I have been a fan of Al Stewart for many years, but I never really kept up with him as a touring entity. I enjoyed the albums and that was pretty much it. Last summer, a full nine months in advance, it was announced that he would play (of all places) Hopewell, VA at the Beacon Theatre. I attended that show and had a wonderful time. Soon after that show was nothing but a memory, I found out that he was playing The Birchmere. Logistically, getting to Alexandria from Richmond isn’t as simple as Hopewell, but thanks to my friend Dana, we were able to attend the show Saturday night.

In March, Stewart was accompanied by virtuoso guitarist Dave Nachmanoff, and he added another dimension with his performance. Dave is on the road promoting his own record (“Spinoza’s Dream”) so for the most recent leg of this tour, including the Birchmere show, Al was accompanied by Marc Macisso.

Was this show as good as the show in March? No. Macisso is a great musician, and plays a whole lot of instruments (Flute, harmonica, bongos and saxophone), but he doesn’t play guitar. Stewart is a fantastic songwriter and lyricist, and he is a serviceable rhythm player, but he is not a lead guitarist. As good as Macisso was as an accompanist, the absence of a lead guitar was felt, and, even though it wasn’t mentioned, it seriously limited the songs from the catalog that could be performed acoustically. Having said that, the evening did have some nice surprises:

*Al played a short ditty called ‘The Candidate’, written in 1984, about those that run for the office of President who never have any chance of winning. I was hoping this would segue into his classic ‘Warren Harding’ but it did not. He did play it later in the set though.

*With Marc accompanying him, this meant that I got to hear ‘Time Passages’ and ‘Year of the Cat’ complete with sax solo! Now, granted, the production on those two songs is great, but it sounds so ‘of its time’ that the sax sometimes gets in the way. But, I was very happy to hear the solo performed on sax instead of on guitar. And, since the solo is in a different rhythm than the rest of the song, for both ‘Passages’ and ‘Cat’ before the solo started, Marc had the crowd clap on the offbeat so he could keep time with Al’s guitar, because, with no drummer counting, it would be very easy to get completely lost and never make it back to the chorus. I’m not sure how many in attendance realized why Marc was so insistent they clap along, but it made for two very cool moments.

*One of the additions to the set list since I last saw him was the song ‘Gina in the King’s Road’ from the 2009 album ‘A Beach Full of Shells.’ A lot of Al’s later (i.e. non-70s) material doesn’t get showcased live, so it was a nice surprise to hear this song from an overlooked record.

*At the start of the encore, Al talked about the current lawsuit involving ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and played a number of songs all with the same chord progression to demonstrate how many songs sound similar but different enough to be their own original compositions. Earlier in the set, Al talked about how he ‘wanted to be Roger Daltry’ when he was a kid, but knew immediately that he would never sing like that. His dreams of being a musician were rekindled when he heard Dylan for the first time and said ‘Hell, I can sing like that!’ He even sang a verse of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and quoted ‘Ballad of a Thin Man.’ As a fan of both artists, it was a brief collision of two worlds.

*The best story of the night was about one of the few songs in Stewart’s catalog that everyone knows. While on tour in 1975 opening for Linda Ronstadt , Al’s piano player would test the sound levels during soubdchrck every night by playing the same melody, and after several nights in a row of hearing that melody, Al went to his piano player and said “I’ve written some lyrics to that melody and I’d like to record it. ”

“No  it’s an instrumental.”

After asking his pianist several times, Al eventually received the go ahead to record the song with his lyrics, after assuring the piano player he could record his instrumental version. Sl’s version of course became the smash “Year of the Cat.” (No one knows if the instrumental version was ever recorded.)

*Lastly, Al told the story of meeting Leonard Cohen in 1966 and showing him lyrics to a song he had just written (‘In Brooklyn’). Cohen complimented him; a moment that Stewart says is still the highlight of his career as a songwriter.

Special thanks to Dana for seeing this show with me, and to The Birchmere for being one of the best live music venues around. I love the Birchmere so much that I am able to look past the hyper young kid who kept bouncing on the booth seat next to us for the entire show, and I am willing to forgive the (very) talkative fan who sat at our table and talked for an hour straight before the house lights finally dimmed.

Setlist:
House of Clocks
Antarctica
Flying Sorcery
Broadway Hotel
On the Border
Night Train to Munich
The Candidate
Time Passages
Warren Harding
Fever (Marc Macisso Solo)
Route 66 (Marc Macisso Solo)
Pinball Wizard (riff)/Subterranean Homesick Blues (snippet)
Gina in the King’s Road
Year of the Cat
(Encore)
Stairway to Heaven/Teenager in Love/Stay (snippets)
In Brooklyn

Bands are like a marriage; there are milestones, celebrations, fights, and sometimes (more often than not actually) the whole thing ends in a nasty break-up.

Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie have a complicated relationship. As the two primary members of The Violent Femmes, they’ve worked together for over thirty years, although the last ten years have been tumultuous. The band members have sued and counter-sued one another over royalties and credits due over the entire span of the group, so when I heard they were touring and making a stop in Richmond at The National, I was curious; would the show be a train wreck?

In an amazing twist, this is without question the most profitable the band has ever been as a touring entity, and proof of this was offered by a raucous sold out crowd of jubilant fans who pogoed, moshed, bobbed and sang along, happily revisiting songs that were staples of their youth (which, at least in the case of your author, was a very long time ago).

There was at least one song that everyone in attendance knew, the song that ‘broke’ the band in 1983, and eventually, to many fans’ dismay, ended up in a Wendy’s commercial decades later. ‘Blister in the Sun’ by most accounts is the hit that you would think the band would save for the end of the show, or at least for later in the evening, but the Femmes, perhaps just to ‘get it out of the way and over with’ opened with their most popular tune. After that, the set leaned heavily on the band’s classic eponymous debut album (which should be part of your record collection if it isn’t already), but they also proved they are not just a nostalgia act by featuring two songs from their latest record (called “We Can Do Anything”) which was released earlier this year.

As I listened to their music earlier in the week, I began to wonder if the song ‘Add it Up’ would be omitted from the set, or have a verse censored due to the massacre in Orlando. Listening on my iPod, when I heard the lines ‘Don’t shoot shoot shoot that gun at me’ I cringed, and I thought if the song was featured in the set at all, it would be censored. Much to my surprise the song, which served as the final encore of the evening, was played in its full uncensored loud obnoxious angst-driven glory, and it was wonderful.

I’ll give Gano and Ritchie credit. They may not be speaking to one another, and they barely acknowledged each other on stage, but when they hit the stage, they were able to put all of that aside and give the fans what they wanted. It was a joy to travel back to a time when the most pressing thing in your life was your math homework and figuring out how you were going to work up the nerve to talk to the prettiest girl in school. The Violent Femmes’ music is timeless, because each generation brings a new crop of nervous, nerdy, awkward teenagers trying to find their footing and The Femmes are able to provide the perfect soundtrack for that awkward stage that we never think will end. Mercifully it does end, but if you’re lucky, your fandom for The Violent Femmes will carry on into your adulthood.

Shout out to my brother Brian and his wife Mary. It was a pleasure seeing this show with you.

Setlist:
Blister in the Sun
Kiss Off
Good For/At Nothing
Love Love Love Love Love
Prove My Love
Promise
Country Death Song
I Could Be Anything
Issues
Old Mother Reagan
Freak Magnet
Gimmie The Car
Hallowed Ground
Gone Daddy Gone
I Held Her in My Arms
Good Feeling
Life Is an Adventure
Jesus Walking on the Water
American Music
Black Girls
Encore:
Memory
Add It Up

–Barry, who doesn’t really care what went down on his permanent record.

Dolly Parton brought her ‘Pure and Simple’ tour to Wolf Trap Wednesday night, and played to a packed house, presenting a career-spanning set that covered the hits, some of her personal favorite gospel songs from her childhood, some new songs from an album that will arrive later this summer, and stories…lots and lots of stories.

“Thank you for spending your hard earned money to see me, because you have no idea how much it costs to make me look this cheap!”

 
Dolly’s shows are more ‘family reunion’ than performance, with Dolly onstage, unassuming, flashing that smile and laughing, regaling you with stories from her nearly fifty-years in showbiz.
As I watched and listened, I was immediately struck with how her voice sounded; now seventy (!) years of age, her voice sounds stronger and better than it did at the height of her popularity in the late 1970’s/early 80’s.

This tour was absent any huge production pieces, apart from a raised bench seat on wheels that she used for a portion of the show. The main focus was on the songs and the stories, and even though I had heard it said before, Dolly does talk on stage as if she’s in her living room having you over for lunch, as breezy as could be.

The venue did an excellent job taking into account the outdoor elements when mixing the sound, and even though I was surrounded by fans (and the occasional mosquito) on the lawn, the sound carried very well all the way to the back of the venue, making sure no one was left out of the fun.
Dolly joked about her wigs as her ‘hair’ repeatedly got caught in the headset vocal mic she used. ‘Don’t worry; it doesn’t hurt when I pull it!’ She talked about growing up in the Smokey Mountains as part of a family of twelve kids and mentioned that she and her husband Carl recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by getting married again (’We can’t remember why we did it the first time, so we got married again!’)

