Tell me a story

North Carolina singer/songwriter/guitarist Christine Kane is a great storyteller, one who can move her audience to laugh, love and feel deep compassion, both during a song and between songs, as I discovered at her recent, sparsely attended Moxie’s show. The emotional response was shared by at least one more appreciative local fan—a woman named Sirena—who posted a message on Kane’s Web site: “Thank you for coming to Chico. … You are a great storyteller…”

I was moved to tears twice that night, once during the song, “I’m With You,” which Kane told us she wrote for her brother. With her very pretty voice, with an occasional plaintive catch to it, she delivered this heartfelt song: “When all the awful of your past/ Brings you to this place at last…/ I can’t make this world be kind/ But you can put your hand in mine…” The song is off her latest CD, Right Outta Nowhere, and its beautiful sentiment is even more moving given that it was written for her brother and not a lover, as I had previously imagined.

Kane’s largely self-taught guitar style is a very effective complement to her fine singing and songs. Her finger picking on “The Good You Do” kept a pleasant, steady pulse going, and her strum on “Right Outta Nowhere” was strong and confidence inspiring. Kane popped on finger and thumb picks for the lovely “Overjoyed,” inspired by a Dalai Lama statement about happiness being a choice one makes every day.

It’s no wonder that Rosanne Cash says that Kane’s "voice and … eye on the world are a real inspiration and joy to me." Too bad more people didn’t get to experience it first-hand.