Becka Hasselbrok played a couple jazzy tunes, including one about not falling in love (and then falling in love).
A guy named Chris played a couple bossa tunes including a cover of One Note Samba, with a real nice guitar solo.
John Telethan played a couple tunes at the piano including "All Hail..." and "Drivin Around."
Andy Junk told some stories. Well first, he read a really funny letter to the fake Andy Junk, a guy who got the Andy Junk name on MySpace. Then he read a story about a cute little dog that eats fingers.
Rebecca Seatle was back, with a Cuban guitar and a couple nice songs, including a new one in which she says she wants to live in a red brick house.
Mr. Patrick told a story about a friend of his he helps care for. Brook started his song standing on a chair and played without amplification (I wish there was more of that at Sidewalk). Jon Berger performed and seemed to have an emotional run-in with a mic stand.
Around that time I started getting ready for the Sidewalk Talk show with Lach. I never come out of these things feeling totally satisfied, but I thought the conversation went pretty well. As someone said to me, it really helps to have people in these things who actually like to talk. I thought the conversation was interesting and I wish we'd had more time. We were just getting into talking about Lach's album The Calm Before and his songwriting in general when we had to finish up. We did talk a fair amount about the early days of antifolk. I also asked Lach why he thought the music he and his friends were playing in those days needed a name, and I got quite an earful from him about that. An interesting topic, I think.
.....more to come....
I caught the tail end of Lola...well the tail end of her performance--of song accompanied by Isaac. STill haven't quite caught a complete set of hers.
Tracey Shapiro sang the bartender song, a funny, kind of satirical number about life as a bartender. (Emily Moment has a songs with somewhat similar themes although a different tone).
It was nice to see Deborah T. on stage again. She sang "all the people I love are bad people." Deborah T. has been low on the radar screen lately, but I think she is one of Sidewalk's underrated songwriters.
Learn Burn and Build was up, then Colin with "Stains Mercurochrome."
Sister Monk comprised a guy on acoustic guitar, a woman who sang and played percussion (djembe and some sort of shaker thing on her foot), and a guy on bass. They had a nice, funky kind of sound that really gelled at times (even though the song was a little long). They'd definitely worked out some very specific arrangements of the tune. The song had a refrain that went something like "can you touch a human life without causing strife." It will be interesting to see if these folks keep coming back and what the rest of their repertoire is like.
Francois sang Where Does the Circle End.
I think I got this right: One of the members of the group The Relatives, Katie Vogel, sang a cover of "All of Me." Check out The Relatives MySpace. Some cool old timey stuff.
MIke Connelly sang two bluesy tunes.
Next up was 3 G Crew who did a long rap tune. Maybe this is showing my own ignorance, but I can't figure out if these guys are serious about what they're doing or if their performance is all some sort of super satiric joke. A bit mistifying.
Adam Young sang Undertow, a song for a friend who had died.
Master Lee did a great piece about finding yourself. It looked at how people separate from themselves and then slowly, slowly come to an understanding of who they really are. He had something in there about how American culture is set up to keep people from becoming whole. I agree. Much of our commercialized society keeps people from unifying their personalities. Oh, you know, I don't want to use this site to rant about things like this, but it was nice to hear Master Lee talk about some stuff that I identified with and a good way to end the night.
See you next Monday.
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