“I’M going to test out the acoustics of this place,” says Joan Shelley. Onstage at the Chapel of St Philip Neri, a neighbourhood cathedral in Louisville that now serves as a community arts centre and venue, she has just finished playing “Why Not Live Here A While”, a standout on her new album, The Spur. As she unstraps her acoustic guitar and sets it down gently on the boards, her backing band – including her husband and collaborator Nathan Salsburg – leave the stage through the baptistry door.
Clad in a long, brown dress, Shelley steps out of the apse spotlight and into the darkness of the rows of intricately carved wooden pews, where she is joined by her keyboard player for the evening, Lacey Guthrie, and local singer-songwriter Isaac Fosl-Van Wyke. The trio harmonise softly to Shelley’s a cappella song “Between Rock And Sky”, their voices drifting up toward the vaulted ceiling and filling the cathedral: “Over hills and valleys, between rock and sky/Hear the child arriving, heaving heart’s first cry”. As the melody fades into silence, someone in the audience is moved to shout, “Fuck yeah!” adding a bit of profane to the sacred.
Despite that outburst, it’s a quiet, intense moment during what has been billed as both a record release show and a homecoming for her and Salsburg – two musicians whose lives are entangled musically as well as romantically. “June was a long time ago,” Shelley laughs, noting the months-long delay between the release of The Spur and this party. It’s also just the fifth live performance the couple have given in 2022 and the only Louisville show of the year, ending a long absence from local stages.
The Chapel of St Philip Neri is an ideal setting, with its blue-and-white ceiling and bare-bulb lamps giving the impression of candlelight. Ornate tapestries on the walls mimic the iconography of stained-glass
