from darkness

It's a bit of a music and show assemblage these days. We covered the Wilmington / Dennan gig already. I'm slated for Angus and Julia Stone on Saturday night with a friend. We have theatre on Friday night at Signature Theater, and I still need to talk a bit about Brandi Carlile's show
 at the Barns at Wolf Trap a few weeks ago.

Carlile's now complete Pindrop tour gave us her and the 'band' (Twins plus strings) playing small theatres with no amplification. Nothing was plugged in aside from some Edison lights strung about the stage. As she relayed during the show, they'd been thinking about a tour like this for any number of years and finally managed to pull if off - perfectly. There are only a handful of artists with the chops to do this, and by artist I include the Twins (Tim and Phil Hanseroth), and the wonderful string trio they brought along. You have to have serious oomph to play and sing in a room that holds 285 people - it's not for the meek projection. Carlile easily carried the room with her voice.

Last winter we had a power outage that started in the late afternoon, and as the sun was dipping down I was heading out the door to work. I'd gathered some 'hurricane lamp' candles and two flashlights as I was compiling what I needed for my workaday in the wilds of southern Maryland. All these beacons were gathered on the table and I pointed at them as I let the only teenager in the house know that , "There are candles and flashlights here on the table. You may need them as it gets darker. Your mother won't be home for a few hours."

"I don't need them. I want to maintain the integrity of my night vision." Okay pal, good luck with that plan.

This show was a bit like that teenager's dream: integrity of the music. I was in the front row of the balcony and as I checked out the room pre-show, I wondered just how the instruments and voices would carry. Clearly, they had a plan and had done the legwork (or studywork, or booking work...) to know that the 6 or 8 venues on order would provide the sound and clarity needed for the show. It all harkened back to seeing a bluegrass show - in particular, Steve Earle and the Del McCroury Band in London - that first showed me, with amplification in that case, that movement and projection is / was how musicians actually control who or what is out front: moving to and fro the microphone. I felt like I felt like Carlile was telling me that "we don't need amps, we want to maintain the integrity of the music." And that they did. It took half a song to realize that your ears adjust almost immediately to what level of sound is provided. Granted, it won't work in a 1,500 seat venue, but it will work in anything up to 300-400 in a designed venue. The notes and voices were so crystalline and pure that the next thing you realize is that all the electric-y stuff - wires, amps, volume knobs - each take away a little bit of the integrity of music. Don't get me wrong, I'll line up just as quickly for a rampaging Slobberbone show in a bar as I will for Brandi Carlile. But, this was pretty special. Damn, I wish I could sing.

Oh, if you're wondering how the night vision thing ended, it ended in the dark. X got home two or three hours later - illumination lost to the blinded - with a lone teenager declaring, "Where is everyone, I can't see anything! I've been here in the by myself for hours!"

Integrity indeed.

desirous

I'm running around a bit today getting errands done, cooking pizzas for tonight's dinner and a veg lasagna for some New School parents get together tomorrow night, all while getting ironed and ready for the The Eleven's date at the Kennedy Center tonight. I managed some very nice seats for Cate Blanchett in A Streetcar Named Desire; it was long planned and in early for seats to the soldout run. The reviews have been great and I'll add my wholly amateur input tomorrow morning from my seat at the Library of Congress information desk.

All's well here aside from the endless rain.

t

play, acting

This is an application I like. I like it like I like iTunes.

I was listening to some Cokie Roberts commentary on NPR yesterday and I suddenly realized just how much I don’t care for Cokie Roberts commentary. She used to seem like a benign voice in the news world but the fact is that she’s quite poor at analyzing or reporting anything. Of course, it certainly doesn’t help that I don’t much care for her views. What triggered it was her “reporting” of Obama’s naming of Eric Shinseki as the Secretary of Veteran Affairs. Her “analysis” was that this move seemed like a poke in the eye of the Bush Administration. (If you don’t recognize the name, Gen (ret.) Shinseki was the Army Chief of Staff who testified before Congress – before the war – that we would need hundreds of thousands of troops to occupy Iraq after the war. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld ran him out for speaking truth to power.) Anyhow, Shinseki served in the Army for 38 years, obviously served at the highest level, was wounded in Vietnam, and may well be the perfect choice for a very high profile and amazingly important position. Imagine someone choosing a qualified person for a job…dang, pinch me. I don’t think the future President is much for sticking things in people’s eyes; I’m pretty sure that the future President cares very little about anything that is thought of the current Administration. Of course, Roberts is too shallow to even imagine it possible – she is effectively belittling Shinseki’s qualifications and service in order to make a high school point. This being only the most current of her Monday morning blah-fests that amount to nothing of import and zero insight.

I won’t dawdle too much on the car bailout. Suffice it to say that I’m against it unless there are very, very stringent rules. Very stringent.

