Sunday, September 21, 2008

Leader of the choir

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.  When I bought the tickets to see Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson at the Birchmere, I didn’t realize that concert would be the one after which all other concerts would pale in comparison.  I guess I thought I’d have more time…

But from the moment the first chord was struck, that fate was sealed.  Goosebumps crawled from my wrists to my shoulders, never shrinking until the lights came on, signaling us to go.  I’d only seen Kasey perform once before, with her band, and it was more than amazing.  But the combination of this acoustic trio (Kasey, Shane, and her dad Bill Chambers) and the intimate atmosphere of the Birchmere tipped the scales.  The perfect harmonies echoed through the room and I thought that if church were anything like this, I’d have found my religion.  Kasey kept reminding the audience that she wanted us to feel like we were sitting in their lounge room, at a family gathering.  Gatherings in my family usually involve a lot of tomato sauce and heartburn, so her invitation was a nice change of pace.

If you haven’t heard Kasey sing, you’re missing out on one of the great female voices of our generation.  Few artists have grabbed me as quickly as Kasey Chambers.  Her voice is uniquely powerful, every note and word dripping with raw emotion.  In one of her many engaging in-concert yarns, she tells the story of her favorite song on the new album, Rattlin’ Bones.  She informed Shane, who wrote the song, that the only way it could be made better is if she sang it.  That could be true of any song ever written.

Kasey’s exuberance is yin to Shane’s calm, introverted yang, and the blend of their voices makes it sound like they were meant to make music together since before they were born.  Indeed, Kasey and Shane’s musical compatibility is bound to surface in their son Arlo one day, and the secret track on Rattlin’ Bones proves that it’s already showing itself in Kasey’s son Talon.  She said that every night before Shane tucks Talon into bed, they sing an old country or folk song of Talon’s choice.  One night Talon said he wanted to sing the one about the ants. 

“The ants?”

“Yes, you know.  The ants are my friends.  They’re blowing in the wind.”

At one point I had to wipe away tears of laughter when Kasey mentioned that she and Shane had gotten into one of those marital arguments backstage before the show.  Like most couples, they’d agreed on the celebrity freebie.  The rules were simple - one celebrity that you could hook up with and the other person couldn’t say anything about it.  Their only caveat was that it couldn’t be an Australian celebrity.  Everyone giggled when Kasey revealed that her celebrity freebie was Jerry Seinfeld.  Shane seemed to have no problem whatsoever with that choice.  And Kasey had no problem with Shane’s either - Sheryl Crow - until Sheryl Crow’s management called to see if Shane would be the opening act on her Australian tour.  Shane claimed the exercise was rather pointless if you could change the rules whenever you wanted, but it seemed that the female population of the audience agreed with Kasey that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Even if we didn’t understand her choice of Jerry Seinfeld. 

Tears sprang to my eyes one more time during the show, and this time, I wasn’t laughing.  Kasey decided to try out her song The Captain on piano for the first time, even though she wasn’t really sure if it would work on piano.  Shane moved from his stool to the bench and plunked down the first note. As the last note vanished in the air, the audience looked around, well aware that we had witnessed something very special.  The Captain on piano - yeah.  It works.

After the show, we hung around, wondering if Kasey, Shane and Bill would emerge to sign a few autographs, but the Birchmere staff told us it wasn’t going to happen.  We walked to the back door, where Bill and the tour manager were loading instruments into their van.  After a while, we agreed to just walk back and ask if Kasey would mind signing a few autographs, promising not to keep them long because it was late and they were probably tired.  What happened next was something none of us would have predicted, and we almost still don’t believe it.

Kasey, Shane and Bill walked out, all smiles.  Tony made a beeline for Shane to talk about his music while I thanked Bill profusely for stopping to sign a few of our things.  He recognized me from my seat at one of the front tables and said, “Eh, you had a nice seat there, didn’t you!?!” I said yes, certain now of the many times during the show I thought Bill caught me smiling up at the stage, and smiling back.  He took a photo with us and I moved over to talk with Kasey. 

I asked her to please come back this way soon and she reiterated that this show was the best one they’d played in America to date.  I told her my face hurt from smiling so much over the last couple of hours.  She agreed, and was genuinely excited about this show, you could tell.  And she agreed that Sheryl Crow really has nothing on her.  Heh.  Kasey, Shane and Bill were more than happy to stand for photos with us and sign our CDs.  Although I didn’t feel so bad about quasi-stalking them for autographs considering they quasi-stalked Arlo Guthrie in a hotel lobby so they could stick their baby in his arms and get a picture of Guthrie with his namesake.  I love them.

Still, we didn’t want to monopolize them any longer, so I walked over to Bill to thank him again for taking this time for us.  He grabbed me in a huge bear hug and thanked us for being such a great audience.  As her tour manager tried to hustle us away, Kasey ignored him, too busy sharing kid photos with Tony’s brother John to pay attention.  Every artist should have the graciousness and class of these folks.

Even if we hadn’t had this very nice encounter with Kasey, Shane and Bill, the concert would stand on its own legs.  I can’t imagine that anything will ever come close to this show. 

It’s my monkey on a wire.