Altan, Buddy & Julie

Since the past couple of weeks have been hellacious at work, and now with the holidays going in full gear, I'm behind. So to get un-behind, I'm going to blast out two show reviews in one entry. (Cheater! Cheater! Hah!)

First off, I went and saw Altan on my birthday, November 15th. (Mark your calenders boys and girls!) I only need one word to describe Altan -- fiddle-gasmic!! (Okay, one made-up word.) Altan has two fiddle players, playing in traditional Irish and other Celtic styles, and they are incredible. The hardest part was sitting still in my seat all night. It's cruel to put us Americans in theatre seats and then play all that wonderful Irish dance music. Terrible.

Anyway, I highly recommend Altan to anyone who's interested in fiddle music or Celtic music. I also highly recommend the Stewart Theatre on NCSU campus here in Raleigh. Pinecone, who sponsored this show, hosts several concerts there each year. I had never been before, but I was very impressed. The theatre is fairly small, probably only a few hundred people, and the seating is similar to stadium seating in a movie theatre. There are no bad seats. The Pinecone shows reserve the first couple of rows for Pinecone members, but then the rest is general admission. We were in the fourth row, a little to the side, and I could still see the fingerings of the fiddle players! A very intimate venue, I got a pain thinking of the earlier Pinecone shows that I'd missed -- the Del McCoury Band and Keb Mo. *sigh* Save those under the coulda, woulda, shoulda file.

Speaking of Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda, I missed Peter Case opening for Buddy & Julie Miller at the Cat's Cradle on November 23rd. (Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda is a Peter Case song.) However, I had seen Peter Case before, and to be honest, wasn't all that impressed. He's a good guy, and I enjoyed his song-writing, but I wasn't too heartbroken that I'd missed him. And even at $16 a ticket, Buddy and Julie more than made up for the ticket price!

I haven't heard much from Julie Miller, and I hadn't heard anything from Buddy before, but I've heard a lot about them, especially on Guitartown. They have such an amazing range between the two of them! Buddy has a more polished Steve Earle-like voice, very bluesy and country, but not too hillbilly. His music ranged from full-on Telecaster honky-tonk, loud and distorted, to gentle flat-picked acoustic folk songs. Add Julie's hippy Gospel and oldtime banjo-style songs (not much banjo though, more on that), and you had everything from loud to twang to old-time to Gospel to folk and Blues. Crazy! Very good! And I just love Julie's voice, especially the way she can harmonize!

They played a very upbeat and rocky version of "All My Tears," my favorite song from the Songcatcher soundtrack. It was an interesting and lively version, especially since the soundtrack version is very old-time sounding with banjos and fiddles. Julie wrote it, I think, and she sang it that night in honor of her Uncle Alvis ("Uncle Elvis" she said) who had just passed away two days earlier. I want to mention something here about that -- Julie had songs for several very emotional topics -- her uncle passing away, the girl who had been shot at Columbine for her belief in God, and the Pennsylvania miners who had been trapped this summer. Most of these topics I would have considered too "cutesy", or saccharine, for my tastes. However, Julie, with her "hippy Gospel" sensibilities, was so genuine, I just couldn't doubt her sincerity, and really empathized with her. That's a rare, rare musician who can take a bunch of drunks in a smelly, smoky barroom and make us dance and then cry, drink and then cry, and then laugh lustily and then cry. Good, good show.

My one complaint is one I've had a lot recently, even at the Porter Hall, TN and Two Dollar Pistols show -- everyone seems to have stripped down to just guitars. If you listen to recordings from all these artists, you'll hear steel guitars, mandolins, banjos, and fiddles, as well as electric and acoustic guitars. Go to a show, however, and you'll hear only the basic rock quartet (drums, bass, and two guitars, usually one electric and one acoustic). All these bands, though, have consistently amazed me with the range they can get out of such a narrow instrument base. However, I would like to a hear a fuller sound, and I would like to see more fiddlers, just for my own edification. Are there just no banjo and fiddler players around? Why can't these bands find any to join them?