When they’re playing and performing together, which is often, these two seasonal NOLA street musicians call themselves the Black Resonators, after their nearly identical guitars.
They’re also their own men and yet, as these two debut solo albums prove, working more or less from the same playbook, utilizing a mixture of gypsy jazz, pure folk, and classic American pop.
Their personalities differ just enough to provide some interesting contrasts, though. Nathan is the one with the clear, sweet voice and the occasional accordion, the very epitome of the happy, wandering bohemian deified by Golden Age Hollywood. You can almost see him, bindle over one shoulder, happily enjoying the backroads of some endlessly sunny Disney live-action landscape from the glorious days of Technicolor.
He’s blessed with an unwavering optimism, happy just to be alive and free, an attitude that holds even through the disturbing death throes of a relationship (“Cold Silence”) or its postmortem (“Goodbye”) or an actual, hopefully third-person, murder ballad (“Stranger’s Blood”).
Then there’s Shine, more prickly and complicated, the one with the voice that suggests Louis Prima raconteur on top and wounded, Billie Holiday-esque torch singer underneath. Unlike Nathan, he rocks out within the narrow confines of his style; also unlike him, Shine’s emotions run the gamut, which may be why all his love songs are fractured.
Nathan wanders for the sheer thrill of it, while Shine always feels like he’s running from something. Sort of the Lennon-McCartney of transplanted Pittsburgh street musicians, separately or together they’ve attracted enough attention to end up on a recent busker’s comp, as reported in this very magazine, offering up a ridiculously appropriate version of the Jungle Book favorite “I Wanna Be Like You.”
Weirder still, Nathan was recently asked by MTV to cover Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” as a promo for those infamous Video Music Awards. Naturally, busking was trumped by twerking—but that’s exactly why the hipster on the corner needs your support.
