Shuffle #128 (January 25, 2020)

The Guitar – They Might Be Giants

One Fine Wire – Colbie Caillat

Coyote – Joni Mitchell

You Ain’t Thinking (About Me) – Sonia Dada

The Land Of Milk And Honey – The Vogues

Food For Songs – Del Amitri

Son Of Your Father – Elton John

Southland In The Springtime – Indigo Girls

Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder

Richard Thompson – The Birchmere, 1/22/2020

Table 319 – the leftmost of the tables that are parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider. Only drawback was that it was extremely difficult to stand for ovations.

 

I’ve said plenty about Richard Thompson on other occasions, so I won’t go into great detail here. There were 22 songs over about 105 minutes. While there was no opening act, Zara Phillips joined him to sing harmony on the final five songs of the main set (“Wall Of Death”, followed by four tunes from his more recent albums) and the last two encores. Hit-wise, the show was very much front-loaded; 6 of his first 7 selections appear on my list of 20 RT favorites.

 

Personal highlights: I Misunderstood (which opened the show), the relatively seldom-performed Walking The Long Miles Home (with a great story about what he’d have to do as a boy in order to stay until the end of shows by The Who), Crocodile Tears, Who Knows Where The Time Goes, plus two great (and apparently new) songs: If I Could Live My Life Again, and When The Saints Rise Out Of Their Graves (the final encore)

 

Setlist

The Hot Sardines – Rams Head On Stage, Annapolis, 1/17/2020

Table 101, Seat 2  

 

A couple friends of mine had recommended this hot-jazz-revival band, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed by their show Friday evening in Annapolis, in front of a large, appreciative crowd. They opened their two-hour set with a lively “I Love Paris” (effectively an homage to frontwoman-singer Elizabeth Bougerol’s native country), closed with “Caravan” (featuring a percussion duet between drummer David Berger and tapper extraordinaire A.C. Lincoln), and encored with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”. Other highlights included Sophie Tucker’s signature song “Some Of These Days”, the Fats Waller classic “Your Feet’s Too Big” (a critical factor in the formation of the band), “Lulu's Back in Town” (with trombonist Todd Londagin showing a few tap moves of his own), and “Here You Are Again” (a charming C&W-flavored tune penned by Bougerol).

 

The band did have a few recent obstacles to overcome, most notably a skiing accident by pianist and co-leader Evan Palazzo. (Bougerol described the incident as Palazzo going “ass over teakettle”.) She also thanked the Rams Head staff for a last-minute trip to Home Depot to purchase a large-enough sheet of plywood for Lincoln to display all of his moves; their initial request for something for someone doing “seated percussion” had yielded a platform that she compared to the size of the venue’s menus.