lenora_rose | (no subject)

Last night was the Heather Dale Band's concert "an Ancient Yule", obviously mostly Christmas and seasonally focused (But not exclusively). Now, I continue to be Heather's raving fan, so take as a given that it was awesome.

- S.J. Tucker was along; as she put it, "I don't often have the chance to run off and be the bass player for someone else's band." She did Ravens in the Library, but it was the only song of hers they performed. OTOH, I noticed some fresh touches to some of the arrangements I suspect to be her influence. Still great to see her like a dangerous wild pixie in the mix, rumbling low on her five-string bass (While Ben Deschamps, the six-foot-plus rocker, got to play the flute...)

- For once this was a concert with a track list handed out ahead of time. Which meant I could look at it an analyze a few oddities. For one, not a thing from her newest album, Fairytale, which normally would be the album to emphasize on a tour. I can see why this might be so with the yule theme, but it still seemed peculiar.

- I still love watching Heather shift in between characters in the songs where it suits (Gawain and the Green Knight, which i still think waaay stronger live than studio).

- For The Road to Santiago/Quem Pastores, the close of the first set, Heather said, on stage, "If any of you would like to do some flamenco moves along the sides, feel free. We'd love to see people dance. Lenora, I'm looking at you." And she was. If she Hadn't name-checked me, with me in the second row and a little conspicuous, I probably would have. After that, I didn't actually ge5t up until halfway through the second set (And that was to stretch my back, which as misbehaving. Though of course stretching did turn into dancing. for the obvious, "of course everyone would dance to that" tracks of Es Ist Ein' Ros' Entsprungen and Good King Wenceslas/Flower Carol. (The encore of Stone Soup was much more obvious, and I did finally get some others up for it, including a 5-6 year old who then wanted to spend a pile of the after concert time either dancing and twirling with me or playing tag.)

- If you're curious about the music, look on youtube under her name plus an Ancient Yule. Someone has up footage from the Madison edition of the concert. (I know the someone and I'm 100% sure she had permission from the artist)

- Finally picked up Fairytale. Still absorbing it, of course. First impression is that it's solid, but no Road to Santiago or Trial of Lancelot (The former is my personal favourite, the latter is often cited by others as theirs.) The same range from hard rock edge to sweet piano as the Gabriel Hounds, plus the charmingly cynical poppish Pied Piper. A couple of tracks I wanted to see her liner notes for, but there are none on the album, and the ones I recall managing to find for other albums on her site seem to be not there. I did note that Fairytale and Storybook, though they sound very different are lyrically both on the theme of "This romance doesn't fit the things I was told". Not quite repeating itself, but they could almost be the opposite sides of the same breaking/broken relationship.