Pedestrians and concertgoers freeze outside of the Blacklight District Lounge as a tremendous crash projects jagged automotive shrapnel through the evening air just before the first act takes the stage.
This unfortunate yet entertaining spectacle would soon fall right into place alongside the dark, grimy inyourface musical sounds and standup black-comedy performances of the night.
Musician and writer Mishka Shubaly, on board with the Altercation Punk Comedy Tour, visited Long Beach’s Blacklight District Lounge to perform some of his morose, yet strangely comedic musical tunes on Sunday.
He promoted his third and latest record “Coward’s Path,” which was released on Jan. 19 under In Music We Trust Records.
“I’m not a comic. I sing true songs about my depressing life and people laugh at them,” Shubaly said when asked about his comedic affiliation.
Accompanied by the gloomy twang of his rhythmic, electric guitar, his charred, baritone vocals bit through the small house P.A. and delivered a gritty yet solemn musical aura throughout the dimly-lit, punk-rock dive bar.
“I love playing with comedians because … when I play with a lot of other earnest singer-songwriters, people think that I’m being completely serious the whole time,” Shubaly said. “They’re like, ‘man, this guy is a huge creep,’ and that’s half true … but I’m also trying to find the joke in a dark situation.”
For the first half hour of the show, Shubaly performed a set list of some of his more notable and comedically impactful songs, old and new.
A main focus of Shubaly’s music has been his personal history of substance abuse, particularly a former addiction to alcohol.
“It’s probably the biggest influence on my work; the songs were sort of a way for me to comfort myself and to make sense of the sh-t I was going through,” Shubaly said. “I think if you can laugh at despair then you can survive it.”
Shubaly has put the bottle down for 6 years since leaving his 20-year-long addiction behind. Although being sober has brought him to his senses, he said that he now struggles to find a new approach with creative discovery.
“Now that I’m sober, I don’t feel such a burning need to write songs as I used to because I don’t wake up in the alley [or] I don’t wake up in my car,” Shubaly said. “I guess I’m trying now to map the new way forward as a songwriter.”
The seeds of Shubaly’s many musical inspirations like Johnny Cash, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan can be found intertwined in the framework of his music.
Along with the dim and depressing sensations portrayed through his songwriting, there is a strong sense of arrogance and disdain that can be linked to an extent with the punk rock mentality, properly placing him among the other acts on the tour such as professional comic JT Habersaat.
“I was a fan before I knew him,” Habersaat said on his first impression of Shubaly. “The first song I think I heard was “Only One Drinking Tonight,” and I [thought it was] haunting and awesome; I relate to it all too well as a fan of booze and punk-rock comedy.”
While most chortles, cackles and guffaws sprung from Shubaly’s many laugh-worthy song introductions, each one of his sullen tunes received light, yet warm applause.