“Itinerant Arias,” an album which had yet to be released at the time, was Stelling’s main focus for the night. He talked about his inspiration for certain songs, what he does now as an artist, sang alone with his guitar, and played with two of his friends, with whom he travels. He talked about his inspiration for the song “castle”, which was written after his trip to Germany, that you can, and should, download now. He happened to wake up after a drunken night, asked a man for directions to the castle, walked three hours to get there, and found the very same man with a van AT the castle. The man then told him that he had been staying at his sister’s hotel and that she wasn’t too happy. I’m not too sure whether this is a true story, but he had a lot of humor and had us laughing the entire time when we weren’t busy listening to his music. He also explained that the morning before we saw him, he was in Savannah and that the following morning, he would be in Texas.
His music and overall performance were all around great. I personally enjoyed the quality of the music itself, as you could truly feel the emotion in his lyrics. I can’t say much about its value since it was music, not a speech, but I think that in terms of the music world, he has a great voice and is a valuable musician. He’s able to keep a strong voice while walking around and playing the guitar, which is fairly impressive since most known singers no longer play an instrument on stage. Being significant and having a place in our culture is very subjective since we all have different music tastes and look for different things. I noticed that he has no love songs, which is a bit shocking to me, but I was able to relate to a lot of the lyrics and that made it more personal to me. Our ability to relate to his music and to attribute it to what is going on in our personal life is what makes him so great to me. None of what he wrote about was what I’ve gone through or am currently going through, but it still made me emotional and pensive. His voice is very passionate, and anyone who enjoys country or folk music will love his songs. It is an acquired taste, especially amongst young adults, and I’m not a huge fan of this type of music, but I still loved his songs. I do wish that his friends had spoken more about their part in the band and who writes all of the music. It would’ve been nice to have their input on the formation of the band and their own history with music.
Overall, I enjoyed the event: the music, the band, and their anecdotes. It was full of humor and inspiration, and the music was so great that I even downloaded it! It was more than I expected to get out of a guitar concert and was definitely worth going to. I’d love for him to come back to Oxford.