Arts & Entertainment

A winning combination

Classical vet Alber joins D.C.-based Goss for Sunday performance

Published

14 years ago

August 16, 2012

Erin Durkin

Matt Alber and Tom Goss
Sunday at 8 p.m.
Atlas (1333 H St., N.E.)
General Admission is $20; VIP $50

Matt Alber, who won fame for his barber shop-set video ‘End of the World,’ won two Grammys for his work in the classical ensemble Chanticleer. (Photo courtesy Alber)

When singer/songwriters Matt Alber and Tom Goss last performed together in Washington, the city was buried under 20-35 inches of snow. Despite the abnormally awful weather, people came out to hear their acoustic love songs.

Now the two are reuniting at Atlas (1333 H St., N.E.) on Sunday evening. Coming from opposite ends of the country, Alber brings his guitar from San Francisco to join the D.C.-based Goss to sing about finding love, losing love and starting anew.

Though the pair may sing about similar things, both say that their styles are very different.

“Matt has a flawless voice, his arrangements are beautiful,” Goss says. “Mine are a little more aggressive than his. People typically say that mine are working class love songs, a little grittier. It is not perfect.”

Alber, a two-time Grammy winner, began his musical career when he joined the group Chanticleer, a classical vocal group that performs baroque and renaissance music. When he first entered pop music, Alber and Goss admired each other’s music from afar.

“We met in San Francisco in 2009 and Tom showed me the ropes,” Alber says. “He encouraged me to take my guitar around as he does.”

Tom Goss (Photo by Michael Key)

Goss, a former Catholic seminarian-turned guitarist, began performing in D.C. coffeehouses in 2006 and has since released two albums and performed in about 100 cities nationwide. In 2011, Blade readers named him best musician. A shameless romantic, many of his songs are inspired by his husband.

“I think we write about what we know,” Goss says. “You have the ability to dream of the world as you would want it.”

Alber uses his music to express his wants and some problems he has faced.

“I use my guitar and my piano as my therapist,” he says. “I sing about things like looking for Mr. Right or working out personal demons.”

He says being gay definitely influences what he writes about and how he sings about love. His songs aren’t just for LGBT listeners, but being out gives them a level of unwritten honesty he says gay listeners appreciate.

“Most of our audience members are super cute gay couples, but straight couples can have just as good of a time. What I write about love can apply to all couples,” he says.

Mixed with his original songs, Alber also does what he describes as “unexpected covers” by artists such as Whitney Houston and Madonna.

While love is a major subject in their music, the artists often touch on challenges that face the LGBT community. Goss, especially, has sung about subjects such as the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” law.

“In some of my songs I explored the lives of men in the military who have been affected by DADT,” he says. “Soldiers who had to hide their identities and who they loved.”

Goss says he and Alber work well together, yet only get to see each other a few days a year. This weekend’s performance will be the fourth they’ve done in the past two years.

“I just really admire his music,” Goss says. “I always learn a lot when I play.”

Alber is also looking forward to reuniting with Goss and is especially excited by the slim chance of extreme weather.

“There is absolutely no chance of snow and the Atlas is air conditioned,” he says.

At the end of the night, Alber and Goss will be sitting in the lobby to speak with audience members. They will also be offering a VIP private performance an hour before the doors open to the public.

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Theater

‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic

Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London

Published

1 day ago

June 20, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Steven Webb in ‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen’ (Photo by DJ Corey)

‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.

Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.

Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.

At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.

Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.

With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.

The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.

Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.

Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)

Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.

Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.

One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.

They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.