At 47, twin brothers Craig and Charlie Reid, aka The Proclaimers, show little loss of energy or voice after a career in which their high-powered, intertwining vocals and thick Scottish burrs have delighted fans.
Thursday night they played the Iron Horse in Northampton Mass for the second time. Their last show was way back in 1997.
Thursday the Reids played all the "hits" (only one of which was truly a hit on these shores). They began with my favorite, "Letter From America," and ended with everybody's favorite, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)." In between they sang the two upcoming singles from their forthcoming album. They sang "I'm On My Way," which found new life in the Shrek soundtrack, and they performed such gems as "Sunshine on Leith" and "Cap in Hand."
As a solo act, the duo don't have a broad dynamic range. What makes them great, and inevitably interesting, is the intensity and power of every song. But with only a strummed acoustic, the vocal onslaught leaves one wishing for some relief.
We sat at the table with Juliana, from San Jose, who may be the biggest Proclaimers fan. Just 23, she's seen dozens of Proclaimer shows, and intends to cover several on this seven date swing.
Listening, last night, to Randy Newman cruise through his, ahem, "hits," it was clear that seated before me on the stage of the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA, was a major American talent.
As he said last night, his recent creative period has only produced six song in nine years, (or was it nine songs in six years), but those songs are undeniably original Randy Newman songs. The kind of songs that no one else could, or would write, and precious few could perform.
At 64, Newman's voice has neither mellowed gracefully, nor disintegrated. He can still barely wander outside of the narrow mid-range where his croak of a voice feels comfortable, and when he does, well, the results are unpredictable. But that is at the essence of his charm - to write perfectly singable songs that he doesn't really sing. It's not surprising that some of his songs are a bit more like a musical conversation than an aria.
He began with "It's Money That I Love," and didn't look back for half an hour as he explored his oeuvre, and acknowledged the smattering of applause at the start of well-known, well-polished and well-loved Newman classics like "Short People," and "Marie."
He sampled generously from his latest effort, "Harps and Angels," singing about potholes on memory lane, and warnings to the boys about when they lay you on the table.
Newman was having a bit of difficulty with the Steinway keyboard, or was it his fingers rebelling after a few nights on the road at joints like Carnegie Hall or Boston's Symphony Hall. At midpoint in "My Life Is Good" Newman's digits seemed to wander onto an errant chord and he announced, "Are there any doctors out there? I think I just had a small stroke." But his fingers wandered astray a half a dozen times during the evening leaving Newman to admit, in one of his last numbers, "God, I'm playing so shitty tonight."
It was a minor distraction in an evening where Newman's stories were as hilarious as ever, his songs, as simple and beautifully expressed as they are, served to skewer our notions of power, comfort and fame, or in a half dozen common words, tore to the heart of a complex emotion.
Towards the end of the show, he actually asked for requests. The room was suddenly alive with titles from throughout his career as he launched into "I Love LA." As he turned toward the keyboard for the first chords of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today," someone shouted out for the obscure, "My Little Buttercup," which Newman began to play. Then he lamented, "Aw, I've gone and ruined the mood," as he returned to the brilliant classic of loneliness and desperation.
As you might have read earlier, Billy Bragg will not, I repeat, will not appear on WWUH on Thursday as promised earlier.
Seems tickets have not been selling as briskly as hoped (I think it's the Red Sox AL playoff effect) and Bragg will hurry from NYC to Northampton to appear at the site of Northampton Box Office and give an "impromptu" concert in hopes of selling some more tickets. The short concert, and interview (scheduled exactly when his WWUH interview would have been conducted), will appear on Northampton's "the river" radio station WRSI.
This is a rather rare appearance for Bragg, and if you've seen him, you know he shouldn't be missed. If you haven't, he's one of those performers whom you'd like to count as friend after seeing a show.
Eric Danton, music critic of the Hartford Courant, interviewed Bragg by phone last week and part of that interview is available on his blog. The remainder will appear in the Courant on Thursday.
For my part, I'll be playing a hell of a lot of Billy Bragg on today's show.
This all-woman string band brings a new energy to traditional old-timey, bluegrass and Appalachian music, and weave a traditional approach into their original songs. Uncle Earl has already sprung a young superstar, Abigail Washburn, onto the scene. The Devil Makes Three takes old music from many decades and spins them into an appealing new sound.
Rock Yer Socks is injecting new music energy into a decades-old musical dormancy in Hartford. This not-for-profit production company is unconcerned with musical labels, or with their audience's ability to move readily from punk to folk. As a result, they have brought some of the most adventurous billings to Hartford in the past two years. This appears to be a night of retro-ragamuffin and insurgent country music. And it sounds like fun.
Crowded House officially kicked-off their US reunion tour in Northampton Massachusetts last night, and the evening was magic.
The band began the show with Recurring Dream, and performed many songs from the new album, which also provided the elements to the stage set, including, as Nick Seymour explained, "the tree of life." The band seemed in good spirits, jumping from the new albums to various points in their recorded history. They sang, amoung others, When You Come, Private Universe, (for Frank) Not the Girl You Think You Are, Fall At Your Feet and Pineapple Head. Neil Finn urged the crowd to sing the first verse and chorus of "Don't Dream It's Over," and we did, with appreciable volume and energy. Finn demurred a request for "Catherine Wheels" as "impossible, mate" then proceeded to sing most of the song with Mark Hart providing harmony, and atmosphere on the lap steel. Seymour was totally animated throughout the show, bouncing around the stage as effectively in the good old days. Hart was remarkable, and serious. Matt Sherrod proved remarkably able to keep up with this wonderful band, and Elroy Finn kept rhythm on guitar. Neil seemed happy to be singing with the boys again. So happy, in fact, that at one point the band launched into a version of "Rock the Boat" by the Hues Corporation, and dropped a bit of the Kinks, "Sunny Afternoon" into another song.
Although Liam Finn was scheduled to open the show, instead Philip Price and Flora Reed of Winterpills did a beautiful acoustic set, which was well received by the audience.
Crowded House closed the show in the second encore with "Better Be Home Soon," a fitting farewell to the crowd and to Elroy who was heading home to university.
