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Singer-songwriter Michael McDermott, looking characteristically unruly of hair and weary of soul, punctured his poet’s heart and served it up in song at the Clearwater.

For this show, it was just the man and his two closest associates--a piano and a guitar. The naked presentation squeezed a deeper level of feeling out of his set as he highlighted his recently released CD, Noise From Words. 

Everything about McDermott’s art is personal. The lyrics are his life and the performance is his therapy. 

This prodigal son has lived a life that gives him plenty to write about. Drug and alcohol addiction have cost him a lot, even some time in Chicago’s Cook County Jail after a cocaine bust in 2004. Still, it is impossible to miss his desire for a real connection to God and a stubborn insistence on belief even in the presence of doubt and despair. McDermott is well aware of his propensity to wander--he knows he’s never more than a step away from a fall.

Speaking to the audience of the wreck he has so often made of his life, the always self-effacing performer said, “Never take an idiot to an idiot’s playground.” 

McDermott’s raspy voice delivered “Still Ain’t Over You Yet” with such raw emotion one might have thought the break-up had happened that afternoon. 

Strapping on his acoustic guitar (complete with yellow strap that said “Police Line Do Not Cross” on it), McDermott started picking the intro to “Mess of Things,” his foot tapping percussion--a pure, sweet moment.

The song “Broken,” too, seemed to be wrung from deep within as McDermott sang, his eyes closed, his face a slide show of felt-pain, words falling almost as if they were tears.

He hit some of the older stuff too: “A Wall I Must Climb” and “Unemployed” among others.

It was a solid, from the gut and the heart performance that blessed his new material with an extra layer of intensity. 

Michael McDermott is a folk-rock act worth catching. He'll be opening for Lowen & Navarro at the Park West in Chicago on November 16th. 

Jim Wormington