Catching up on Concerts and stuff

It has been a very busy month so far. I am behind on concerts. I am behind on updating the play list. And it isn't going to get better. Next week I leave for Austin for the Austin City Limits Music Festival; Friday September 23rd thru 25th. As in previous years, I will be writing about the shows and posting pictures. You will be able to find these at http://aclfestival.blogspot.com . Meanwhile, here are a couple of mini concert reviews of Jill Sobule and Lucinda Williams.

Last week I saw Jill Sobule at Largo. Yep another Jill Sobule concert. Jill wasn’t 100% this time. Either tired or distracted, it took awhile for her to kick it into gear. She also forgot a couple of lines from songs. But you gotta love the way she deals with it: “Wait, can I start over?” she asks the crowd. She is so cute. The opening band, which included Dave Carpenter on upright bass joined her on several songs, giving her a full band for the first time in awhile. It was another fun show. We’ll probably go back in October when the next show is announced.

Last Saturday we saw Lucinda Williams. It was a last minute decision and so we had pretty mediocre seats (it didn’t help that we needed 5 seats together). CC Adcock was the opening act and I enjoyed him a lot (although that wasn’t a unanimous decision within my party). It was just him and a stand up bass player who spent most of the show bent over playing the bass almost parallel to the ground. He also had I believe something attached to his hand to hit the body of the bass with to give them a percussion sound. The sound of the two of them was sort of a Cajun mellow Violent Femmes (again I had trouble getting my friends to agree with me on this). I bought his CD and will post about it later.

Lucinda Williams was not the Lucinda we saw in Austin 2 years ago. In fact she wasn’t even the Lucinda I listened to on her new Live in Austin CD. This was a happy Lucinda; a sharing, giving Lucinda. Many of the songs came with stories about who or what influenced the song. Many influences were famous people and the crowd acknowledged them with applause. The largest applause came when she mentioned Paul Westerberg; very unexpected. But it made sense when she thanked the crowd (which she did several times) and said that she loved this crowd because they accepted both her “straight country” and rock and roll songs. I wish we were up closer for this show. It would have been nice to see the “good” Lucinda up close like we saw the “bad” Lucinda two years ago. She played for about 2.5 hours. I found a song list online so I’ll pass it on:

MAIN SET: (1) Ventura; (2) Fruits of My Labor; (3) Those Three Days; (4) Metal Firecracker; (5) Jailhouse Tears; (6) Pineola; (7) Still I Long for Your Kiss; (8) 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten; (9) Where Is My Love? (10) Righteously; (11) Knowing; (12) Changed the Locks; (13) Come On; (14) Essence; (15) Bleeding Fingers; (16) Joy; FIRST ENCORE: (17) Lake Charles; (18) Crescent City; (19) Bus to Baton Rouge; (20) Well, Well, Well; (21) Get Right With God; SECOND ENCORE: (22) Unsuffer Me; (23) American Dream; (24) West.