Weirdest Maybe Heckling Ever

I finally made it out to one of Jenny Owen Youngs' shows last night at Schuba's. She's been on my radar ever since she popped up on Pandora alongside Erin McKeown, with whom she shares some similar vocal stylings and a record label. She had a fairly small crowd for Schuba's on a Saturday night, but I'm guessing that the Old Town School's festival up in Welles Park was siphoning off a lot of her Chicago fan base.

I was expecting an intimate vibe because of the crowd size. I'm not even sure what I mean by "intimate"; any time you hear a small but good show described it's always "intimate". But it conjures some at least basic expectations: the performer will pull out funny anecdotes and rarely performed songs, the audience is adoring and supportive, everyone hugs at the end. Those elements were there in Jenny's set, but the audience part was... well, it was kind of weird and heckle-y. But at the same time it was clear these people were her fans, so it wasn't negative heckling. If Jenny was doing stage banter, two or three audience members would banter back, loudly, like "You sound great, you don't need to tune anymore" or "I would like a T-shirt", as if perhaps instead of watching Jenny at Schuba's, in their head they were on some sort of date at a coffeeshop or Korean barbecue. I guess that's intimate in a different way, but when you're standing in the audience, in order to talk to the performer you really have to shout like a drunken Cubs fan, which sounds aggressive no matter what you're saying and defeats any sort of "intimate" vibe regardless, unless you have masochistic fantasies about Cubs fans shouting at you on your coffeeshop dates. In the end some guy took off his shirt and threw it on stage, which I guess would fit into the whole Wrigley Field scenario I've detailed here.

I think my point is, at my show on Tuesday, let's use our indoor voices and if you have to take off your shirt, please fold it neatly and leave it at the foot of the stage.