August 07, 2003 - 3:06 AM

A Tiny Dynamo Known as McKeown

I wanted to write about Tuesday before it slipped my mind. Details about Monday's trip to the waterpark will be forthcoming, I promise.

So, Tuesday morning I drove N, LDBL, and DZ to the Burbank Airport as they were all flying to MD (N and LDBL for a Swarthmore friend's wedding later in the week in Philly, DZ since her vacation out here was finished). La la la, boring nothing during the day, and then...

8 PM, I find parking on Fairfax in Hollywood. Stand in line for a few minutes outside of Largo until they let us in, at which point I claim a barstool in the back of the small room, get me a beer and turn and face the stage.

Now, I swear that there is a woman in the line for people with reservations for dinner who's profile I've seen on an online dating service and I've considered responding to, but I don't pursue it. Instead I occasionally glance over at her table and occasionally I think I catch her glancing at me, trying to suss me out. And now i can't find her ad on the website. Oh well.

After an hour of nursing my beer, the opening act comes out. She starts singing and I'm thinking, well, she sounds kinda like Danielle Howle, kinda like Oh Susanna, kinda like Leslie Feist; and something is clicking in my head because i know I've made these same comparisons to something else that I've listened to this year, but I can't quite put my finger on it. There's something familiar about the down-home, folksy, appalachian bluesy music that this Jolie Holland is doing. And then, introducing the third song of her set, she says "My voice might sound familiar to some of you because I was in a group called the Be Good Tanyas" at which point I give a little whoop of recognition. The mystery is solved, the connection made, the epiphany breached. She then performs a solo version of one of the BGT's songs called "The Littlest Birds" which I really really like.

Jolie wraps up her set to much applause and I chat with the man next to me who is a street-team member for Nettwerk America, meaning he goes to shows for the artists on that label and hands out promotional cards and asks people what they like about the acts.

Around 10 PM, Erin McKeown takes the stage with her Trio and proceeds to make me melt. Sometimes concerts are good, but you get restless, wondering how many more songs are left, or when they'll play the songs you like; and sometimes a show knocks your socks off and you don't care how long or short it is, you soak it all up with a stupid grin plastered on your mug because it reaffirms why you still go out and pay absurd amounts of money for parking and tickets and comestibles and deal with lousy acoustics and annoying audiences. Yeah, sometimes you get that perfect show. I think I get one or two of those a year. This was one of those.

So Erin tears the roof off the house; she shimmies, she shakes, she jams, she bakes. Her band is tight. The songs cook. Oh how tasty it all is. Most of the songs are off her new album Grand while a couple are off her old one Distillation. She makes us laugh and sing and clap and shout. We are eating out of the palm of her hand. Even if she places doggy doo in her hand, we will eat it, we are so enamored of her. Luckily, it is not doggy doo in her hand, but an extravagant feast of witty musical wonders.

Amusing patter is interspersed throughout the set, and she engages the audience in some Q&A time during an instrument swapping. At the end as they get ready to play the third song of the encore, I'm pretty sure that they are going to play "Oh Estelle" but I shout out for it anyways. She laughs and says "ok...for the guy who shouted that, do you think I should teach the other people their part?" To which I reply "They'll pick it up." And my oh my if the crowd doesn't take the cue and shout "Oh Estelle" at the proper points in the song.

Hot diggety dog, what a night. Erin Rules my ass!

Now Listening To : Erin McKeown of course- Grand
Random Thought : Largo is one of the best venues to see live music. They are pretty strict about their no talking/no disturbances policy.

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