Admittedly, I am only a recent Avett Brothers fan, drawn in by their 2009 album I and Love and You. So when I got a ticket to see them at the Missouri Theater in Columbia March 2, I went to a veteran listener for his opinion on the band’s live performances. “Totally different experience,” he told me. “Much more raw: punkish even. Harmonious, mountain-man punk.” 
The Low Anthem, a folk-rock group from Rhode Island, opened with a wild variety of instruments and the male singer’s impossibly high vocal range on the soft ballad “Charlie Darwin.” Other members took turns on clarinet, saw, something called a Tibetan singing bowl and cell phones. Explanation: Before playing one of their final songs, the group asked for audience participation. Without describing what the effect would be, crowd members were told to take out cell phones, call their seatmates on speaker phone and hold the phones together. Skeptical. In the end, though, in the darkened theater and accompanied by the hushed final strains of the song, this phone trick produced something like the sound of dozens of electronic crickets. It was a lush end to a set that had started quiet and escalated into raw, funky Americana.
Again, being new to the Avett obsession, I wasn’t expecting the level of joyous anticipation and raucous appreciation from the audience. The band opened with “January Wedding” from I and Love and You, but the remainder of the hour-and-a-half set jumped all over their decade-long career. Every one seemed to know the words. Every one had some obscure request from a 2003 EP. Other selections included “Offering,” “Bella Donna,” “Hard Worker,” “Tin Man” and “Kick Drum Heart.”
Midway through the main set, the Avetts brought out the title track from I and Love and You, which ends on the forlorn harmony of those three words. The sold-out crowd was more than singing along—rather, each member seemed to be expressing its fanatic love for the group on stage.
Punk was a good word to describe it as the three (or four or five, depending on the song) band members jumped around with guitar, banjo and upright bass during “Shame” and the rowdy finale of crowd-favorite “Laundry Room.” The experience also resembled some kind of Southern church evangelization. The band’s infectious enthusiasm and shouted lyrics fed the giddy, beaming crowd. Guitarist and sometimes-vocalist Seth Avett took the stage for the “Slight Figure of Speech” encore with the graciousness the band displayed throughout the show. He said, “We would love nothing more than to play another! Thanks for asking.”
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