“Live Wide Open” is the name of Martin Sexton’s new live album and the two-month tour he kicked off at the sold-out Birchmere Wednesday night and live is where the Syracuse singer-songwriter is unquestionably at his best: the concert stage sets gives his autobiographical compositions form and his remarkable voice charges them to life.
The two sets Sexton performed Wednesday with his longtime percussionist/sidekick Joe Bonadio used the form and material he has been honing for years, but because his singing is so enthralling, the two hours never seemed stale.
Alternating between a big velvet purr, a crackling soul shout and tender falsetto flights, Sexton’s vocals penetrated songs like “Freedom of the Road”, “Angeline” and “Where Did I Go Wrong” to their very core. While swaying around the same line where folk and rock blurred for Tim Buckley, Sexton shoved his youthful love of classic rock into the stew, singing his best songs---”Glory Bound”, “Wasted”, “My Maria”---with an emotional commitment that is rare in any current genre. Though he continues to indulge in lightweight numbers like “Diggin Me” and “13 Step Boogie” that are little more than showpieces for his singing prowess, it is hard to imagine tiring of hearing Sexton’s voice work through the straightaways and curves of a classic road song like “In the Journey”.
Finishing the second set without Bonadio’s percolating thumps, Sexton opened a quieter door, performing a wistful acoustic version of his junkie-prostitute-love song “Candy” and an oddly thrilling “America the Beautiful”. A soft comedown to another uniformly fine evening of Sexton.
Washington Post, 2002
