Monday, May 2, 2016

Marti Jones & Don Dixon – Kentlands Arts Barn (Gaithersburg), 4/30/2016


Row 5, Seat 6 (center, about midway back)
 
Sublime 100-minute performance by the 1980s WHFS mainstays in an intimate environment: 10 or 11 rows in the theater with 9-10 seats per row – sort of like a house concert if the house had a theater in the top level. Highlights included “The Night That Otis Died” as the second song (followed by Otis’s own “These Arms Of Mine”), three tracks from Jones’s recent You’re Not The Bossa Me (including the hilarious “Keep It To Yourself”), and some of Marti’s classic radio “hits”, such as “Tourist Town” and “Any Kind Of Lie”. They closed the main set with “Follow You All Over The World” and encored with Dixon’s “I Can Hear The River” (since they referred to the theater as “the best place for music on this side of the river”). Having been married for 28 years, the couple’s between-songs banter also added a lot to the experience; I now know, for instance, that her daughter and her boyfriend live with the two of them and raise snakes.
 
Local singer David Kitchen opened with a 35-minute set, which I might have enjoyed more had his vigorous guitar strumming not overwhelmed both his vocals and the excellent lead guitar work of accompanist Anthony Pirog.

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