Dorothy Ashby

Before there was Joanna Newsom, before there was Mary Lattimore, even before there was Alice Coltrane, there was Dorothy Ashby.

Hip Harp, from 1958.

Joanna Newsom at The Buckhead Theater, Atlanta, September 11, 2016

Yesterday, Monday, was officially Day Five of our five-day show marathon, but the killer combo of a day job and a show that night by The Album Leaf meant we didn't have time to say much about Sunday night's Joanna Newsom show, other than to share a few pics and post the obligatory video.  

Let us make our amends.  We arrived at The Buckhead Theater a full 15 minutes before the doors opened, but the line to get in already snaked way down Roswell Road to near it's intersection with Peachtree. When we finally got inside, we walked straight passed the bar to the stage (no time for beer), but were still three standing rows back from the stage.  Fortunately, our sight-lines were still pretty good.

The show started with a set by husky-voiced, Portland-based singer-songwriter Alela Diane, who we've seen before at The Crystal Ballroom in Portland during MFNW (RIP) in 2011 and in Seattle at Bumbershoot in 2012.   We don't think too many other people in the room that night had seen Alela twice before.

Lynn Jacobson covered the Bumbershoot set for The Seattle Times, noting, "Alone with her guitar, she stood stock-still in a spotlight, singing (and occasionally whistling) melancholy tunes rife with romantic images of roses and thorns, darkness and wine. She introduced a new song, About Farewell, which she called 'pretty [expletive] sad.' And it was."  She delivered about the same on Sunday night, too (which is a good thing).

There was about a 40-, 45-minute break between sets, and the crowded stagefront got even more crowded still with people pushing to get closer.  That usual circumference around ourselves that most people consider "personal space" was reduced to mere centimeters, and every time we tried to move our arms to check our phone or whatever, we wound up rubbing against the person or persons next to us, as they were also doing to us.  Several young women around us had a hand on their opposite shoulder so that their arm protected their breasts from brushing up against strangers.  I think we all felt a sense of relief when the house lights finally dimmed and Joanna Newsom took the stage.

Joanna Newson "only" has four albums out, but each one is so long and complex, and each song so intricate and involved, that her body of work seems of staggering volume.  Which is to say, to be honest, I only know a few of her songs, but she played everything that I know, including Sapokanikan and Divers, from the new album, Divers.

Newsom sang using a portable microphone, freeing her up to frequently move back and forth from her trademark harp to piano, sometimes while still singing during the same song.  She was back by a drummer and three multi-instrumentalists, who played a wide variety of stringed instruments and recorders, switching frequently during the course of a song.

So what else happened?  She covered a Judy Collins song (Albatross), Alela Diane came on stage and accompanied her with backing vocals on the last couple of songs, members of the audience yelled "I love you" during each and every break between songs and tried to engage her in one-on-one conversations from the orchestra pit, someone told her "I like turtles," and someone else threw her a rose (which she impressively caught one-handed). 

Newsom performed the first song of her encore alone and accompanied (the aforementioned Albatross) and the rest of the band joined her for the second song.  Even though the evening felt like a marathon of selections from her impressive oeuvre, the show started early enough that we were back home by 11:00 pm, which is nice on a Sunday night.

One more night to go for our our five-night run.  The end is in sight. 

Here We Go

Here we go, sports (and music) fans.  Rocktober arrives a full month early:

Sept. 8 - Car Seat Headrest (Terminal West)

Sept. 9 - Angel Olsen and (just announced) Julianna Barwick (Terminal West)

Sept. 10 - Quilt and Mutual Benefit (The Earl)

Sept. 11 - Joanna Newsom (Buckhead Theater)

Sept. 12 - The Album Leaf (Terminal West)

Sept. 21 - Okkervil River, Landlady (Terminal West)

Sept. 27 - Little Tybee, Hello Ocho (Mammal Gallery)

Joanna Newson

To keep the theme going, Joanna Newsom will perform at The Buckhead Theater on Sunday, Sept. 11, the night after Mutual Benefit and Quilt appear at The Earl and the night before The Album Leaf play Terminal West.  It will be our first time seeing Newson perform live. 

Preview

What we all knew is now official - July 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded in the history of recording hottest months.  So far, August hasn't been much cooler.

It's also been one of the driest, at least as far as shows go.  I haven't heard live music since Swans' July 22 show at Terminal West (although part of the ringing still in my ears is continuing to hear them  now).

