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• The Avett Brothers, sans Seth, in June 2008. (Photo by D.L. Anderson)

The Avett Brothers

Tuesday, Sept. 29

In the beginning, The Avett Brothers played an endless string of secret shows, I guess. But they weren’t private. Details weren’t guarded. Anybody could come. Relatively speaking, very few did. That’s not intended to belittle the music Scott and Seth Avett and Bob Crawford (and, more recently, Joe Kwon) have been laboring over for the past decade.

No, it’s the opposite, or the most potent testament to this band’s power: If these kids from Concord hadn’t offered a vision of unhinged bluegrass bliss and honeysuckle-scented Americana, well, everybody (or nobody, as it were) would have kept that secret. But they didn’t. So, show by show and fan by fan, the Avett Brothers grew into something truly special—first in North Carolina, then everywhere.

And now they’re a major-label monster, recording with Rick Rubin, touring with Dave Matthews and performing on David Letterman. So it was a respectful love letter to their modest beginnings that they celebrated this Tuesday’s release of I and Love and You— their biggest, most anticipated, most impressive record yet—with a real New York City secret show.

The unticketed event was a public exhibition of Avett artwork at the street-level Envoy Gallery and a closed-lip gig down below at the 150-capacity Home Sweet Home. Writers, bloggers and label types milled throughout with their plus-ones, while a healthy smattering of diehards got in by jumping through Facebook hoops (tag 10 friends in your status update, kids!) or working magic on the gallery owners during the day-long art exhibition. But industry schlubs and fans alike seemed downright gleeful to pack themselves in the tiny space, especially since the band plays the massive (and utterly impersonal) 3,000-capacity Terminal 5 in two weeks.

Spider Bags, Yusuuf Jerusalem, Thomas Function

Sunday, Sept. 27

We stood in a circle outside of a modest house in a quiet West Durham neighborhood Sunday night, enjoying the mild late September air, talking about bands, telling jokes.

“When are the Spider Bags going to start?” somebody in the group asked, referring to the third and headlining act scheduled inside for the living room rock show.

“I don’t know,” someone else replied, looking around. “I think they’re waiting on their bass player to show up.”

As if scripted, a car parked across the street and flipped off its lights. Wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, with his hair cutting down close near his shoulders, the bassist in question, Spider Bag Greg Levy, got out of his car and walked toward the house. The second band, Alabama’s unequivocally springy Thomas Function, had finished about 15 minutes before, so the trio and some friends rushed the rest of the gear inside. We kept waiting.

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Mingus Big Band and Sun Ra Arkestra

Saturday, Sept. 26

Wild horses were not obstacles getting into Page Auditorium, but they were about the only things missing: Duke University's homecoming football game had a kickoff time matching the start of a double bill with the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Mingus Big Band, so West Campus looked like some mad maze teeming with cars and pedestrians in every direction. M.C. Escher would have been proud. Of course, there was the rain, too. My fellow travelers and I determined that the reason the traffic cop directed the lane across from us endlessly, without giving us equal time, must have been a hatred of jazz. Too bad for him...