Experience the Signature Sounds of Mark Erelli at Caffe Lena on March 5th

Mark Erelli’s prolific output is impressive for its sheer numbers and stylistic width: 18 very varied albums since 1995, plus sideman stints with Josh Ritter, Lori McKenna, and others. But the much-honored Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter is all about depth in his new “Lay Your Darkness Down” album that he’ll play Sunday at Caffe Lena (47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs).

Hailed in Rolling Stone, on NPR, in Billboard and other music-biz bibles, Erelli writes here from the looming threshold of great personal loss.

Diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, Erelli faces the loss of his sight. And yet, he has found something.

“I could not have accessed the emotions and the observations that inspired these songs without realizing that I was losing my sight,” he has said. “In some way, I am grateful for that. The making of ‘Lay Your Darkness Down’ was my attempt to find my way back to shore.”

Let’s look to Erelli’s fellow singer-songwriter Joe Henry for some wisdom on this.

“I hear a songwriter and singer courageously—soulfully and with an uncommon grace and generosity—engaging a startling world made no less vivid by the degenerative ocular condition that is diminishing his sight,” writes Henry, hailing it not as a passive expression of resignation but an embrace of what matters, an emotional response that empowers.

Henry went on to say, “Mark is not writing pointedly about potential blindness as much as demonstrating just how much all of our lives are shaped and played out in a waning light.”

Henry also quotes an essential Erelli lyric: “Shadows lie upon the ground/to show us where the light is coming from.”

To see this another way, in the words of irreplaceable jazz saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter who died Thursday, “There are colors we can’t see, but they’re connected to the ones we can. There’s a connection between everything.”

Erelli’s writing takes its colors, its strengths and connections from the rock and roll canon in its sonic fullness. He flexes its muscle, surfs on its fundamental roll, with an encyclopedic richness that echoes Willie Nile, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen or Ed Hammell.

The calm mid-tempo rocker “Break in the Clouds” urges a patient stoicism in the face of even unchosen change. But then “Fuel for the Fire” punches things up with chiming guitars, ringing like the linked beauty The War on Drugs plays. Early in “You’re Gonna Wanna Remember This,” Erelli cites “Rosalita” on the radio to highlight the exhilaration the best rock and roll evokes – the way, as NRBQ fan Johnny D rightly points out, the ‘Q makes us feel young. In “Up Against The Night,” Erelli’s powerful vocal spices this upbeat rocker with optimism. 

Turning serious – and here’s where the album slows into mostly more deliberate and thoughtful tempos – “You” expresses awed gratitude for love. “The Man I Am” deepens this sentiment, a lovely slow-dance serenade that pays tribute to a life-changing love: “You loved me into the man I am.” “Sense of Wonder” has a spry but philosophical Paul Simon-y grace, and a nice doo-wop style chorus. The nature of love, and the need for it, go under the microscope in “Is It Enough.” And by then, we know Erelli’s answer.

Then, in the album’s clearest statement of loss, the title track portrays the late Justin Townes Earle as the proxy for all of us as inevitable victims of a too-early passing. It mourns, “Towns can be rebuilt, but some holes can’t be filled,” but then hopefully suggests a sunset always follows a storm.

And, finally, “Love Wins in the Long Run” rides a bustling rock shuffle ala Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, as Erelli sings it with both Petty’s declarative defiance and the gruff confidence Willie Nile always brings to tunes of optimism and salvation. 

And that’s where Erelli takes us to a place of strength, earned in trouble but lit up by love. 

Not a bad neighborhood.

At Caffe Lena Sunday, Erelli will perform with keyboardist James Rohr, playing tunes mainly from “Lay Your Darkness Down” plus a few older songs, says his publicist. Show time is 7 p.m., doors open at 6:30. Tickets are $27.88, $24.65 for Caffe members, $14.44 for students and children. The concert can be streamed live at caffelena.tv; a week of access with a $5 live stream ticket. For tickets call 518-583-0022 or visit caffelena.org.

Erelli’s Sunday show caps a strong weekend at the Caffe.

On Friday, contemporary jazz fusion drummer Bob Holtz leads his band A Vision Forward in hot improvisations between bracing smooth-muscle statements. Holtz has aimed straight-ahead phrasing and tasty tones at a range of styles with guitarist John McLaughlin, trumpeter Randy Brecker, the late reggae master Peter Tosh – even George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic groove machine. 8 p.m. $27.88, Caffe members $24.65, $14.44 students and children

Another style-shuffling artist takes over the Caffe stage on Saturday; the bluesy funkster – or funky blueswoman – Sunny War. She sings with Tracy Chapman/Joan Armatrading richness and character; she plays acoustic guitar with muscular thumb bass downstrokes and index finger upward melody picking. 8 p.m. $24.65, Caffe members $22.50, $12.50 students and children