As hard as it is to believe today, there's just a little over a month from the autumnal equinox.  We're two weeks out from football season starting again.  Ten weeks to Halloween, twelve to the end of this insufferable Presidential election season.

But my point is this - after a drought of biblical proportions, live music will soon be returning to the ATL. As you can see from the Upcoming Shows gadget over to the right, September will bring an insane amount of good music to town, starting with Car Seat Headrest at Terminal West on Thursday, September 8.   

The next evening, Angel Olsen plays Terminal West and the night after that, Saturday, Quilt and Mutual Benefit will be at The Earl.  

On Sunday, September 11, Joanna Newsom plays The Buckhead Theater and on Monday, September 12, The Album Leaf  will be at Terminal West.

And that five-show/five-night run isn't even all of it for September.  On Wednesday, September 21, Okkervil River and Landlady will take the Terminal West stage, and to close the month, Portland's Ages & Ages will be at Vinyl on September 30.

I'm not likely to make all of the shows (work, travel, old age, etc.), but there's not one show in that list that I want to miss.

Economics 102

Faced with fewer bands touring through the American South, club owners appear to have re-evaluated their own profit margins and the sources of their income.  Why pay some band from New York a big fee to perform, when a local band can fill the room or at the very least cover the costs for the night at little or no money?  

Local music is an important part of any city's music scene and part of the joy of living in a city with a thriving local music scene like Atlanta is watching our local favorites grow and mature as artists.  But when the club owners no longer can pack the room with fans of the latest buzz band, they have to figure out how they can afford to keep the doors open with fewer customers, so with lower volume, they have to reduce their costs by paying the locals less and less, and before too long the music fan is faced with enduring whatever band the club can scrape together to play for free that night and with putting up with fewer and fewer comforts (AC, clean toilets) in the club itself.

In a perfect world, our fine local bands would rise to the occasion and fill the empty stages left by the touring bands that refuse to venture too far from home, but in the imperfect world in which we live, there's a downward spiral as owners realize they can make greater profits by paying the bands less, or even nothing at all, and the quality of the music on stage suffers as a result.

So, yes, I've been to fewer shows this year, partly because there's been fewer shows this year, in my humble opinion, worth seeing.

But then, suddenly, an oasis appears in the desert.  Over the next week, Atlanta will get to experience Swans (Friday), Fear of Men (Monday), Marissa Nadler (Tuesday), and Boogarins (Wednesday), and then almost nothing for the month of August.  But then, just as dramatically, we'll get another overload of shows on September 8, 9, 10, and 11, with  Car Seat Headrest, (8th), Angel Olsen (9th), Quilt and Mutual Benefit (10th), and Joanna Newsom (11th).  

So don't lose hope, Atlanta, there's still good music to be heard out there, and in the meantime we can support our local artists like Little Tybee at Terminal West on August 5, Takenobu at Eddie's Attic on August 13, and Hello Ocho and Jeffrey Bützer at The Earl on August 29 and September 3, respectively.    

Joanna Newsom

After 5 years, we finally get some new Joanna Newsom, this time directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.  No plans announced yet as to how she's going to leave the American South out of her tour plans.

Another Thao Song

On February 5, Thao Nguyen's band Thao & the Get Down Stay Down will release their new album We the Common via Ribbon Music. The follow-up to 2009's Know Better Learn Faster was produced by John Congleton (Modest Mouse, St. Vincent). One of the album's tracks, Kindness Be Conceived, is a duet with Joanna Newsom.

Thao pointed out on her Facebook page that the duet with Ms. Newsom and several other songs would not exist without the Hedgebrook Retreat.  Hedgebrook supports "visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come."

Hedgebrook Retreat is located on Whidbey Island, about thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle. Situated on 48-acres of forest and meadow facing Puget Sound, the retreat hosts women writers from all over the world for residencies of two weeks to two months, at no cost to the writer. Residents are housed in six handcrafted cottages, where they spend their days in solitude – writing, reading, taking walks in the woods on the property, on nearby Double Bluff beach or trails around the island. In the evenings, they gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a home-cooked gourmet meal, their work, their process and their stories. The women who come to Hedgebrook are writing in all genres, and are of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and levels of writing experience.

Update:  Meanwhile, Thao released a second hilarious installment in her Behind The Scenes, The Making of The Making Of . . . video series.  Who knew she was such a great comedian?