LOCATION: Luther's Blue's, Madison, WI
LINEUP: Karin, Linford, Will Sayler, Paul Moak, Rick Plant
REVIEW BY: SoulQuest7
The club in Madison, Luthers Blues, was much nicer than Shubas in Chicago in that it was roomier, had plenty of seats, and better sound. Luthers seemed to hold a lot more people, and all the seats were taken. It seems surprising given that Madison is still just town of 250,000 people plus the University of Wisconsin college students, while Chicago is a huge metropolis. Susan Enan: If You're Feeling Low; Skin Bone and Silicon; Bring on the Wonder; Gold Dust; Moonlight OVER THE RHINE: 1. Spinning The sitar on this one is simply being played through an echo devise; but the moodiness of the song does start the show off on a compelling note. 2. Bothered As in Chicago, the drums were still too loud, but I love this song so much I bolted from my perfect seat and moved to stand center stage to swoon along with Karin's sublime vocals. It was only later that I realized I had left my shoes behind and was wearing just my socks! I kept expecting a bouncer to tell me that it was a safety hazard. 3. Show Me 4. Jesus In New Orleans This song replaced "Long Lost Brother." You know something, it just occurred to me where I heard a song with a similar theme to "The last time I saw Jesus/ I was drinking bloody marys in the South/ In a barroom in New Orleans/ Rinsing out the bad taste in my mouth." The gay songwriter Jallen Rix wrote a song called "Down at Stonewall" where he sings about seeing Jesus at the Stonewall bar "one drink short of losing respect." The Stonewall bar is famous in gay history as the sight of the 1969 riots where gays being arrested literally fought the police. This riot ended a lot of the arrests and legal harassment of gays gathering in bars in New York City and is seen as the birth of the modern day gay liberation movement. Rix's vision is in seeing Jesus amongst the despised and oppressed: "I saw Jesus down at Stonewall/ that's the place we finally met/ I saw Jesus down at Stonewall/ Love can grow where you least expect." This reminds me of Detweiler's lyric, "But when I least expect it/ Here and there I see my savior's face/ He's still my favorite loser/ Falling for the entire human race." Other than that, the difference is that Detweiler's Jesus is more a metaphysical counselor, while Rix sees him as one struggling against injustice, even if it is injustice perpetuated by the church itself (hence, Rix's Jesus is deliberately absent from church). Even here we might find some common ground, as Detweiler states "Ain't it crazy/ How we put to death the ones we need the most," bringing to light the notion that religious institutions did not or could not protect Jesus from injustice, or may have been on the wrong side of the conflict. Rix writes of Jesus like this: "Now I only see him down there/ he always draws me near/ When I ask him why he stays/ He says 'there's too much hate between the sacred and the queer'/ I saw Jesus down at Stonewall..." These songs are not in the same context, but they are surprisingly similar in the way they envision seeing Jesus in the place most would consider taboo-- a bar. 5. She 6. Nobody Number One 7. Suitcase 8. Lifelong Fling 9. Ain't No Sunshine (1970s soul classic by Bill Withers) 10. Ohio A few songs before this one, Linford had invited us to each pick a picture painted by a classroom of students who had drawn them while listening to OHIO. He placed them at the edge of the stage. I used the exiting of the rest of the band for this song to mosey over to the stack of abstract juvenilia. While Karin sang her beautifully song solo, I casually went through the stack of 8-year-old abstract expressionism until I came across one drawn by a child who simply wrote in multi-colours "I LOVE YOUR MUSIC, xoxoxoox" and then drew a bright pink heart. Needless to say, I thought, "this is the one for me!" I've been a music fanatic since I first saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964 and since then have never stopped falling in love with music. I guess that's why one of the first songs to hook me on Ohio was "Bothered,": "Your fire burns me like a favorite song..." Music can definitely be a love drug. 11. B.P.D. 12. All I Need Is Everything 13. The World Can Wait, OK, I know I'm not crazy now, cuz the drums were so loud that even Karin had to hold her ear to hear herself. It was a rocking track, but I was afraid the guitarist was going to slam his head into the drummer's plastic partition, so dramatic was his headbanging routine. Relax, Paul, it's just a solo. 14. When I Go 15. Cruel and Pretty I had again started sifting through the stack of children's paintings during this song, and it suddenly occurred to me for the first time that I was hearing a song about a person dying and leaving his body (duh, that lyrics aren't too obvious). Just as Karin was singing "meet me in the backstreets of heaven" I came across an abstract splatter painting that had a thick golden line winding through it-- "this is the backstreets of heaven" I thought. 16. Changes Come Show over. Tilt.