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Dr T
2/24/01

The Ark

Reviews!

Greetings All!!

Here’s my writeup of Sarah Harmer’s show at the Ark. Just for background: I’ve seen her open for Great Big Sea three times, so I’ve only been familiar with her work for about nine months, and this was my first time seeing her in her own show. I was VERY impressed. The openers seem more stylistically unified, whereas this show ran the gamut from pop to punk and blues to bluegrass. Very impressive! Songwise, I’d heard all of _You Were Here_ numerous times, and snippets from _Songs from Clem_ and the Weeping Tile albums. So my familiarity with the songs is probably considerably less than most of the people in here, but still more than most of the folks at the Ark. :-)

Usually I include a lengthy personal travelogue in my accounts, but this time I’ll cut to the show. Observations are mine, mine, mine...I throw in everything but the kitchen sink, one day maybe even that...but I’ll include the setlist as transcribed during the show (go ahead and chant it, "geek, geek, geek"), and any of the between-song dialogue that I can recall. All quotes are rendered as close to verbatim as my memory allows.

***

We shivered outside in the cold for about fifteen minutes before the doors opened. The Ark is an unusual style club in that it’s fairly smallish, intimate like a bar, but all of the free-moving seats still face forward, as if it were theater seating. I was in the second row, right in the middle on the aisle, which basically means I could see the sweat on people’s foreheads, or speak under my breath and be heard by the performers.

So, I sat and chatted with the folks sitting around me, who I’d met in line (all the people I was supposed to go with backed out at the last minute, but it didn’t end up being a big deal, because it turns out there were a bunch of us who were there on our own and we all glommed together. I also found some Great Big Sea fans afterward). So, we talked, and eventually one of the Arkfolk came forward, took the mike, and said, "And now I’d like to introduce Sarah Harmer."

She took the stage with Kevin Fox and the drummer and announced, "That’s the shortest introduction I’ve ever had!"

Sorry, I can't recall her drummer's name! John?

Here’s the setlist as I recall it:

Hideout
Around the Corner
Don’t Get Your Back Up
Coffee Stain
Uniform Grey
Open Window
Oleander
Pretty Little Cemetery (Ron Sexsmith)
_____ Lion (didn’t get the full title, she said it was new)
In the Road
Trouble in the Fields
You Were Here
Alabaster (O Susanna?)
Good Fortune
Basement Apartment
Lodestar

(Encore 1)

Everytime
Capsized
I’m a Mountain (not sure on that title)

(Encore 2)

Sail Away (Neil Young)
Dogs and Thunder
Blue Moon of Kentucky (shortened)

****

Having seen her as an opener, the first few songs were no big surprise selection-wise. "Hideout" was pleasantly familiar. The first thing I noticed, though, was how positively atmospheric the show was, even from the opening song. From where I was sitting I found myself honing in on little details...noticing how fancy and varied her guitar picking is in places...different little melodies that depart from the album version, intricate little would-be improvisations...hearing the slide of her fingers over the strings on the neck of the guitar...even hearing the untightened snare drum rattle with the force of the guitar sound. I’m not mentioning this because I consider extraneous noise an imperfection, but because for me it’s part of the whole experience, the same way that I miss hearing the needle hit a 33 RPM record hissing, and bump there during the track. It’s all part of it, and it’s beautiful.

This atmosphere laid the groundwork for a harder rockin’ "Around the Corner" than I’d expected, and continued from there. Her guitar work really started to catch my attention in "Don’t Get Your Back Up." I don’t know squat about guitar playing, so I can’t really say what alerted me, but I found myself watching her play the guitar and feeling impressed.

Around three songs in the discussion started. :-) She gave a longish intro to "Uniform Grey." She said that she’d written it while staying in Halifax, playing with the Thrush Hermits, and staying with one of the band members there. Though I’m not a country music fan by nature, I like the way country music seeps into rock, and I was tickled to hear how she was bringing out the countryish stylings in "Uniform Grey" in performance. I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t simply going to hear the album played over again in person, but that I was getting the songs in live VERSIONS, versions more varied than studio recording tends to permit. Cool.

"This is the last show of our tour," she said before "Open Window," and began describing the bar where they’d played in Wisconsin the night before...including a giant moose head, complete with beady red eyes, that hung behind the stage and spewed fog out its nostrils at the lightguy’s command. This got a big laugh from the crowd, and she also informed us that the guy who owned the bar was called "Moose." She then apologized for her voice (which didn’t need any apologizing for), explaining that she was suffering the after-effects of dry ice.

