acho que não

I win!

Ha!

A long time ago, in a University not so very far away, I wrote a web journal entry about a friend's fiancee (who shall remain nameless to avoid a repeat of the previous fiasco) and a conversation we'd had about the slightly risque subject of strip clubs. It was a very funny conversation, and a reasonably funny journal entry and people laughed and that was the end of that.

At least, that was the end of that until late last year, when said fiancee (by then, long since husband) got a new job, with a new boss who was both very slightly web aware and a bit of a prude. Googling on the name of his new employee, what did the boss discover but that the second entry on Google was my journal entry. About new employee and strip clubs. Well, new boss was very concerned about the image this might present to clients and asked that it be removed.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid.

The journal was hosted on geocities, on an account I no longer used, which was tied to an email address I no longer had access to. I did eventually manage to recover the password and deleted the site as a whole. Unfortunately, I had failed to account for Google's peculiarities - namely that pages which disappear are not de-cached or de-indexed, but assumed to be merely missing for awhile.

Fine, I thought, I'll ask Google to re-index the page so they can see that it's gone. But I can't do that without having an actual page there. So I go in and recreate a blank page, not enough. I go in and recreate a page with actual content, link to it from somewhere else, and ask Google to re-index it. Finally, after about 6 months of trying, Google has cleared their cache of that page and stopped returning it as one of the primary results.

How long is 6 months in internet years?

Book!

He even spelled my name right in the acknowledgements.

I met up with a friend to see Neko Case, with Corb Lund opening, at the Harbourfront Center last Thursday. Harbourfront is an outdoor venue, and the weather was postcard perfect for an evening concert.

I thought before the show, and still do, that Corb Lund was an odd match with Neko Case. They're both in the tent, for sure, but they're not exactly rubbing elbows in the crowd. Taken separately they were both good shows. Taken together, well, there was an intermission between them for a reason.

Corb Lund plays a certain brand of cocky up on stage and he manages to make it work. His patter is as amusing as his lyrics, and his voice almost as good as his dimples. The band he's got behind him is tightly rehearsed and talented as hell. Which makes it a shame how poorly they got used through a lot of the show.

Singing the first half of the song with just your own guitar accompanying you and then having the band come crashing in was, at some point, an interesting arrangement. It might still be an interesting arrangement. Until it's used for four consecutive songs in the same show. Then it just leaves you scratching your head as to why he'd leave that talented band standing around scratching their asses for a third of every song.

It'd been somewhat less than a month since I'd last seen Neko, and a little over three since I'd last seen her in front of the Sadies, so I thought I had a pretty good idea what to expect. It was largely the same set she brought to Twangfest, despite the presence of the Sadies, and not much in the way of the rawk. She was in a damn site better mood than she was in St Louis, so that, at least, made for a much better show.

It was not a mind blowing set, about an average set for Neko, but then, average Neko is well above average.

My Mariposa festival experience did not get off to what you'd call a great start. I knew traffic was going to be a bitch, competing with Friday afternoon cottage traffic, but I'd had Richard F. check the time on the first set I cared about, and I was confident I could make the drive to Orillia in time to get there. And indeed, after a 3 and a half hour drive (normally less than 2), I did manage to get to the festival site about 15 minutes before Serena Ryder's set was scheduled to start, whereupon the nice parking man informed me that it had been raining for some three straight hours in Orillia that afternoon and the show had been washed out. I turned around and made the hour and half drive home. Checking the website over the weekend, I discovered that I had been misinformed, and that, in fact, the mainstage show had been moved to the beer tent, not cancelled entirely. My aggravation over missing it is immense.

The next morning, after several hours of Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot and Crocodile Rockin' at the IBM corporate picnic, I was anxious to make the return trip North for day 2, if for no other reason than to drive the horrible, horrible music out of my brain. It was late in the day and after I arrived and looked around for awhile to get an idea of how things were set up and went back to my car and got a chair and whatever else, there was only one round of small stage performances left. I opted for a concert by a duo called "Likewater" on the Estelle Klein stage. Good, catchy, well-written lyrics, if a little spare on the music side. I picked up their CD which is less spare, and which I quite like.

The evening line-up on Saturday night was Crooked Still (bluegrass fusion, of a sorts), La Corde du Bois (Quebec traditionalist kitchen party), David Francey (story-telling songwriter), Fruit (Australian pop folk) and Tom Cochrane (Uh, Tom Cochrane ?!?).

I enjoyed Crooked Still a fair bit, though not enough to buy a CD. They seem like a 'see them live' band to me. I didn't really think much of La Corde du Bois one way or the other. They were fine, I suppose. David Francey is one of those singer-songwriters who can't stand to let his songs tell the story. He has to preface every song with a five minute explanation of where it came from and what it's about. Fortunately, he's a reasonably funny kind of guy so this wasn't completely bloody annoying. Fruit (there's some weird capitalization thing in there that I decline to participate in) were energetic and fun and had quirky Australian accents. They were a little on the rah, rah, is everyone out there having fun, I can't hear you side in terms of on stage mannerisms, but musically, they were pretty solid.

