Do you remember Grant Hart?

 

Ex-Husker Du drummer alone and in person at the Garage

Grant Hart, former drummer of hardcore band Husker Du, performing solo at the Garage, has mellowed considerably in his later years. (photo by Ryan Snyder)

 

The Grant Hart of today is a far cry from the man in the beat seat of one of the most vicious and vital hardcore bands of the genre’s infancy. He’s mellowed considerably in his persona, his productivity and his creative aesthetic, though none of those outcomes is a surprise to Husker Du fans from the Metal Circus days. Hart was always the sunny foil to Bob Mould’s terse hostility, more concerned with hooks than hatchets, and the rivalry between the two was what inevitably let to their acrimonious dissolution 23 years ago this month. Now, as a primarily solo performer, Hart has all but put away the hard stuff that engendered them to the perpetually uncool of the ’80s. While a bigger noise was being made 75 minutes down I-40 with the unannounced reunion of Archers of Loaf at the Cat’s Cradle, it was just as easy to feel cool sitting in the Garage and taking in a solo set by one of the Chapel Hill noise pop icons clearest influences.

Though it’s clear that Hart’s best days are in the rear-view — save for an extremely unlikely but potentially lucrative reunion — the frail-looking punk icon with scraggly black hair and a John Waters-inspired mustache has cobbled together a noteworthy, if highly erratic, life after punk. His short performance before a small audience Saturday night at the Winston-Salem club reached into all eras of his mostly unheralded career, from made-over Husker Du-classics to his underrated solo works that hint at post- Bakersfield and Rust Belt folk. Though Hart’s set was mostly just him and a coral-toned Epiphone Archtop, he was preceded and accompanied briefly by an overly casual Chapel Hill power pop trio called the Venables, a band that behaved a bit like three middle-aged poker buddies rehearsing, ironically, in someone’s garage. They acknowledged their predilection toward random stage banter by mentioning a Washington Post assessment which addressed it as less than kindly, though they seemed unphased by the criticism, even if it was accurate. On songs like “Remains To Be Seen” and “You’re the Reflection of the Moon on the Water,” their sound was big and robust, their accompaniment pointed and their enthusiasm to play with a man who helped shape their sound was sincere, even if the bassist’s posturing was needlessly distracting at times. The seemed too eager to please while trying too hard to convey ambivalence in that regard, and the bassist’s wandering around stage to collect gear while Hart played on didn’t help the cause either.

Hart’s punk attitude, on the other hand, might have weathered with age, but still manifests itself in amusing ways. He rebuffed calls for “Diane” after soliciting the crowd for requests, implying that people would never want to hear that song again were they to become more aware of the ghastly story behind it. It somehow felt more appropriate seeing him perform alone, as if Hart is so detached from the rest of the music-making world that it’s inconceivable to imagine him in any other arrangement. Occasional missteps were amplified, such as his fudging of the opening chord to “Green Eyes” and its ensuing reboot. Reappropriated Hart-penned Husker Du gems like “The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill” breathed with new life in his hands, and his original “What’s A Little Angel Doing So Far From Heaven” was almost too soulful to have come from the man who cowrote “Masochism World.”

The further Hart got into his 80-minute set, though, the more time one was allowed to ponder the overwhelming sense of desperation that must surely accompany playing for a room of 40 people for only $7 apiece. Most artists with Hart’s credentials might find themselves locked in interminable despair at such a prospect, pleading that they deserve better. Grant Hart might just deserve better, but one with such a beleaguered past as his also knows better, and that’s pretty cool.