Another writer's songwriter

Just in case you haven't noticed, I have a few little obsessions--namely musicians. Pretty much, if they're in town, I'm there. (And sometimes when they're out of town, I'm there, but don't call me a groupie. I'm NOT A GROUPIE. Well, not much.)

So, sorry, lonnng concert review coming up. Don't like music? Go away. :-D Music is as entwined with writing for me as anything can be. It's my sixth sense.

If you do like music, hie thee to a Swell Season concert.

Last night, my husband and I (and another 1,000 folks or so) had the opportunity to see The Swell Season in concert at the Palladium Ballroom inside Gilley's in Dallas. This is the duo of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the leads in Once, the indie movie that blew lots of folks out of the water last year--including other contenders for Best Song at the Academy Awards.

I wondered if the experience last night could possibly top the experience of seeing them last year at Stubb's BBQ in Austin. You know, they made the movie, the songs were all ready-made for touring, etc. Could they keep it up? But I suspected they were good for at least another tour after listening to previous CDs by the Frames, Hansard's long-lived band.

I wasn't disappointed. Not by a long shot. First, the Palladium is nearly perfect as long as you don't mind standing--and there are even nooks and crannies for sitting if you don't mind listening and not seeing. Todd and I got there early enough to score a good spot along a rail that lines the general floor, elevated two or three feet above it and topped off by a narrow bar that makes for good leaning and no back aches for the old folks. My son, my friend's son, and a few other students we know were crammed on the floor in front of the stage by choice--there was plenty of room to spread out behind them. They just wanted to be able to, as my son put it, "see him blink, yo." Still, we weren't more than 10 or 15 yards from the stage--plenty close to see any of them blink, if not in great detail.

So, Hansard and Irglova are amazing. Marketa is this diminutive Czech girl (she's barely 20!) with an angelic voice and huge presence without even asserting herself much during the show. Hansard is, in a few words, a singer, a poet, an evangelist, a politician, and a clown. He wore all those hats, and very well, in the course of their 2.5 hour concert.

Glen requested the management to turn off the air conditioning so they could sing their "quietest song," without the blowing overwhelming it, and nobody cared that it got a little stuffy while they sang "Falling Slowly" almost straight out of the gate. (Then the people who only knew one song were happy for the rest of the night, you know.)

He covered Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River when the audience wouldn't let him away without it, perfected since he pulled it off first last year at Stubb's when we were there and someone from the audience yelled it as a request. After he did it last night, he yelled, "This better not show up on YouTube," and the audience responded with a collective, "Yeah, right!"

There were a few more covers--Daniel Johnston's Life in Vain, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks--and the band's violinist, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, played a cut from his newly released solo album, The Blue Shoes (which you can also see here). Haunting, beautiful.

They played old music and new music, from Glen, Marketa, and both together. In an extended encore, Marketa played If you want me (from Once), in her words, "for the women."

Glen introduced Fitzcarraldo, a Frames song, with the idea that if you're passionate about something but have come to a wall that won't come down, stop butting your head against it. Simply turn and walk another direction and you might discover that if you keep walking, you'll eventually come to the other side of the wall--even if it means you walked clear around the earth to get there and it took many years. Good reminder about creativity and persistence, and he speaks from experience--he's nearly 40.

Happiness is a song Glen sang without his guitar, and one I think deaf or hard of hearing readers might enjoy watching on video, because I'm not sure I've ever watched someone feel the music quite as much as he does. I wish there were a captioned one out there, but perhaps it will appear on the Austin City Limits special they recorded last weekend at the ACL festival.

Because the heart's a fool
A stranger to the rule
Because the love has grown
You had to leave alone

And if you've gotto go, go with happiness
And if you've gotto go, go with happiness

In a subtle turn toward the political, Glen introduced a song "from the perspective of a man who tells the truth about things that didn't happen." Lies (also from Once) is a song whose lyrics make me stop and listen carefully each time--not to mention gaze, enthralled, if I'm watching the one-of-its-kind scene in the movie. You can see him perform it here, if you'd like. And just a taste ...