Tom Cochrane was an interesting closer. Not exactly someone you'd think of as a "folk" artist, he's a pretty straight forward Canadian rocker, but with sufficiently solid songwriting chops that he fit in pretty well with the rest of the line-up. The show was a real nostalgia trip for me, because my very first concert ever, was Tom Cochrane on Canada Day of 1990 at a big outdoor show in a field. I've always enjoyed his music, and the show at Mariposa was no exception. It suffered some from what I think of as old dog - old tricks syndrome. Artists have been singing the same songs for so damned long that they get bored with them. In order to not be bored with them, they try new arrangements, new phrasing, new whatever to make them seem like they aren't the same damned songs they were singing 15 years ago. This is not always, or even generally, a good idea. A few different songs that night were really badly mangled in the new arrangements. Without the sheer volume of chatter put out by David Francey, Tom managed to introduce the songs and tell interesting stories about them. I'd have liked to have heard Life is a Highway, but 20 minutes after the show was expected to end, it was still going on strong, and I had a nearly 2 hour drive home that night, so I departed.

The next morning, I headed back up North for another day. After lunching with a friend in Barrie, I arrived in time to catch the last song of a workshop featuring Lynn Miles, Lennie Gallant and Russell de Carle. That one song alone was worth the price of admission, and I'm damned sorry I missed the rest of that set.

The next workshop was another really fine one - Fred Eaglesmith, Gurf Morlix and Murray McLauchlan - set up a 'swapping stories and telling lies' kind of vibe. It was like watching a bunch of guys on a back porch somewhere, and they were really strong together, trading licks and backing each other up.

Followed that up with a workshop featuring Trio Bravo, Oh Susanna and Serena Ryder, that was a weaker example of what a workshop could be. While Serena and the Trio eventually worked their way into each other's grooves, and were playing along, Oh Susanna seemed completely detached from the group. She didn't kick in on anyone else's songs, she seemed uncomfortable when they played in on hers. She's one of my favourite artists, so I still enjoyed her songs, but I'd have liked to see her do something with the group as a whole.

If the Trio/Oh/Serena workshop was a poor example of what a workshop could be, the last workshop I saw that day was an unmitigated disaster. A mix of the Sweet Water Women, Serena Ryder and Bleeker Ridge was like oil and water and a different kind of oil. Sweet Water Women is traditionalist native folk singing, Serena Ryder is a folk singer-songwriter with a powerful voice, Bleeker Ridge is a teeny-bopper rock band. They had nothing in common and nothing to work with each other on. Even the stage set-up was bad, because as they took turns, they'd go up to the mics, then return to their chairs at the back of the stage while others sang, there wasn't even an opportunity for collaboration, really. I've talked about Serena Ryder before, and can't say enough good things about her, she really is a hell of a singer. Sweet Water Women do a style of music that alternately moves me completely and bores me to death, depending on the power of the performance. This was relatively low key stuff that definitely fell on the bores me to death end of things. For a pack of Junior High kids, Bleeker Ridge is a surprisingly good band. They need a few years of seasoning, especially when it comes to stage confidence, but they're pretty decent at what they do - sort of like a Hanson that doesn't suck. Together, though, the workshop was a disconnected mess.

Sunday evening's lineup was Harry Manx, Fred Eaglesmith, Lynn Miles, Murray McLauchlan and Gordon Lightfoot. I'd already decided in advance that I was leaving after Lynn Miles set because I needed to finish a document for work that night, which meant not staying for Gordon Lightfoot's set, and I'm not much in the way of a Murray McLauchlan fan, so couldn't see staying for that, either.

I have no idea what Harry Manx was doing up there, but I really wish he'd been doing it somewhere else. Out of earshot. Fred Eaglesmith was funny and interesting and worthwhile, and I'm not quite sure why I spent several years thinking I didn't like him. I must have been mixing him up with someone else. Lynn Miles did an excellent set, and I've been wanting to hear her for awhile. I often find it difficult to get into songs I don't know at concerts, but Lynn's set was really good, despite my lack of prior knowledge.

Overall, a good weekend, well worth the cost of the tickets, though the cost of 4 hours a day of driving is questionable. In the future, I'd probably find a way to afford to stay in Orillia to bring that time commitment down.

Relevent Links:
Mariposa Folk Festival

I got the feeling, listening to Rodney Crowell play, that if it was half as much fun as being a musician, he'd probably write novels instead. The man is a born storyteller, a walking mass of interwoven characters and themes and plot lines, with a real gift for telling stories in his songs and on the stage. Add to that his musical talents, and it makes for an endlessly fascinating, moving show.

