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By Ellen Rawson
The show was sold out; the queue to get in sneaked around the corner of Orange Yard. On a hot summer evening, 275 fans braved their way down to the basement club that is the Borderline. Without any windows and little ventilation, it was going to be a hot night. Thankfully, the music was even hotter.
Clad in a black chemise top and long, stretch velvet skirt, Williams was on and ready for the packed house. Coming on stage carrying her guitar and pint glass of water, she launched right into "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono." Fans cheered as they recognized the song, and the evening was set.
Before going
into the second song, she stopped to announce that it was the last night of
the tour, and it was first time she toured the United Kingdom with a tour manager
and a massage therapist. Yes, there had been an accident backstage just prior
to the show; Williams had gotten a little massage oil on her hands, "and
you're suffering for it," she said with a grin. "But, as you can see,"
she continued, "my chakras are all positive." While the massage oil
might have made
her fingers slide a little on the guitar, it certainly hadn't marred the quality
of her playing.
"I'm changing the order of the set," she announced. "I usually save the singalongs for the end - when you're all drunk," she said, acknowledging the crowd's laughter. However, having heard the audience singing with one of her opening acts, she decided to play "Iowa," one of her popular singalong numbers right away. She decided to explain how she wrote the song to British fans who might not be familiar with the hills of Iowa. Noting the state's voluptuous, bosomy landscape, she instructed the audience to sing "voluptuously," while still wiping massage oil off of her hands.
One thing particularly
noteworthy about seeing Dar Williams perform live is how easily she interacts
with her audience. Towards the end of the song, she let everyone know the last
chorus was approaching. If anyone hadn't yet joined in and wanted to, this was
the last chance. She didn't want anyone to wake up feeling regret the next morning
that he or she hadn't sung along. For further motivation, she assured everyone
"you'll be what we call empowered." As might
be expected, there was hearty accompaniment on that final chorus.
Williams tends
to pay attention to her audience. After peering into the crowd a bit, she seemed
reassured that "you're not too packed." "I don't want a rock
and roll tragedy here," she continued. "I'm sure Mick Jagger never
told anybody to hydrate, but I worry." The audience laughed, knowing that
she probably meant it. She also sometimes felt a little self-conscious when
she would play two songs in a row that were in the same key. "Okay, this
is in the same key," she
admitted. "I'm going to just do some 'Raindrops Keep Falling on Your Head'
just to cleanse your palate."
Her in-between
song patter did tend to focus on the audience's needs or to question herself
in a funny, self-deprecating way. When politely asking people to turn off their
cell phones, she prefaced that request with "unless you're a doctor or
a dealer." After numerous flashbulbs had gone off as she played, instead
of asking people not to take flash photos while she singing, she volunteered
to strike a yoga pose for photographers. While she didn't actually do that,
she did step in front of the microphone and smiled, acknowledging that too many
of the photos taken that evening might be blurry since she tends to move about
a bit on stage. Introducing "Spring
Street," she talked about gentrification, referring to New York's Soho
neighborhood, and how something initially very cool can become too trendy, too
marketable. "Have I gentrified the Soho within?" she asked half-seriously.
She then went on to mock New Age marketing asking it was okay "if I just
buy some aromatherapy candles but skip the transformation part." During
the song, her voice nearly skipped a beat a little, as if she might be tired,
but she recovered it quickly.
While she mostly covered material from her earlier albums, she couldn't but
help slip in some new
material. (She made the audience happy when she informed them that her new CD,
due out in January, would be released in the United Kingdom the same time as
the United States.) "Mercy of the Fallen," she assured us, is not
as negative as it might sound. Inspired by the man who runs a British 'rock
and roll' bed and breakfast, she doesn't mean it to seem that he's sad. She
compared the idea of "fallen" to performer Leonard Cohen, someone
who has "surrendered" and is entirely happy with it and has great
generosity of spirit. The song's melody is attractive. It has
AAA radio quality and would sound even stronger with a band. "The One Who
Knows" is more of a gentle, reflective lullabye, influenced by friends
who in their twenties wanted "to breed superchildren," but now, in
their thirties, they "wanted children that knew that they were loved.'
While emphazing the fact that "Your Fire, Your Soul" definitely is
not autobiographical, she talked about how there are certain things that need
preserving. There are lines about dealing with family, such as "If we make
you suffer, don't you want to find out why?" But then there are the reassuring
lines of "I think your darkest days should have some light this year."
Possessing a catchy chorus, it's a song that should take well to radio play,
particularly with a band in the background.
"I Had
No Right," a song from her most recent studio release, she explained, was
initially written to impress her sister Julie who had given her a book on the
trial of the Consonville Nine, focusing on three brothers doing peace work around
the world. One, she noted, is in jail now for protesting. The song quickly grew
into more than just impressing her sister, as she was able to meet "these
people who are the pulse of the American peace movement." She quickly segued
to Steve Earle's controversial new song, "John Walker's Blues," written
from the point of view of Walker, the "American Taliban," and informed
the audience that "people are trying to get it banned
in the US." She dedicated "I Had No Right" to Earle, one of her
heroes, to audience applause.
As the Borderline's
magic curfew time of 11:00 PM drew near, she went back to playing more old favorites.
The penultimate song, she said, was a request. While Williams often plays the
popular "Christians and Pagan," this time she attempted to make it
geographically specific, filling in English city names for the cities between
which Amber and Jane, the song's protagonists, were traveling. Williams seemed
to have fun playing the part of Amber's uncle, as he tried to explain to his
wife how their niece and her "friend" would be visiting, that the
double bed was just fine for them, and how he needed to go to the health food
store to buy the food they liked, such as
hubris, or was that hummus?
Williams risked breaking the Borderline's usual 11 PM curfew by playing two encores. "When I was a Boy" was dedicated to her best friend from her childhood, who actually was in attendance that night. After mentioning that she'd married since her last visit to London in the autumn, she played the final song of the evening, "We Learned the Sea" for her husband, Michael.
Slippery fingers
and all, Williams finished the evening in fine style. She gave her London fans
a
show to remember, despite the crowded conditions and warm temperatures.
Opening for
Williams were two rather diverse acts. John Watts, advertised as Fischer Z,
was a one-man band with guitar, vocals, and some strong sardonic wit. Jonah
Hex, an up-and-coming indie/folk-style band from Brighton, only had five members
with them that night; the bassist and drummer stayed behind. On stage were Andy
Bramley and Darren Lynch on guitar, Rachel Wickham on oboe (she usually also
plays keyboards), Naomi Bedford on lead vocals, and Donna
Edmead on backing vocals. While there still are some rough bits to work out,
this group shows promise. Bedford and Edmead harmonize nicely together, and
there are some genuinely nice bits of songwriting. For more information visit
www.darwilliams.com
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