"Jolie Good Time"

Zing!

Having survived my crazy trip in the big yellow helicopter this week, I decided to celebrate my new lease on life with a night out and some warbled, depressing, pretty songs about brutality and death - Jolie Holland, Justin Rutledge and Dan Ledwell at the "In The Dead Of Winter" festival. The show venue was the round church in the north end, which had some of the worst sight lines imaginable - thick posts and railings and podiums obscuring the view from every corner of the room. Regardless, the sound in the church - much like the Hayden show at last year's fest - was spectacular.

Dan Ledwell, who regrettably also plays in In Flight Safety, was the first act. He was charming, shy, and clearly terrified to be playing in the church - understandable as every leg shift, shoe scuff and dry cough echoed throughout the building. Dan finger-picked a few songs on a classical guitar, many of which seemed to have wordless choruses sung in a high falsetto. It was very good, and quite daring considering how terribly terribly wrong it could have gone. Next.

Justin Rutledge. Hokey cheeseball, not worthy of further discussion. Next.

Jolie Holland - the main event. Looking like a brunette farm girl version of Mena Suvari, she took the stage and quickly threw on a black hollow body electric (somebody please confirm) and test-strummed a few dry, crunchy chords (no reverb whatsoever). This sounded very promising after the syrupy acoustic country crap that we just saw. Like Dan, Jolie was clearly nervous to be playing in the church, stopping mid-song several times and asking the crowd to stop taking photos. But the music was great - her voice alternating between a low odd warble and a loud emotional bellow. Some interesting chord progressions, and some 12-bar blues played in unusual strumming patterns. The songs included some covers (most notably a Los Lobos song sung in Spanish), some requests from the crowd (my plea for Mexican Blue was rejected, but acknowledged - eeeeeeeeeeee), a whack of tracks from the new album I have yet to hear, and a neat version of The Littlest Birds.

It was a good night - topped off by a horrible-in-retrospect decision to eat a jalepeno-covered plate of pub nachos and down a pint of draft a half-hour before going to bed. Groan.

EDIT: someone posted some audio/video from the show - http://www.herohill.com/2009/01/idow-recap-jolie-holland-justin.htm