Shinbone Alley brings spooky songs to Spencertown

Seeing isn’t always believing. Sometimes it’s the lack of a defined picture that can be the most compelling. And when Alex Harvey of Shinbone Alley sings his supernaturally charged sea shanties and street ballads, the unseen will be downright scary. On Oct. 30, the historically inclined storyteller and performer will create a spooky evening of forbidden tales and yarns through a carefully chosen series of songs at Spencertown Academy of Arts.

The repertoire for the performance is a bit fraught. Over the years, Shinbone Alley has explored the world of folklore through music. Though the group usually features two musicians, Harvey, a multi-instrumentalist and singer, will be performing solo. That is, of course, unless you include the spirits.

Harvey believes there’s power in a good ballad. When those ballads are spooky in nature, unfamiliar feelings have a tendency to permeate the atmosphere.

With two or three decades of performing under his belt, Harvey, a trained ethnomusicologist, has sought out and stumbled upon quite a few of these haunting ballads, many of which date back hundreds of years. Through some of his many musical projects, he’s cautiously dabbled in performing the tunes, but only one or two at a time.

Even nonbelievers in the supernatural can feel the power in these tunes. The musicians, therefore, treat them with care. Unleashing too many on an unsuspecting audience could simply be too much to handle. The selection Harvey will perform at Spencertown is what he refers to as the “superheroes of supernatural ballads.”

With this program, Harvey is tempting the darkness, bringing all his most powerful ballads together in one performance. Will it be too much? Will everybody make it out alright? Will a portal open to another dimension, unleashing ancient demons into the realm that is upstate New York? Only time will tell.

Adding to the unsettling subject matter and lore of the tunes is the nature of song as a form of storytelling. Harvey is a firm believer in the tradition of passing stories along orally. Though he spent years as a filmmaker, he’s decidedly avoiding screens these days. In fact, he doesn’t even have a smartphone.

To him, a story told through words and music demands more of the audience and their imaginations than video ever could. In turn, it rewards listeners with more intimate versions of the stories, each visually unique to every single person present.

While Harvey has a series of seasonal repertoires, it’s this special time of autumn that stirs up the most unsettling notions. It’s not just Halloween, either. As the darkness creeps in, the trees reveal their skeletal forms and the verdant bounty of summer starts to decay, a profoundly grim feeling can wash over New England and the Hudson Valley.

Many despair at the thought of shorter days and colder nights. But some are willing to succumb to the season and embrace the darkness. Those hearty few will find themselves quite at home with the supernatural ballads and shanties of Shinbone Alley.

For morning information and tickets, visit spencertownacademy.org.