The Association – The Birchmere, 2/20/2018

I bought the first two Association albums when I was in junior high (and subsequently re-bought them on CD), and was impressed that all of the tracks held up well over the years, not just the hit singles. I had never seen them live, and almost didn’t get to this year; I had a ticket for their sold-out Saturday night show at the Rams Head in Annapolis a couple days earlier, but the roads weren’t in good shape and I decided that chancing what would have been a 2-hour round trip in ideal weather was more than I wanted to try. (As it turned out, there did wind up being an accident on my route.) Fortunately I was able to get a ticket for their show 3 days later at the Birchmere. The rush hour traffic to Alexandria was lighter than usual, so I got there shortly after 4:00, was the 6^th “group” in line, and wound up at table 317 – close to the center, one of the tables that are parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider.

 

The current 6-man lineup includes 2 original members, the son of another original member, and the brother of a guy who joined the group in 1967. The first half of the 95-minute show was good but not spectacular – the opening “Windy” had a little too much percussion for me, and I wasn’t all that fond of their reworked version of “Walk Away Renée” – but things picked up when they got to “Six Man Band”, which rocks harder than most of their material. They also got to my two other favorite obscure singles during the second half of the show, “No Fair At All” and “Goodbye Columbus” (for the encore). The main set ended with a bang, starting with Jim Yester’s hilarious “Avocado” (Weird Al’s parody of “Desperado”), continuing with a 7-song medley of hits from The Big Chill, and concluding with “Cherish” and “Along Comes Mary”.

 

Setlist

David Buskin w/ Eryn Michel -- Positano Ristorante Italiano (Bethesda), 2/18/2018

I hadn’t been to a World Folk Music Association Showcase since they moved the location to Bethesda, so this was a good chance to catch up with some friends and try out the restaurant. A huge parking garage a block or so away is free on Sundays, which is a big improvement on the parking situation at their previous venue. Service is always a challenge at sold-out music events; our entrees didn’t arrive until the first set was nearly over, no one offered to refill my iced tea or water all evening, and someone else’s appetizer appeared on my bill. They did do a nice job with the penne al’arrabbiata, however.

 

Eryn Michel accompanied herself on acoustic guitar in a 25-minute opening set that included a couple of originals, in addition to covers of songs done by Emmylou Harris (“Boulder to Birmingham), Maren Morris (“Dear Hate”), and Edith Piaf. After intermission, Buskin (on acoustic guitar and keyboards), with Marshal Rosenberg on percussion, kept the audience entertained for the next 90 minutes. Highlights included a smorgasbord of song fragments rewritten to reflect their writers’ advancing years (“Urge for Going”, “Try to Remember”, “YMCA” turned into “AARP”, etc.), a great rendition of his “All In All” that reminded me of Stephen Bishop at his best, and his classic “Jews Don’t Camp”.