It goes unnoticed by many how great a songwriter Dolly is. I mean, she’s made a living out of her ‘look’ (and she looked amazing) but, beyond that, the songs she has written have stood the test of time and been recorded by not only other country singers, but across all genres, most notably Whitney Houston’s record shattering rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You.” Last night, as she performed hit after hit, she proved, without actually mentioning it directly, that she’s a superb lyricist and writer. Also she displayed her talent for playing many instruments, including guitar, banjo, fiddle, piano, dulcimer and, the one that surprised me the most, the saxophone!

As I made my way among the throngs of fans, back to the car and back to reality, one thing was clear: We are now all in love with Dolly Parton. Even from seemingly miles away on the lawn, she will capture your heart.

Thanks to my friend (and big-time Dolly fan) Meg for bringing this show to my attention. It was a joy to see this show with you!

Set list (from setlist.fm):
First Set

Intro: Hello Dolly
Train, Train
Pure & Simple
Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That
Jolene
Precious Memories
My Tennessee Mountain Home
Coat of Many Colors
Smoky Mountain Memories
Applejack
Rocky Top/Yakety Sax
Banks of the Ohio
“A Slice of American Pie” Medley: American Pie / If I Had a Hammer / Blowin’ in the Wind / Dust in the Wind / The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
The Seeker
I’ll Fly Away

Second Set

Baby, I’m Burnin’
Outside Your Door
The Grass Is Blue
Those Memories of You
Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
Little Sparrow
Two Doors Down
Here You Come Again
Islands in the Stream
9 to 5

Encore:
I Will Always Love You
Encore 2:
Hello God

It’s Summer Concert Season, and this month I am seeing some great shows, starting tomorrow:

June 8 – Dolly Parton at Wolf Trap
June 15 – Violent Femmes at The National
June 18 – Al Stewart at The Birchmere
June 22 – The Cure at Merriweather (Maryland)
June 24 – The Cure in Atlanta

That list doesn’t even include shows later this summer (I’ll get to those in another post); the reason for this entry? As noted above, I’m returning to Atlanta…and I’m kinda freaking out about it.

I haven’t even really thought about Atlanta (except following the Braves) since I left the city on a very cold February morning in 2013, crammed into the backseat of a car that contained almost everything I owned. I had lived in Atlanta for the previous six months, and had developed a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with the city I truly believed would be my home.

It didn’t work out that way, and I am very glad that a) I tried to make it work and b) I wasn’t stubborn enough to stay there while my health and mental state got worse. When I left Atlanta, I was in the absolute darkest place mentally. I had no desire to return to Atlanta, and even stopped watching Atlanta Braves baseball for the 2013 season because it brought up a lot of wounds that had not yet healed.

Now, three-plus years since my exit, I think I am ready to walk the streets of the ATL again without getting physically ill, or heading into an emotional tailspin.

I’m glad it’s just for a few days, and I am thrilled that I’ll be seeing some friends. In fact, before the Cure show was announced, my friend Mimi (Here’s the story of the first time we met in Atlanta) and I had talked about touring/stalking the outdoor sets of ‘The Walking Dead’ so, once the Cure show was announced, that was the catalyst to set all of this in motion. My main objective, apart from catching up with some dear friends, stalking TWD and seeing The Cure, is to stay busy. I’m not even sure I will take the transit system (MARTA) because, one of the last times I was in a MARTA station is when I had a major emotional breakdown, to the point where I do not recall the walk home from the station to my apartment.

Ironically, the Braves won’t even be in town the weekend I visit. I had hoped to see them play on the Thursday before the Cure show, but the start time was moved from a night game to an afternoon game, and my plane won’t land in the city until an hour after scheduled first pitch. That’s okay, and it’s probably for the best. The team is horrid this year, and I think visiting The Ted (Turner Field) will be akin to a wake, as the team and the city play out the string of games in 2016, literally counting down to Opening Day April 2017, when the Braves leave Downtown Atlanta for a shiny new park in the suburbs.

Like I said, I want to stay busy while I am there, because I know myself well enough to know that if I am alone in my hotel room, mindlessly flipping channels, it will remind me too much of how things ended the last time I was in Atlanta.

Lots of things have changed in the 40 months since I was last there, and I think I will be fine and I’ll have a fabulous time. Atlanta and I still have a strange relationship, though. You know the old adage, ‘Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there’? Well, I already know I don’t want to live in Atlanta. I just hope, after ‘breaking up’ with the city and doubting I’d ever be back, that after this visit, Atlanta for me is once again a nice place to visit.