X invited me to spend about 90 minutes in a Benetton store the other night. I, of course, accepted.

I hit the Keegan Theatre for last Sunday’s matinee of Glengarry Glen Ross. I was quite a fan of the movie and I think the performance was just as good. There were a few reviews that didn’t much care for Mark Rhea’s performance as Ricky Roma but I thought it was excellent. The problem with that role is that Al Pacino played it in the movie and Al Pacino overacts (or over- Pacinos everything). Pacino is a caricature of himself (much like Sean Connery and Charleton Heston). I would think that if you’re reprising the role you’d find yourself doing a Pacino imitation…it’s too easy. Rhea, who is the founder (?) and board member (?) of the theatre, seemed to wander into Pacinoland for a few seconds at a time before pulling himself back from the brink. Everyone else gets straight As. One thing I also realized toward the end of the show was just how much I think David Mamet and Neil LaBute have in common. Maybe on another day we can talk more.

T

boys chase the girls

I'll finish the month with an update on the rotating banner/header situation: I've added Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Kasey Chambers, Lucinda Williams, and Emmylou Harris. I think the addition of three kings clears me of leering at the chicks.

In the department of irony; I got a call while I was cooking our Transylvanian Eggplant Casserole (actual name) to alert me that I'd won two tickets to the Gary Louris show in Falls Church on Thursday night. Louris was a founding member of the grand Jayhawks hailing from Minneapolis, circa late 80s to early 00s. He's now on tour supporting his first solo album and I entered the drawing two weeks ago at Melody Records. The irony here is that the WonderTwins are under the misguided impression that I buy lots of tickets yet they couldn't be further from the truth - maybe one ticket here, one ticket there. I only have tickets for the next two Capitals games, Cloud Cult on the 19th, the New Pornographers on the 14th, a date with Justin Earle on the 12th, we're off to the Metropolitan Opera up NYC on the 18th (that's her's, not mine), I did two theatre shows this month, and now Louris on the 3rd. See? That's nothing; it's like napping on the couch.

L. will be here from the 12th to the 15th. We'll move the first weekend in May. Santa comes in December.

Out like a lamb.

xxx

t.

quick hit review

The P. Griffin show last night was excellent. First and foremost, I do not give good reviews to performers and venues that don’t have good time management (this applies primarily to theater venues; bars / nightclubs are different animals). The details of that management are these: timely start, short opening act performance, headliner equipment up and ready to go, short break between acts, 90-100 minute performance by headliner, and preferably no encore. If you’re tipping your head like a confused dog when you read about my lack of interest in encores, I’ll tell you my feelings. If I’ve paid $40 to come see your show I don’t need to stand there and clap like an ass for five minutes before you come out to play two or three more songs. My ticket is my encore (call it a pre-core); play all your songs, hit me hard to finish the show, turn the lights up, and go home. There. Here was last night’s timing – 2 hours and 35 minutes of show, gate to finish.

8pm – Scott Miller steps on stage to open, right on time
8:35 – Scott Miller says thanks (he was good enough) and walks off stage
8:40 – I’m in the Warner lobby getting drinks
9:00 – Patty comes out and starts her set
10:35 – Patty and the band are done (not including encore; I didn’t stay)
11:05 – Home from the show, the walk, the Metro.

Patty Griffin may have the best voice going in music today. She also has a great band that reminds me of the two great backing bands I’ve seen in recent years: Madeleine Peyroux and Joan Baez. All three groups are cut from the same cloth: great band leadership (in this case the lead guitar player), and a thumping / hippy / head-bobbing / bass-loving rhythm section. The most interesting of last night’s backers was one Bryn Davis who plays stand-up bass, cello, keyboards, and sang back-up vocals (according to her myspace she plays with Grisham, Rowen and Rice, Bela Fleck, and Guy Clark; and she has bass tats on her back – very cool). That’s a Telluride picture of her above. When they all cut loose on a few of Patty’s rawkus songs the whole theater was on fire; they had so many layers of sound coming at you that it was impossible to not get drawn in. In addition to the show’s timeline and the quality performance, the mixing crew had everything just right. In particular, Patty’s vocals were set so you could hear every lyric and intonation of her voice. They get 4 cellos on my 5 cello scale.

(photo courtesy of Tim Benko's Fine Art Photography)

the week

Good music happening in the D.C. area this week. I'm off to see Patty Griffin at the Warner Theatre in D.C. tonight and there's a Silos / Tarbox Ramblers doublebill at Iota in Arlington on Saturday night.

Add to that a potential great late show a week from Friday at Jammin' Java in Vienna, VA, and everythings looking good indeed. That Friday show features two, three-piece jam bands that are poised to have very good years: the headliners are Rose Hill Drive, here's a live video...



with support from Earl Greyhound. As if everyone is eagerly awaiting reviews.

T.