The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance capped off a year of fundraising Thursday with a show at Cholmondeley's featuring artists Kate Schutt and Sylvie Lewis. Though a free concert, donations given to the club contributed to over $10,000 collected during the year. The money will fund the group's trip in April to Washington for the March for Women's Rights.Not simply a singer/songwriter, England's Sylvie Lewis was described by tour-mate Kate Schutt as playing "Parisian caf music, with a hint of German cabaret, mixed with Klezmer." This depiction was tongue-in-cheek, but still gave a fairly accurate idea of Lewis' sound. This was immediately apparent as Lewis opened with a light waltz, her soothing and often deep voice singing, "This is a bar I come to when I drink." It was a somber post-drinking ballad, reflecting on heartbreak and disenchantment, familiar themes in many of her lyrics.

Those lyrics, however, were often somewhat clichd with lines like, "Love is a circus/you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be amazed/but you've got to catch it while you can" and "If love songs are all we have/we better sing our load." Still, Lewis' gentle voice and delicate lounge folk allowed a refreshing and engaging start to the evening.

Ending with her set's best two songs, Lewis lightly strummed "Move So Fast," pleading, "You move so fast/how can I slow you down?" Her last song, a musical adoption of Rudyard Kipling's poem "My Rival," was a slinking narrative of innocent jealousy and naave charm. It was this very charisma that left the crowd satisfied after a memorable, albeit short set.

Playing a Novax eight-string guitar/bass hybrid-an instrument popularized by the contemporary jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter--Kate Schutt, a past performer at Chum's, opened with the energetic "High Noon," off her newest EP. Only accompanied by a drummer, Schutt's blues-rock recalled both Stevie Ray Vaughn and P.J. Harvey, yet contained a unique urgency that took much of the audience by surprise.
Most amazingly, Schutt's set, though featuring only two musicians, sounded amazingly full and elaborate due to the complicated percussion and the dense vibe from Schutt's Novax. Schutt seemed to be having as much fun as her audience, breaking into a funky guitar solo as her opening song ended, and screaming "yeah!" as she plucked the last string.

The erratic scat verses of "Lone Ranger," another new song, seemed reminiscent of Ani DiFranco's more jazzy material-and for a second, even Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do"-but Schutt's musicianship took precedence over her influences, as she brought smiles to her crowd with a bass solo played on her guitar's lower strings. In the following song, "Miss You Much," a Janet Jackson cover from her recent album Broken, the reverb-heavy bluesy guitar mixed well with Schutt's gasped vocals as she asked, "Not to say that I'm in love with you/but who's to say that I'm not?"

Continuing with "More of You," Schutt's blues left the crowd somewhat bored, and a cover of the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves" also failed to energize. The fast tempo of "Undone" finally revived Chum's, taking the audience from jammed blues to folk, jazz and wherever else the cowbell-laden percussion decided to go.

Intertwining gender politics with her fantastic guitarwork, Schutt sang "Calpernia," perhaps the evening's highlight.
"You're in America/and there's no grey in-betweens/so we'll say you're a him/and we'll keep it all nice and clean."

Providing a landscape of homophobia, violence and the media to the speechless crowd, the song's chorus continued, "They say they swung the bat so hard/they had to clean the blood off the wall."
Lewis joined Schutt for "Peter," single-handedly fulfilling the evening's soul quota. The two stepped to the very front of the stage, repeating, "Oh Peter please?" before doing some brief stand-up comedy over Schutt's bass coda. Schutt then closed her set with an engaging cover of The Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden," even teasing Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" during a bridge.

Describing herself as "the only chick around" playing a Novax eight-string, Kate Schutt is a talented singer/songwriter and an even more proficient guitarist. More impressively, she only picked up the instrument recently, and it has given her music a new and exhilarating direction. If there's a void in the realm of popular music for a female blues rocker, Schutt might not be a bad choice to fill it.