It was a quiet audience in the Shoe Wednesday night, but quiet in a respectful, intense sort of way. Even the usual gaggle of talkers at the back of the room were dead silent and intent on listening to every word and every note. He commented on it at one point from the stage, and someone yelled back that the crowd was mesmerized. Mesmerized was exactly the right word.

The set was comprised largely of material from Fate's Right Hand and the new album to be released in August called the Outsiders with a bit of Houston Kid and some older stuff thrown in, as well. From a lesser man, a four song line-up of material from an unreleased album that immediately followed a brand new song that's so new it's not even on that album would be a pretty destructive act of pride. Crowell managed to pull it off flawlessly, and take the audience with him on a ride through that new stuff. I'm expecting something simply outstanding from that album when it comes out, because the songs he showed off in concert were brilliant.

Particularly moving was a song called 'Beautiful Despair' which opens:

Beautiful despair is hearing Dylan when you're drunk at 3 a.m.
Knowing that the chances are
No matter what, you'll never write like him
Oh brother.

Damn, I was nearly in tears just listening to him sing those words. The fact that I remember them even now, having heard them only once is a testament to their strength. They just might be lines that prove themselves false.

I have Fate's Right Hand, but didn't love it all that much after thinking Houston Kid was the best album of the year it was released. I only ever listened to it twice, before dropping it in the CD drawer. But hearing him do those songs that night was like listening to the album for the first time again. It seemed fresher, more interesting, more instense than it ever did on CD. I'll have to pull the disc out and revisit it to see if there's something I missed the first time.

It was a truly outstanding show, with less self-indulgent guitar wankery than you might have expected from a band that consists of a drummer and four guitar players (though more than I might have liked), and every word of every song and every story and every story song was perfectly placed.

This show seemed a bit like a steeplechase. There seemed to always be one more obstacle in the way of getting where we wanted to go.

The first obstacle was opener Martha Wainright - she seemed very slightly confused as to why she was there. Early in the show she was clearly nervous, and it took her a few songs to work past that and get comfortable with the show. Between that nervousness, and some tame, coffee house guitar strumming, the first few songs lacked energy. As her set moved on, though, she worked in a few songs that were more powerful and musically interesting, earning a reaction from more than the few hardcore fans that dotted the audience.

A particularly off moment came when she declared that she had brought only her tamest songs for the show, implying that her work was just too risque for Loretta. True, she left Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole off the set list, and that was probably for the best, but a woman who has been in the music business as long as Loretta, a woman who sang Rated X and The Pill, wasn't likely to be shocked by swear words and mild sexual innuendo.

Intermission came next. It was complete with plugging of Loretta's cookbook from the blander of the two Lynn twins, Peggy.

The next obstacle up was a couple of songs by Loretta's band, The Coal Miners. 6 instrumentalists and 3 back-up vocalists, they sang Honk If You Honky Tonk and one other, despite appearances which would suggest they don't Honk, much less Honky Tonk. They're a fine, skilled band, just not very interesting. All the better to not overshadow the star of the show, I suppose.

One more hurdle was a new country interlude featuring Loretta's daughters, Patsy and Peggy, The Lynns. They did a couple of completely predictable "sassy woman" numbers with Nashvillian polish. A fairly witty song from Patsy about mother daughter relationships was marred by Peggy clowning for the audience in between her backing vocals. It's clear that they learned something from their mother - Patsy, especially, has a gift for storytelling - but they're letting somebody shine off all the interesting angles.

Finally, after more than half the show had already passed, Loretta came out blazing in a white, sparkly gown with more fluffs and flounces than a wedding dress. She sang a few of the classics including Hey Loretta, You Ain't Woman Enough and I Wanna be Free, then paused to tell a few stories and ask for requests from the audience. That was set to be the pattern for the evening - she'd sing a song or two, tell a story or two, sing a request or two.

There was such a clamour for Van Lear Rose that she sang it despite not knowing all the words, gamely covering up for the verses she couldn't remember with some dum-de-dums. A medley of One's on the Way and The Pill proved a perfect and amusing combination. Love is the Foundation was an audience pick and provided a nice quiet moment mid-show.

One more of those hurdles was thrown up when she took a break and left us in the only moderately capable hands of her backup singers for two songs. Peaceful, Easy Feeling and Man of Constant Sorrow proved that they aren't the Eagles, never mind Dan Tyminski. They were, fortunately, more able to meet the challenges of duets with Loretta on Portland, Oregon and Feelin's - though it wasn't so much singing with her as staying out of her way while she sang the hell out of those songs.

She closed with a few more classics - Honky Tonk Girl, Don't Come Home a Drinkin', Blue Kentucky Girl and, finally, of course, (despite earlier promises to leave her 'out there crying on the bus') Coal Miner's Daughter.

Without an encore Loretta's portion of her show was just around the hour mark, and a truly electric hour it was. It's just a shame that it needed to be padded out with such mediocre side material.