow myself to believe there's some way this country can exist and move into a new phase and continue. But I don't know how to imagine it."

So Berman came to life and art with his fair share of grievances. And he processed all of it with such a rare mix of wit and wisdom. He wrote more than his fair share of funny lines. "Boy wants a car from his dad," he sang. "Dad says, 'First you gotta cut that hair.' Boy says, 'Hey, Dad, Jesus had long hair.' And dad says, 'That's right son, but Jesus walked everywhere."

There exist numerous lists of great Berman lines cobbled together by his dedicated following. John Darnielle – the brilliant singer and songwriter in the Mountain Goats – tweeted upon news of Berman's death, "I could sit here all day and quote memorable David Berman couplets and never grow tired. He had no competition. He was the competition."

Then Darnielle began listing couplets and excerpts, including the one below, which reflected Berman's brief time in Texas – he attended high school in Addison.

"Got two tickets for a midnight execution/hitchhike our way from Odessa to Houston/and when they turn on the chair/something's added to the air/Forever."

I guess if I had one favorite it was a single line from the Silver Jews' "People": "I love the city and the city rain."

The line did what so many of Berman's works did, they pried loose some part of my own experience to make me wonder if his thoughts and my experience overlapped.

I naturally prefer the city to the country, with its distinctive set of less organic stimuli. But cities are built upon density .... But for dystopian fiction, cities are full of people, which can be a problem for some. But rain has a certain suppressive effect on the city. My favorite time to walk in New York was before 6 a.m. when it was raining.

Maybe Berman intended something else with the line. But it's just one of numerous musical moments Berman designed that made me feel like he was singing to me. Kind of like that show after Ike, when a crowd packed into a rickety old club – which has since been razed -- on a Houston street that looks nothing like it once did.

One last line, and I'm done: "First life takes time, then time takes life. Now the next move's up to me."

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