Roy Jurgens on July 8th, 2017

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Witnessing Sean Rowe live will not cure your heartbreak. If anything it will twist the hot knife a bit deeper into that smoldering hole somebody left behind. Captivated and stunned into silence one moment and hooting and hollering the next, the rapt audience in the pews within the intimate Sanctuary at Pico-Union was deeply invested in Rowe’s tales of loneliness and heartache on Friday night.

One hundred minutes of a man and his guitar can be long-winded experience, but Rowe is in possession of a rich soulful rasp distinctive enough to captivate the most text-obsessed millennials into putting their phone down and listening. His baritone is not of this earth. This is a mighty voice that cuts through the fog to warn freighters away from the rocky shore. 

Rowe is a master storyteller. His between-song banter proved endearing, allowing for beams of light to pierce the darkness. His influences are vast and classic, the porch blues of John Lee Hooker, the classic soul of Otis Redding, the ragged folk of Kris Kristofferson and the outlaw country of Johnny Cash are all present and accounted for. Covers by Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Waylon Jennings didn’t sound out of place among his original material, which is an achievement in itself.  

And his original material shone brightly. “Gas Station Rose,” from his fifth full-length “New Lore” (released in April), found him surrendering to time and lost love. “I’ll Follow Your Trail” channels Jim Croce’s best odes to fatherhood. “I Can’t Make a Living Holding You” grapples with the balancing act of being on the road and being a husband and a father. “To Leave Something Behind” is Rowe’s gloomy breakout hit, featured in the 2016 Ben Affleck vehicle “The Accountant” is a study in self-doubt. “Desiree” finds Rowe channeling Nile Rodgers-ish funk chops.

Speaking of guitar chops, Rowe has them in spades. Many singer-songwriters are content to merely strum some basic chords around their lyrics. Not Rowe, who is fantastically nimble and creative on his battered, duct-taped Takamine cutaway acoustic. With an army of effects pedals, amps split by frequency, and fret technique in which he played a bassline with his thumb while playing lead with his forefingers, Rowe was able to turn what would normally be a monochromatic coffeehouse set into full spectrum of sound and color. His playing took on the tone of church organ one moment and Trinidadian steelpans the next, a vintage roaring Tele one moment and a lilting Celtic shimmer the next.

Generously bearded and gruff, Rowe is at once primal and unmistakably male, a wild man of sorts, yet deeply vulnerable, warm and prone to self-reflection. It is encouraging to see that a forty-something artist can still follow his muse and gain broader acclaim after years of toiling in relative obscurity. A trained survivalist who once spent 24 days alone foraging off the land, Rowe is an interesting study. He is a throwback to an earlier America, when troubled troubadours tossed battered acoustics onto railroad cars and sang about a hardscrabble tales of life on the road.