Mon Rovîa and Josiah & The Bonnevilles at Lincoln Hall
BY MARY ICENOGLEAs Mon Rovîa, an Afro-Appalachian folk artist, took the stage at Lincoln Hall for a Wednesday night sold-out concert, a wave of applause swelled before the room fell into an anticipating quiet. With a quick nod to the city of Chicago, he launched into his set and the room was captivated; aside from his soft vocals and ukulele, you could hear a pin drop amongst a crowd nearly 500 strong.
Mon Rovîa’s performance is soft and silky, it’s a patient and measured drip of emotions. Even the way he talks is soft and smooth which is a deep contrast to the words he speaks, describing his lived trauma in Liberia before being adopted by a family in America, the way that trauma stuck with him even after relocating, and the solace he found through music.
In a poignant moment that I couldn’t shake even after leaving the venue, Mon Rovîa recounted a visit to Liberia after they had relocated to the U.S. The visit culminated in Mon Rovîa, a young boy at the time, holding his breath with a child soldier pressing a gun to his forehead. Concert-goers clung to each word coming from his lips, as he left his heart on the stage and relived the traumatic experience that led to his song To Watch the World Spin Without You. As the song’s instrumental began, emotions were high; to my right, I could see tears on cheeks and eyes welling. Other highlights of his set included City On A Hill and Outlaw For Your Love.
Headliner Josiah and the Bonnevilles is a one-man-band, despite what the name might lead you to believe. (According to Josiah, we, the audience, are the Bonnevilles.) That doesn’t mean this one-man-band can’t play the guitar, sing, and play the harmonica, somehow all at once. Josiah, also from Appalachia, takes a lighter and more energetic approach to folk and country music, compared to his opener, though when listening closely to lyrics you can see he tackles similarly somber topics like heartbreak, addiction, and loss.
For audience members like myself who are less familiar with the artist, Josiah gave a brief background on his origin story as an artist. I was surprised to learn many had heard of him from American Idol, where he didn’t get terribly far, but which did earn him a record deal with Warner Brothers at 18 years old. At that time, he admits he didn’t know anything about the music industry which chewed him up and spit him out (in his own words). As he left his record deal with Warner Brothers, he asked for a song back, Song Without a Reason, which he still receives royalty checks for.
This experience resulted in his song Six Dollar Check. This cheeky song calls out Warner Brothers and earned some whoops and hollers when Josiah sang out, “I'm pretty damn sure they do regret / The day they let this cowboy go.” (I’ll admit, I gave both a whoop and a holler; I couldn’t help myself with the infectiously feel-good tune of the song).
His set was broken up by a middle portion of cover songs where Josiah took pop hits like Anti-Hero and Ghost, and put his own folksy, country, harmonica-y spin on each one. He wrapped with several songs from his newest album, Endurance, including Another Day at the Factory, Blood Moon, and Holy Place. The night was a show of all the beautiful things to come out of Appalachia.
