Pezzettino @ Verge

Images by Jeff Moody

Image by Jeff Moody

I was sad for a second. The accordion is so much a part of Pezzettino’s persona, and watching her play it is quite a marvelous experience. She’s a physical player, and the instrument becomes both an extra appendage and a dancing partner in her hands. She stomps her right sneaker down hard and opens the bellows slowly. In the wet atmosphere, when she drags out a low register with the fishy smell of nearby Lake Michigan’s churning waters hanging damp in the air, Pezzettino seems to be from another time, like some sailor’s wife getting by entertaining post-dinnertime patrons at a seaside dive. Her face contorts when she sings hard and closes the bellows back up. She swings her body around and the accordion with it, opening it up again. And this is what she does over and over again; this is how Pezzettino transfixes an audience. About halfway through her performance, I managed for a second to pull my attention away from her long enough to notice her band, a bass and two-drummer set up, all of whom, just like the audience, have their eyes on her.

So when Pezzettino concluded her new song “Free Fall” with the violent murder of her instrument, she pretty much guaranteed there would be no encore. I wondered if it meant anything. In my own imagination (which tends to run wild) it was as if I’d just witnessed Pezzettino kill off a part of her self. I’d just watched her move as one with that thing for nearly an hour. How could she seem so in love with it and them turn around and smash it like that? Is she quitting the accordion forever in favor of the, uh… saxophone or something? What WAS that?

Just then my friend Kelly walked up and said “Oh my God, that was crazy! We’re you able to get a shot of that…?”

Then I remembered. It’s only rock and roll.

Duh.