Watch Sarah Jaffe and Keite Young’s Sweet Duet With ‘Clementine’

The events of the past year no doubt stung more deeply without the joy of live music, and this past weekend we got a concrete reminder of what we’d been missing when two of Dallas’ prodigious natives came together at The Kessler.

On Saturday, indie queen Sarah Jaffe headlined a show at the theater with opener Keite Young, the fiery frontman for Medicine Man Revival, who played a solo set.

While the two singers are known for their blazing live presence (one of Jaffe’s most memorable last performances was a symphonic production at the Meyerson), toward the end of their Saturday show, their distinct vocals joined in a stripped-down, sweet symbiosis on Jaffe’s most popular song, “Clementine.”

Normally, the song makes for a perfect closer as a crowd sing-along, but on Saturday, like Jaffe’s manager Tami Thomsen wrote on a Facebook post, “You could hear a pin drop.”

Young says the performance was unrehearsed.

“It was humbling to stand there with Sarah and add my feelings to a song that so many people love,” he says. “Sarah’s vulnerability is her brilliance. There was no prep or rehearsal so what happened in those moments was a one of one experience. I wouldn’t have had it another way.”

Jaffe and Young have collaborated on other projects, and Young’s vocal talent has been solicited by seemingly every musician with a Grammy: John Mayer, Leon Bridges, Kirk Franklin and Bobby Sessions, to name a few. 

The warmth in Jaffe’s delivery and the soothing soul in Young’s gentle harmonies reminded us of the wide range in local talent and made us hope for a new version of “Clementine” we didn’t know could exist.

Watch the video below: