Written by: Dave Cantrell

It’s the rare musician who, without the aid of Rick Rubin, gets to record his own posthumous tribute album. Because even though it contains no originals and of course was not intended as such – wasn’t even recorded in any official way, instead by a devoted fan with a decent recorder – the recently released (on Bar/None) Alex Chilton album Electricity By Candlelight  is exactly that, containing, in its abundance of charm, off-the-cuff, self-deprecating irascibility and heroic yeoman’s proficiency, far more of the essence of the man, the artist, the rather accidental cult figure legend, the survivor, than the most lavish celebrity-studded tribute could ever hope to bestow.

Booked into the Knitting Factory for a two-set gig in the winter of 1997, a blackout betokened an almost certain cancellation of the second set when Chilton decided what the hell and carried forward in the finest ‘the show must go on’ tradition, performing an impromptu set with naught but a borrowed acoustic and (eventually) his drummer, Richard Dworkin. The result is an exquisite document that not only disarms with its naked honesty but as well erases any doubt whatsoever as to whether the phrase ‘consummate pro’ should be applied to Alex Chilton, and not simply because of this willingness to dramatically switch gears in response to daunting circumstance. More than that, even as he fluffs lines and forgets the occasional entire verse, it shines a light on a side of the guy that was largely hidden from many of his fans, an endearing reverence for – and command of – the rock ‘n’ roll songwriters canon. What emerges over the seventeen club-recorded tracks (an eighteenth is a studio version of Johnny Lee’s “You Can Bet Your Heart On Me”) is a randomly generated set of step-stones, from the obscure to the obvious, that constitutes the basic DNA of the hybridized rock/country/pop songbook. There’s prowess here even it’s a tad rusty about the edges.

The recording is so intimate – and clearly attended by a few unusually clumsy fans – that multiple times we hear a beer bottle kicked over on the floor beneath the tables, and a young woman’s frequent laugh just off-mike is close enough to elicit a quick look over the shoulder. By every indication an utterly delightful evening, the audience high-spirited, convivial and adoring, one of the inescapable responses to hearing Electricity By Candlelight is a crushing envy for every single person there. It was a special enough night to render the word ‘special’ somewhat trite. It’s also inviolably evident that if there was any bitterness in the man’s Big Star-cheated heart, there wasn’t a trace of it on display that February night.

Whether we’re talking Chilton’s warm – and immediately audience-seducing – take on the Clyde Owens-penned “Last Bouquet” that opens the record, the spare, loving rendition of “Let’s Get Lost,” how wryly he nails Loudon Wainwright III’s “Motel Blues,” investing it with a mix of sweet and ribald that only, well, Loudon himself can match, or the cymbal-brushed, country strut of “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” Alex is in his element, happy and strumming like he’s back on his porch in New Orleans except that, via some voodoo hocus-pocus, it’s been transported to the darkest pitch black night of a blown-out New York City and all these people are there. During Glen Shirley’s funny, raunchy, cheekily-crafted come-on stomper “Step Right This Way” (“but if you wanna try a little fast-paced life with your toes in the good time sand step right this way, I’m your man”), it’s impossible not to hear the singer smiling through the speakers and I’ll bet my writer’s reputation – such as it may be – that you’ll be smiling right along with him (though the whistled solo he invites from the stage, attempted by at least three takers, may crimp that smile some; Otis Redding they’re not).

Much of the effervescent mirth on this record derives from banter, both between and during songs. After “Let’s Get Lost,” just the third song played, Chilton, looking to beg off – “Let’s do one more” – protests in the face of the audience’s gentle persistence that he keep going that the acoustic’s making his fingers hurt, “I’m one of those tender little electric guitar players. I’m not as hardy as you folkies,” which leads to his call for folk song requests which leads to someone shouting ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’ to which Alex replies “That’s not a folk song” and then..to a quick rendition of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

Spontaneity can’t help but be born of such drastic unforeseen circumstance as happened that night and it will either flow towards gold or tumble into a hot ragged mess, but in Alex Chilton’s case we get a sassy, satisfying blend of both. The extent to which he was unprepared for an unplugged one-man hootenanny is never far from the surface and yet, through a charisma that’s as much ‘Aw shucks’ as it is the natural assuredness that derives from being an artist whose legend precedes him, whatever awkward bumps and stumbles encountered are smoothed and massaged and become an integral part of the performance, each a faux pas that is instantly covered in honey and bourbon. In short, Alex’s considerable Southern charm is showing.

The possible highlight might be the medley of Beach Boy songs towards the end of the set, Chilton’s not-so-obvious debt to Brian Wilson on clear display and lovingly rendered in service to that debt. The audience adds ooh-oohs and handclaps to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” someone chimes in a background vocal to “Surfer Girl” before Alex leaves them all behind with the more obscure “Solar System” (though ardent fans would recall him covering it in the mid-80’s). Or perhaps the highlight is the earlier take on the Bryant brothers’ “Raining In My Heart,” Chilton restoring some of the rockabilly flourish that the later-career Buddy Holly track had been stripped of, even giving it a bit of Elvis lip on the second chorus. Or maybe it’s the way the heartache and armor inherent in Joni Mitchell’s “A Case Of You” is captured by a vocal triangulating somewhere between Roger McGuinn and Rick Danko, or it might just be the unironic take on “Girl From Ipanema,” the interplay between acoustic and Dworkin’s drums bringing a spry, coffeehouse intimacy that tropicalia has seldom if ever known.

In any case, we’ll all have our own favorites – yours could be the fairly impeccable roll-out of “I Walk The Line” or the alternately faithful/irreverent version of “If I Had A Hammer” (“if I had a potato” standing in for the second verse) that fittingly closes the set in a sublime shambles – but however the particulars shake out, at the end of the day Electricity By Candlelight will remain as a loving testament to a beloved artist lost far too soon. Life’s not fair that way, but at least we get moments like this to divert us from that fact and remind us that, as with the recent passing of Lou Reed, it’s the legacy that stands and needs celebrating.