Wilber endears with Vagabond performance

A crowd of about 80 at Vagabond Blues was treated Thursday to a night of music by one of the best singer-song writers in the country. While the audience tended to be the more seasoned concert-goer type — hippy era — the music was new and fresh.

Jason Wilber played two sets of his songs featuring his versatile voice and excellent guitar skills.

For those unfamiliar with him, Wilber is a young musician, younger than the majority of the audience anyway, from Bloomington, Ill. One night he happened upon a fellow named John Prine and he got the opportunity to jam on stage with Prine and his band.

As Wilber tells it, John Prine was so impressed with Wilber’s playing that Prine invited Wilber to audition for his band …10 years later. Wilber has been John Prine’s lead guitarist and back-up vocalist for the past 15 years.

John Prine is undoubtedly one of the top three or four singer-songwriters in the country and has played sold out venues around the world since the mid ‘70s. Prine and Wilber filled the Anchorage Concert Hall last year for two shows.

While John Prine’s songs tend to deliver a social message, Wilber concentrates on expressing the simple pleasures of enjoying the beauty around you and appreciating what you have. Thursday night he enchanted the crowd with the pleasures of an Indiana summer day and the serenity of a small park in London. His song “In Her Veins” expressed how his love of performing his music is trumped only by his love for his wife.

He poked fun at the human spirit with the song “The Last Meeting of the Quakerstown Optimist Club” a real Optimists Club that folded due to a lack of interest. He sang a wonderful song about a musician he heard in a smoky club in St. John’s Bay, Newfoundland who delivered a stunning musical message that no one in the club bothered to listen to.

Wilber closed with a song near and dear to many an Alaska heart, “Going Fishing.” His Palmer performance was all acoustic and all Wilber. And Wilber is a truly nice person. He spent the intermission and long after the final song chatting with fans and signing autographs.

Tom Rainey lives in Palmer and is a sound board operator who has been a John Prine fan since 1972.