Sunday Night Concert at the Egg


This pic is from a show in Birchmere VA, not the Egg, but it illustrates a point...

We saw Nanci Griffith at the Egg tonight. Nancy plays "folkabily which is folk/country/bluegrass with her band The Blue Moon Orchestra. Now she only had part of the band so she called it the Half Moon Orchestra... She's a funny lady.

These were the tickets I gave Liza for her birthday back on the 1st. We had center section about half way up at the Egg, and there really is not a bad seat in the house. The usual crowd was there, the aged hippy Pete Seger crowd, including our own mini celebrity (at least in his own head) Alan Chartok. (Alan runs the local PBS radio station, is a professor, does political commentary etc etc etc.)

The concert opened with a band called Olabelle who opened with a soulful set of gospel-influenced rock, highlighted by a take of Blind Willie Johnson's "The Soul of a Man". They were very Jam Bandish, with two female singers, a keyboardist, killer guitarist and drummer. They did a bunch of songs from their newly created and not yet released CD, of which we bought a promo copy in the Foyer. Liza had them sign it and everything.

Nanci came on after the intermission and Liza's first question after the first song was, "what's the button on her guitar strap". Well it turns out Nancy pulled out her old Nixon Agnew buttons because she thought it was probably the only time in history where the button was so appropos. This woman is such a lib! And a crackup.

Since none of my readers have any idea of her catalog I won't waste bandwidth with song titles. Overall it was a very relaxing night of good music. Remember that I love the Dead, and part of that is the love of bluegrass. So it's not a huge stretch for me to go see a singer who has performed at the Grand Old Opry four times. The acoustics at the Egg are pheonomenal as any local knows, so the sound was amazing. Made me wish I did stealth recordings.....

Nanci is a long time veteran of the music business and is of that protest school that has Bob Dylan and Pete Segar. She works with Vietnam Vets and does tons of politically active left leaning performances. She has written or first performed some amazing songs, including being one of the first to record Julie London's Wind Beneath My Wings (Bette Midler mad this famous) Heck she even did an early Rolling Stone song!

Her second encore was Pete Segars "If I had a Hammer" which had everyone singing. The hammer of Justice. Bell of Freedom. Song of love.. Important words in today's world.

So the photo below is not mine, but it clearly shows the Nixon Agnew button. Missing from this picture however was that although she was wearing the same black suit here in Albany, over it, here in Albany, she wore a beautiful Indochinie overcoat-thingy. Very thin, with an amazing tapestry sewn into it. It was quite an outfit.

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