The little cracks they escalated
And before you know it was too late
For making circles and telling lies

You're moving too fast for me

and i can't keep up with you

Maybe if you slow down for me

and you see you're only telling lies, lies, lies

Breaking us down with your

lies, lies, lies

When will you learn?

Glen ended the concert with an admonition. During this election season, it's been interesting to watch how many of my blog friends from outside the U.S. are as vocal, if not more so, than those of us right here at home. Glen took up that refrain by saying how they, as Europeans, are watching, waiting to see how things play out because everything we do as a country affects them, too.

The image came to me of a young boy sitting in Ireland, strumming his guitar and dreaming of America, but watching with both great fear and great hope as we tread a dangerous path. He basically boiled it down to asking each person in the audience to wake up on election day and take a walk to clear his or her head of all the b.s. (said in full, with wonderful Irish accent, of course) and propaganda from the television, radio, internet, and newspapers, and then go vote for the person we really believe will steady us again.

He finished with the song I've listened to over and over lately, thinking of how timely it was. He asked people to sing along on the chorus, and they did, and it was really quite inspiring. (Again, an old video, here)

People Get Ready (from The Cost/The Frames)

People all get ready
'Cos we're tearing down the stand
Rebuild what's gone unsteady
And see it through with newer hands
And what has gone between us
Is a lot, is a lot
And who'll be there to clean us
If you're not, if you're not

We have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
We have all the love in the world
To set alight, to set alight

"What is correct?" she said tongue-in-cheekily.

Anyone else think that looks funny?

I'm in one of those quandaries that's really just a timewaster, and it's making me glum.

You know the kind.

~The perennial prologue debate. (Agents say they hate 'em, yet they're in almost every recent book I pick up.)

~That that thing. (Five SIX(?) in this post. I think that they're all okay. Except the one I just typed to make my point.)

~Show, don't tell. But please, tell me how to REALLY do this. Better yet, show me!

~To exclamation point or not. (I kinda liked the one in that last point. I also like parentheses. But for the sake of publication one day, I leave them out when I'm not blogging. I snuck ONE set of parens into my manuscript sneakily last night, and boy, did I feel like I was living on the edge.)

~Unfortunately, I must also mention the overuse of adverbs.

But, today's quandary: Asked vs. said.

(Which leads to the whole dialogue tag discussion, but I'd prefer to stick with this one today, thanks.)

Ray Rhamey over at Flogging the Quill mentioned in a flogging today that "____ asked" is irrelevant if you've enclosed a question in quotation marks. You can go ahead and say, "____ said."

But, I googled it a little (for extra points,what are the two glaring errors in that phrase? Wait, three.), and found conflicting advice. We were not surprised.

It's a wonder any of us get to the point where we actually query a manuscript. Hmm, I wonder if it's a conspiracy.

If we build more rules, only the truly diligent ones will come.

Or ... maybe the brave ones. The ones who throw caution to the wind and exclaim mightily, "Pick me! Pick at my prologue! Pick at my dialogue tags! Pick at whatever you like, but, please, pick me!"

Does this make me look fat?

Revising is a little like shopping for new clothing or glasses, which I did several times this week and last. You try things on. You see how something looks. How it feels. A little too loose? A little too tight? Too long? Too in your face? Too ... PINK? Is this really me, or am I trying too hard?

You walk to a new stack and start over.

You can spend too long. Finally, you have to say, "Okay, this is the best I can do," and hand over the credit card. Yet still, sometimes, you get home and you realize you didn't get it right. (For instance, I can't stand my new glasses.)

I'm so ready to hand over the credit card, but I'm still just not quite sure whether my story makes my butt look fat.

My little obsession

A writer's musician (and if you want to see what I mean, just look here at the notes from his recent release):



And a source, for me, of much inspiration, both personally and in my writing. (That's a lot of commas.) Yes, I'm proud to admit I'm a card-carrying member of the cult of David Wilcox. ;)

See him a couple of times, and he'll get to you. And to your family. My 15-year-old (15!!) daughter's wish for her birthday? A ticket to the upcoming DW concert here in DFW. My son's requested and granted 19th birthday wish last year? A ticket to the DW concert. These are teenagers, people. Listening to a folk singer pushing 50. With their parents.

Besides, how can you resist that laugh?