Dar and Girlyman

Go check 'em out. Music, pix, whatnot. Much goodness. Dar and Girlyman

Iowa City. To(last)night. My heart is doing that crazy expanded/broken thing. Where I'm so freakin happy and blown wide open and the after effects of goosebumps and all that. And then the ache of feeling I have it somewhere in me to share, and I can't get it out, don't have the skills/knowledge/practice or something. I was trying to explain to Nola, and doing a bad job of it I think, how I got this really clear knowing (this was during the Girlyman part) of how they are just normal people. And that isn't quite right, because they DO have something special and different and amazing. But there's something about the experience, and I've had it before with other singers or performers, about how they are SO human, and I connect with that human-ness in them in some deep and powerful way, and I'm moved with wonder at how they can be so normal and real, and yet totally amazing and unique and powerful at the same time... It's a really good, powerful, mindblowing, life affirming, hope giving experience. Having a really hard time expressing it, but I feel good, and this maybe explains/expresses a fraction of it, so there. Use your imagination. I hope you can/have experience(d) it some time.

Got to actually talk to Dar for a few minutes. Tobi had talked to her at the concert she went to in CA and told her about how her mom had used to go by the code name "Mitzi Avalon" when she went to concerts in the Fillmore, which is where Tobi went to see the concert. And I said I was supposed to say hi from Mitzi Avalon, and Dar totally remembered, and I actually had something to talk to her about. Thanks Tobi!

Yeah, Nola and I went to the Java House for drinks (which is right by the Englert Theater), and we had to walk back past the theater to get to the car, and I was like, "I just want to see if she came out", and sure enough, there she was in a cute black sweater and little pointy shoes. She was really nice, talking to this sweet girl who had written her a letter, and she wrote back, and the girl brought the letter with her. Luckily the girl asked her all sorts of good questions about touring with her son and stuff. And I stood in the background of that group, with my CD out in my hand. Dar noticed, and some other girl came up to her, after that group left, but she pointed to me like she had to talk to me first cuz I had been waiting. yay!

I also got the Girlyman CD, and all 3 of them signed it at intermission. TIGHT harmonies. Very awesome. Thanks Dar for introducing me to new cool people. I discovered Catie Curtis at my first Dar concert, in Boulder. Catie comes through Cedar Rapids sometimes, gotta get myself up there for the next one...

Dar did Iowa for the finale. You knew she had to, and they were all ready for it, because the whole band and Girlyman came out to help do it. She said that since Iowa was probably her most popular song and she plays it around the country and Canada, it's created a lot of interest and people want to come here to see what it is about the land that would inspire someone to do such things as mentioned in the song, and so they expect something somewhat exotic and spiritual, and therefore we have a duty to be that to live up to their expectations, and she knows we have it in us, and cited having bio-diesel, and going to New Pioneer and the Red Avacado that night as examples.

She had a pumpkin and a vase of some sort of flowers, maybe even dried ones? on stage. She said she hoped we liked the harvest decor, it had been on the hospitality table downstairs and they liked it so much they brought it up to the stage. :) And she used that as a segway into talking about the seasons and how we in Iowa know them as more defined than some people in say, Arizona. And how she used to live in New England where they definitely have the seasons, at a time where she was both in a "dig your neighbors out of the driveway" rural-ish type place, but she was also discovering that she liked shopping in SoHo and was amazed that the main street there was named after a season that New Englanders say you have to earn - Spring. :) Love that song. And I love how even though she played several songs I'd heard her play before, none of her introductions or stories were the same. Pretty brilliant. I saw a new songbook too. Better put that on my Christmas list.

Not sure if I'm still buzzing from the white mocha frappe, or the concert, or both, but I better try to get some sleep... so. happy. yum.