Well, I think I'm awake now, though I'm probably on my way to bed again soon. :) We got home at 5:30 this morning from our Northampton odyssey to see The Nields at their hometown venue, the Iron Horse Music Hall. There was a huge snowstorm raging outside and the drive home was hell, but man, was it ever worth it.
June Rich opened -- they are a funky, bluesy, rocking band from Philadelphia who have played with The Nields quite a bit this year. I first saw them opening for Patty Larkin at the Bottom Line in NYC a couple months ago, and was blown away. They didn't disappoint this time, either. I got to buy their CD this time, but I haven't listened to it yet. I had a chance to talk to the two singers afterwards, and they were both really nice people. I'm sure I'll be seeing them play again. :)
For the first show, The Nields presented a wonderful mix of old and new stuff, as well as three of the new songs ("Cool In The Backseat", "Taxi Girl", and "Einstein's Daughter"). I was pleasantly surprised to hear "All My Pretty Horses", which Katryna dedicated to her and Nerissa's mom, who was in the audience.
By far the highlight of the set was the segment dedicated to "The first songs we ever wrote", which was a scream. Dave Chalfant's first song was a three-riff, paint-peeling electric guitar piece called "Blastoff" (David N. played bass on this, which was cute). David N.'s first song was part of a rock opera he wrote for a class when he was a senior in high school, based on Mary Renault's The Bull From The Sea, a historical novel about the story of Theseus. The song was called "I Fight The Bull&. Next came a short demonstration of the beat Dave Hower used to practice on his snare drum and cymbal for hours on end until his parents couldn't take it any more and bought him the rest of the kit. Nerissa's first song, which she wrote when she was 13 was called "Don't Say Goodbye", and apart from rather pedestrian lyrics (hey, she was only 13), it was a pretty good jangly pop song. Finally, Katryna presented the first bit she ever contributed to a song, from the time-honored Nields classic, "Long Island Lolita" (a.k.a. "Mary Jo Buttafuoco's response to Amy Fisher"):
Hey hey hey, why why why
If she was so mad, she could've just thrown a pie
Hey hey hey, pain pain pain
Long Island Lolita put a hole in my brain
Believe it or not I had almost forgotten about this song, and when they played this part I was just about on the floor. (I got the impression there weren't many people in attendance who had also heard the whole thing.) I called out for them to finish it, but Nerissa sheepishly admitted that that part is all they can remember.
It was a wonderfully energetic set, at the end of which (literally -- the final bars of the encore hadn't quite faded away) the power went out. Perfect timing. We had tickets for the second show, so we hung around waiting to see what was going to happen. The power was out in all of downtown Northampton, and it was blizzarding heavy, wet snow at the rate of more than an inch an hour, so it didn't look like it was going to come back on any time soon. People had been lining up for the second show since just after The Nields took the stage for the early set, and Eric (Iron Horse owner and Nields' business manager) was determined that the show would go on, as long as the performers were into it. The members of June Rich were worried about their drive back home to Philly (a sentiment with which I empathized wholeheartedly), but they agreed to do a short, entirely acoustic set. So the audience for the late show was ushered in, more candles were set out on the tables and around the stage, and the real magic of the night began.
While Dave Chalfant went back to the house to fetch more acoustic guitars and hand drums and such, June Rich cobbled together an unplugged, unamplified set of 5 songs, only two of which were from their earlier show. Their bassist sat in back and played air bass the entire time, poor guy. :) At the end they apologized to The Nields for cutting out on them, but they all said they had had a really good time. The audience was really into them, too.
Then Patty Romanoff, Tour Manager Extraordinaire rearranged the stage for more candle illumination, and The Nields reappeared. Literally with the strumming of the first note of "(Just Like) Christopher Columbus", the power came back on. However it was still flickering, and Eric said he didn't want to turn on the amps and run the risk of a power surge frying the entire sound system. So, to the great pleasure of those in attendance the lights were turned back off, and they started again.
Katryna was afraid her voice wouldn't hold up (indeed the only critical comment I could make about the first show was that both she and Nerissa desperately need a vacation to rest their voices), so the rest of the band adjusted their volume so she could be heard, and Nerissa encouraged the audience to sing along. It was beyond cool to hear an entire room full of people singing harmony on songs like "Christopher Columbus", "James", and "Best Black Dress". Unfettered by the constraints of amp wires and microphone stands, the entire band was having the time of their lives. On "Happy Ever After Afternoon", where David N. usually runs into the audience between harmonica solos the entire band went roaming; Katryna climbed up a pole on the side of the stage, Nerissa came around to stand right behind my chair; and I think Dave C. went somewhere down on the floor as well. David N. ended up in the loft at the table of two fans named Amy and Elizabeth. :) I was glad when they started on "Boys Will Be Boys", however, since I was desperately in need of a bathroom break (sorry, but David Nields should NOT be allowed to sing). A cool thing did happen at the end of the song, though: David told the usual story a woman told him after hearing the song, about her rescue from sexual assault by a group of 12-year-old boys who chased off and helped apprehend her attacker, and when he was done, a voice from the loft called out, "He got nine years!" It was the woman who had told him the story, and her presence obviously touched the band. The entire room broke into applause. It was a moving moment.
The set also featured my first hearing of "Nebraska", which is as wonderful as I'd been led to believe by postings here and elsewhere. I'm sure every time I hear it from now on, I'll be reminded of the snowy night in Northampton where I heard it first, unamplified and unlit. They ended the set with a fun version of "Gotta Get Over Greta", and came back with "May The Circle Be Unbroken" for an encore. The audience wouldn't let them leave though, and Nerissa, Katryna, and Dave H. came back to do a Medieval summer song, a cappella save for some percussion, that was positively breathtaking. (Too bad a lot of people had to miss it, since the announcement came from outside right as they were getting ready to start singing that there was a line of tow trucks outside waiting to tow all the cars off the street because of the snow emergency.) One disappointment was Katryna's revelation that she'd translated the entire "Alfred Hitchcock" song into French, and she was sad the power was out because she really wanted to sing it that way. (That would have been beyond surreal.) Still, as I told David N. on my way out, I've lost count of how many times I've seen The Nields perform live over the past 4 or so years, but that show was by far the best of the lot.
Many of the people I know wonder why music means as much to me as it does -- if I could somehow bottle that night's experience up an give them a sample, maybe I'd be able to explain it better. As I sat there, surrounded by friends and a couple hundred other Nields fans, warm and lit by flickering candlelight and watching the snow fall furiously outside while a group of people fronted by two beautiful harmonizing voices made wonderful soft music just a few feet in front of me, I thought This is it, this is why I spend so much of my time and money traveling all over the Northeast to experience music performed live. It just doesn't get any better than this.
Of course, it took us over three hours just to drive to New Haven, but then the snow turned to rain and the roads cleared completely, and it was smooth sailing from there. There was never any doubt that the entire trip had definitely been worth it. :)
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