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Such was a pertinent question upon going to see him on this stop of a brief tour, his first show in Wisconsin in at about three years (to my knowsledge). His latest two albums are instrumental works: one dedicated to  New York City's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the other a string quartet interpretation of his experimental, vocal-less album centering around the Chinese zodiac. For a guy whose voice had brought me so much enjoyment and poignancy, seeing a show of his where he wouldn't do any singing would be odd. Not that odd isn't something to expect from a man whose concept albums not only span metropolitan motorways and Asian astrology, but two of the United States (and counting?), but still.

But oh, did Stevens sing! His manchild-like tenor, sometimes in tandem with Nedelle Torrisi of openning act Cryptacize, assayed songs from his back catalog as well as new pieces made for the purpose of this road stint. If you're going to woodshed fresh material, why not do it in front of audiences in cities where you know you have sizable followings?

This Madison date was a sell-out in a venue with a fire a few hundred at most. My vantage point from the front row of the balcony afforded a view of the sprawling mass huiddled to the front of the stage on the floor below.

And somehow, with his clarion pipes and a band that straddled indie-ish rocking, free and sometimes dischordant jazz, serenely freaky folkiness and adventurous classical, Stevens brought an intimacy to the the venue and the music.

Starting with the titular track of his arguable breakout long-player, Seven Swans, the 13 numbers to follow spanned numbers familiar to the crowd, the aforementioned unrecorded pieces and even an Innocence Mission remake. A duo of brass players in his ensemble-switching between trumpet, trombone and fluglehorn (or was that French horn?)-especially made the jazz influences prominent. Traditional rock band instrumentation of electric guitar, bass and drums combined with the horns and Torrisi's keyboard and whatever Stevens may have been playing at any given time to make a sound that sometimes would have been home at the artier environs of the Unitarian-Universalist meeting house on the far West Side of Madison (a great Frank Lloyd Wright-designed space for non-rock music) as well as this converted movie house.

For all its apparent pretension and spawling instrumental passages, Stevens' intuition for slyly hooky melodies rarely abates. Debut pieces such as "All Delighted People," "Too Much Love" and the number he wrote as a  challenge from a friend to write a love song, possibly titled "Don't Be Distracted," should resonate as strongly when they hit the market as those he included from his albums about Michigan and Illinois.

Speaking of the latter state, his creepy, melancholy piece about Chicago area serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (which is really about humankind's fallen state before or without redemption) made for a stark encore as Steven accompanied himself on acoustic guitar. Thankfully, the singer with enough of a sense of humor to refer to himself in a mispronunciation of his peculiar first name after his openning number closed with a much more chipper, celebratory offering.

Somewhere during his 14 songs, it hit me how Christian pop radio would do well to embrace Stevens and artists of his godly worldview and envelope-pushing stylistic bent. Heck, he, Soul-Junk, Danielson Familie, Woven Hand, et al can't even get respect on many Christianity rock shows even when some of those acts were on Christian market labels. It seems that such music would be at least as strong a witness to the creativity God gives His people than..oh, there's no need to name names, right?

Then again, maybe Stevens and his type are just where the Lord wants them, speaking of their faith with subtlety and metaphor to fans who may be as apt to listen to K-Love and Way-FM as they are to vote Republican (OK, maybe that's generalizing...). If that's the case, more power to those who aren't likely to ever share a playlist with Point Of Grace or Chris Tomlin on this side of eternity (which isn't to say Tomlin nor POG aren't any good).

Torrisi's full-time group, Cryptacize, cranked out only one fewer song than Stevens in less than half the time. With a variety of keyboard tones, a drummer with heavier hands than the headliner's and a guitar & bass axis that split the difference between surf and post-punk, the lead cutie's voice (and the guy singer's as well) contributed a sound that balanced whimsy wth noise. They scored laughs for saying they were going to be in town for the national dairy expo starting that day. They lost a few of those points by claiming their pride in being from the Cheesehead State's bovine rival, California. "California's nice," Torrisi meekly pleaded. So is her troupe's unique act.
 
Jamie Lee Rake