Double concert

I went to a concert last night.  I don't have a lot of time to write you about it because I have to leave soon to collect the boys from Wife's place so they can spend the next week with me.  But maybe just a couple lines.

Actually it was a double concert.  The first hour was given over to a group called the Indigo Girls.  I'm sure everybody else has heard of them long since.  Me, I'm pretty sure I had heard the name but I didn't know any of the music.  (There's an argument that I need to get out more.)  Now I liked it -- the songs were melodically complex and interesting, and the energy was good.  I couldn't make out most of the lyrics, but I liked the music.  I also noticed that many of the couples in the audience were both women, so I deduced (what I confirmed this morning by checking the Wikipedia page) that the Indigo Girls must have a large presence in the lesbian community.  Anyway, as I say it was new and pleasant.

But if you think about it, there was something just a little strange in the line-up.  Here, after all, is a Grammy-winning band with 14 published albums.  They have been in the music business for decades.  And yet in effect they were playing as a warm-up band.  Does that strike you as odd?

It did me, but only at the most theoretical level.  Practically, for this particular concert in the here and now, it made total sense.  Because the second artist was Joan Baez.

There is no possible way for me to give an objective review of a Joan Baez concert.  Fifty years ago, when I was an infant or a small child, my parents would put her records on to play when I got upset, ... to soothe me.  I've been in love with her voice my whole life.  So of course I enjoyed the concert.  I'd pay to listen to her sing the Yellow Pages.

There were a few old favorites -- including at least two Bob Dylan covers that I could identify -- but most of her songs were new, or at any rate new to me.  (See my remarks above about needing to get out more.)  There were a couple of technical hiccups: while one of them was being unsnarled she kept us from getting bored by playing a recording (on her phone) of her dog howling along to her vocalization exercises.  And there were a couple of times that she dropped a line and had to hum or catch up.  Also she had trouble hitting high notes consistently; at least twice she had to drop an octave in the middle of a note because she couldn't sustain it.

But her voice itself -- ahhh, her voice was strong and clear and as beautiful as ever.  I had no trouble making out any of her lyrics.  Sometimes she had several people backing her up on piano, drums, bass, and accordion; other times it was just her and her guitar ... and the microphone and the spotlight.  I suppose it's a good thing that I wept only a couple of times and not all the way through the concert.  That could have been distracting.

Then after her set was done there was a third set, where the Indigo Girls came out and they all sang together.  Joan sang their songs; they sang her songs; they traded parts back and forth in an easy flow and hand-off.  And all of a sudden it was time for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", and the lights came up and it was over.  I realized that I wanted some dinner, and that it was late, and that I was cold.  (It was an outdoor concert.)  Time to go home, get a bite to eat, and go to bed.  Long past time, really.

But I could have sat there all night if she had kept singing.