Melissa Ferrick
Oct 13th - Crocodile Cafe

Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians
Oct 19th - Neumo's

Shawn Colvin
Oct 30th - Moore Theatre

Indigo Girls
Nov 5th - McCaw Hall

Imogen Heap
Dec 6th - Showbox Theatre

Sat Jun 17: Jill Sobule at the Tractor Tavern

I was never able to get tickets for Indigo Girls on Sat July 2nd thanks to a complete lack of online advertising or ticket sales. Apparently the Woodland Park Zoo management is only catering to people with memberships and yupies who pay way too much for groceries at Metropolitan Markets.

Looks like Melissa Ferrick will be back on the west coast sometime in October based on a tentative Portland show date. She had to cancel her summer dates here for medical reasons.

Melissa Ferrick had to cancel her Seattle May 6th show due to medical issues. Details on her site

Ani DiFranco is playing Seattle August 18th as part of the Concerts at Marymoor series, which is apparently stepping in to cover the cancelled Summer Concert series this year. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 9a (they are of course already in presale)

Indigo Girls are playing Seattle July 2nd at the Woodland Park Zoo. Tickets are not on sale just yet.

Anna Nalick: April 6th in Seattle at Tractor Tavern, April 7th in Portland

Melissa Ferrick: May 6th in Seattle at Crocodile Cafe, May 7th in Portland

"her hands are in the air again
stripped of pride
she was waiting for a sign to be let in
she tried to stop a train for him
without shoes
and he was so amused, amused

she needs a reason to parade on
she needs a new road to pave
she needs a reason to parade on
it's wearing her outsides thin
there's someone there to save

you wonder why she gives and gives
till it burns
and there is nothing he can give her in return
she'll live and die by make-believe
her frozen heart
well he can't wait around while she gets blown apart

she needs a reason to parade on
she needs a new road to pave
she needs a reason to parade on
it's wearing her outsides thin
there's someone there to save

the distance won't know which way you should go
'cause we are not built so we can float
we are what we are
but that seems so far
parting the red sea is easier, easier

it's time to introduce herself
she's dethroned
like some lonesome dusty book upon his shelf

she needs a reason to parade on
she needs a new road to pave
she needs a reason to parade on
it's wearing her outsides thin
there's someone there to save, oh
and there's nothing I can say"
-- Charlotte Martin, Parade On

Melissa Ferrick is playing Austin @ the Flamingo Cantina this Saturday evening. If you are into acoustic guitar, heart-on-your-shoulder lyrics, and/or wish you had seen Melissa Etheridge in the old days in a small venue, check it out.

Looks like I'll have to wait until summer to see her myself...

Been listening to a new artist, Charlotte Martin, since getting her album for the holidays. Her style is something akin to Kate Bush, including the predilection to melodic (and sometimes cacophonous) wailing notes, but she's also has a quality of voice like Tori Amos. Combine the whole thing with soulful piano and a cover of a Rolling Stones hit and you've got an instant fan. The only downside is that her album is one of those Sony pushed their spyware crap on and she's not big enough to reissue, so if you do buy her album just be sure to disable Autoplay before putting it into your computer. It's a non-issue if you only play it in a CD player--or use a Mac or Linux apparently. Yet another crappy piece of spyware that screws up Windows and makes people think it is Microsoft's fault their system is unstable.

"i opened my eyes
while you were kissing me once more than once
and you looked as sincere as a dog
just as sincere as a dog does,
when it's the food on your lips with which it's in love"
-- parting gift, Fiona Apple


So one of the downsides to my trip back to Austin this past weekend was missing all the local Samhaign events: OLOTEAS and the TERRA Witches' Ball. As a result, I didn't really do much to celebrate the sabot. I had some candy by my door at work for the Microsoft kid Trick or Treaters coming by, but that was about it. Spent the evening doing bills, catching up on recorded TV, and eating in.

I picked up Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine. I'm still on my first listen, so we'll see if it grows on me like When the Pawn. I loved Tidal on the first listen, but Anna Nalick sounds more like that first album than this one so far. Since I'll be seeing her live in a few weeks, maybe I should give this album a few listens :>

Been a good week and weekend.

Work is productive, spending much of the week dealing with various on-going projects and a few 'fires'. Lots of gaming continued this past week, often with me hosting. Should quiet down for the next few weeks until my trip to GenCon SoCal in mid-November. OryCon is in two weeks, which should be an enjoyable "Relax-A-Con" hanging out with loree, jeliza, drakemonger, rubylou, and others. Following some on-going special law of quantum mechanics, royalbananafish will be in Seattle that weekend.

jeliza and I managed a date Saturday night. As an aside, Canyons might claim to be southwestern, but we couldn't find anything that really qualified as spicy. Decently cooked food, just kind of bland.

As is often the case, I tend to have kinda bizarre and vivid dreams. This morning I woke up from a dream that started off as your usual 'stuck back in high school, the school building is of a bizarre architecture, and you are late for class' thing. It then morphed into a John Cusak flick based on some recent events in my life. It's never a good sign when your subconscious decides Cusak is the ideal actor to play you in a movie. A friend suggested that maybe the subconscious was being clever in that Cuask films often involve him beating himself up over some crazy girl who dumped him and ultimately finding a more sane girl as his true love. One could only hope. All I can really say is, "I want my two dollars!"

Long time readers of my journal might remember that I gave a big recommendation for Julie Larson, a local Oregon singer, a few years back. She was going to come out with a third album at the time, but it never materialized. Turns out she made it, but never got it released due to the arrival of twins. She is, however, selling me a few copies direct. Sweet!

Had a good time at the Melissa Ferrick concert last night at The Triple Door. The venue is actually a 'dinner theater' setup sharing a kitchen with Wild Ginger, but had a surprisingly good sound-system. Since I was going on my own, I was sat against the stage so I had a great view.

The opening act was a cute folkie girl Natalia Zukerman. She was a bit like a more subdued Ani DiFranco with a blue grass sound, but she played a few numbers with a slide guitar and did horn sounds by mouth. It was cool. Actually, on the first number Melissa herself played an actual horn.

Various highlights of the set included of course drive, willing to wait, burn this guitar, the stranger, all for me, everything i need, win 'em over, i will arrive, mercy, will you be the one, freedom, her 'I broke my guitar string' random made-up song, her usual 'I broke another guitar string but this time not the B string so I'll do Ani's untouchable face', a number of songs from her most recent album The Other Side, and a few new ones.

Lots of on-stage amusing babble, and great energy from Melissa as usual. She's working on a new album, and I really liked the new songs. She's also apparently releasing an autobiographical DVD, which should be quite interesting. Natalia did some harmony backup singing and slide guitar on a few of Melissa's songs, which worked really well. She's great solo acoustic, but it was a nice change.

At the end of the show, the crowd was of course expecting the usual long, drawn-out performance of Drive. She wrote the song five years ago, and had been playing almost every day since. She explained that she hadn't played it for much of this tour because she felt like she had been hating the song and the expectation to play it--for those that don't know, it has more or less become a lesbian anthem. But, she was going to have to play it in Vancouver the following night and felt out of practice. This was the first time here in Seattle I've seen her just play the song without trying to make fun of it or find other ways to entertain herself through it, which gave it a power and honesty that I've not seen live before.

All in all, Melissa was her usual dynamic powerhouse of energy and emotion, but she seemed to be having fun. Sometimes she seems like such a raw nerve on stage, that it is hard to not to feel just how much suffering she puts herself through. Then again, that's where all these great, painful songs come from. Still, it is nice to know she isn't always a mess.