Photos by Dan DeSlover

Orville Peck has a baritone built for songs about leaving town. At The Sylvee in Madison last night, the masked country singer put that voice to work telling a story about starting over. With Abbie Callahan opening the night, Peck’s Man Turned Mule Tour drew heavily from his latest album, a record that turns the hardest year of his life into country songs with room for both grief and a good punch line.

Released in September, Mule traces the year Peck got sober. Its prologue, which played before he began singing, imagines a funeral for the man he had been. Emmylou Harris, Noah Cyrus and Allison Russell sing on the recording, and their harmonies give that opening a solemnity that carries into songs like “Rehab Blues.” The record’s humor comes through elsewhere in the set, particularly in the bluntly titled “You’re an Asshole, I Can’t Stand You (and I Want a Divorce).”

Peck gave the new material plenty of room while reaching back to the songs that established his sound. “Turn to Hate” and “The Curse of the Blackened Eye” arrived early, while “Daytona Sand” closed the main set. The Magnetic Fields’ “Papa Was a Rodeo” fit right into Peck’s world of lonesome cowboys, while “Maybe This Time” brought a bit of Cabaret to a country show.

Peck saved “Dead of Night” for the encore. After a set that spent so much time with Mule, ending with the first song on his debut album, Pony, brought the night back to the spare, lonely sound that made his baritone so recognizable in the first place.

Dan DeSlover was at The Sylvee to photograph the show for The Early Registration. Check out his photos from Orville Peck’s Madison stop below.