If Pancake Breakfast’s show at East Burn resembled a kindergarten assembly before the set began—attendees sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the knee-high stage, a coloring book being hawked at the merch table, the cutesy band name—by the time he reached the song where he howled like a coyote, it might as well have been a segment on Blue’s Clues. Singer-songwriter-guitarist-banjoist Mike Midlo, a.k.a. Pancake Breakfast, specializes in a kind of hippie twee-folk, one celebrating instrumental amateurism, romanticizing rural living, and endlessly fascinated with animals. In essence, he writes kids songs for suspended adolescents. How much you’ll enjoy it depends on your tolerance for childlike innocence. And, judging by the turnout Saturday night, there are a lot of people in Portland who wish they’d never grown up–or at least had a pet rooster.

Midlo used this performance to introduce the Pancake Breakfast Singers–actually a gaggle of musicians switching off on a variety of simple percussion instruments, guitars, violins and mandolins—whom he enlisted to replace the large, cumbersome organ he used to lug around to gigs. The backing group added bouncy energy where there might not have been any otherwise, even contributing a tap dance solo to a tune about wearing pants. But the focus throughout remained on Midlo. With his odd, explosively floppy hair and beard combo, he looked like he should be painting trees on PBS, but his stage presence, augmented by goofy faces, is strangely captivating. He introduced each song, usually by talking about how it relates to his farm in White Salmon, Wash. (where he apparently lives among many chickens), at one point telling an entire story about the friendship of a dog and a crow as if he really were speaking to a crowd of five-year-olds.

At times, it was all just too willfully naive for this cynical heart. But Midlo certainly has a knack for the catchy—if a bit silly—sing-along chorus, and the sorrowful “Paul the Axeman Had a Blue Friend” was oddly affecting, especially with some of the Singers appearing downcast as Midlo mournfully described Paul Bunyan’s loneliness following the death of his beloved blue ox. And the closing “It’s a Cruel and Beautiful World” seemed to sum up Midlo’s worldview: adult life is complicated–better to concentrate on the bluebirds.

Links:
Pancake BreakfastSpace
Blue’s Clues

Photos by Matthew Singer