Four songs later, she coughed, cleared her throat pre-song, and then cursed under her breath..."Damn Moose!"

As for "Open Window" itself, I enjoyed hearing the down-homeyness of it brought out in live performance, the de-emphasis of the soft rock feel that it can have on the album.

"I believe in writing songs to inanimate objects," she begins for the seventh song, "so I wrote this song about my plant." (pause) "It’s a poisonous plant, though," she laughed, speculating whether it was appropriate to write songs for deadly greenery. Then she turned to the cellist and asked, "Do you have any horticultural thoughts, Kevin?" This led into "Oleander," which sounded as nice as I’ve ever heard it. She also mentioned that someone had e-mailed her in advance requesting to hear the song.

The next song was "Pretty Little Cemetery." She indicated that she’d gotten a call from a friend who was putting together a Ron Sexsmith tribute album, so she’d worked on the song, and then she never heard back from the friend. She also mentioned after that it was kind of a depressing song, but she still liked it.

It was here that I started to get really, really impressed with Sarah Harmer. It’s a simple song, rendered simply...but beyond lovely. Her voice and enunciation perfectly suited the song, seeming to fairly trip on the words "pretty little cemetery." The song is also "her style," in my mind, because it’s written very colloquially, including conversation in its lyrics. So when she sings it, in her conversational style...everyday, straightforward, familiar, and yet simultaneously weighted with meaning...it becomes intangibly hers.

From there it was on to a new song, something about a lion (?). Bodes well for the new material. I wish I could remember more of the lyrics, but I do recall that when she sang about "trouble," it echoed in my brain in both the good and bad senses of the word, and like so many of her songs, it felt, for a long moment, like it was about me.

Then it was "In the Road," and big thanks go to Melrose for introducing me to this song in advance, so I’d know it when it came. As a travellin’ girl myself, I’m a sucker for a good road song, and this is a GOOD road song. But it sounded dramatically different than the Weeping Tile version, primarily in tempo. I don’t have enough background to say for certain, but it sounds as though she’s changed the time signature from 3/4 to 2/4, or something along those lines. At any rate, the pacing of the song is altered, and I was riveted hearing it in this new way. I didn’t think it was possible to like it more, but it is.

This three-song segment was probably my favorite of the show...surprising, creative, beautiful.

Next came "Trouble in the Fields." She started off by mentioning how she has several older sisters (four?), and how she was fortunate that they were all "into music," and that’s how she first came across Nanci Griffith’s _One Fair Summer Evening_. I was personally delighted to hear her plug the album, because that is one of my top ten favorite albums of ALL TIME. Nanci Griffith writes stunning human narratives in verse, and I think you can see her influence in other Sarah songs as well (the line "maybe we’re all just out alone/and everybody is only their own" has always struck me as highly reminiscent of Griffith). ANYWAY, Harmer mentioned that she’d recently gone back and found the album again, and noticed that Nanci Griffith had thanked the Ark on it, and how she thought it was cool to be playing it there, or something along those lines. She also dedicated it to her retired-farmer father.

There were several points during the show that I felt my eyes magnetically pulled over to Kevin Fox, and "You Were Here" was one of them. Once again, I can’t recall what it was about the cello work here that pulled me, but it did.

And I have a question here, too...do they pipe in prerecorded noise for that song, or is all the freaky experimental noise from the cello and percussion itself? It weirded me out slightly, but I think it’ll grow on me when I see her next.

Some point in here she thanked one of the crew, I think it was the swag guy, and mentioned how he’d been modeling her clothing backstage, doing a beached whale imitation, and generally "warming up our vocal chords with laughing." (Do people want to know what she was wearing? I’ll provide that in future reviews if that interests you, I can usually remember).

Next came "Alabaster," a lovely song written by a friend of hers...I think she said she went by O Susanna? It added nice variety to the set. Then came "Good Fortune," which I had never heard before, and which completely sent my world careening! What a great song!!! Before she played it, she strapped on the ol’ neck-rigged harmonica, and quipped, "I always feel like I’m at the dentist," which was pretty appropriate, since it did look strikingly like that orthodontic headgear that Joan Cusak wears in _Sixteen Candles_. But ooooyeah, what a cool stylistic shift to the set, all rocksy-bluesy and rollicking. This was another highlight for me.

Then came "Basement Apartment," which I simply adore. One of those songs that makes you go, "Yeah...my life. To a T."

Someone passed a note up on stage at some point, asking her to wish someone in the crowd from Indiana a Happy Birthday, which she did. Then she launched into a story about driving through Indiana on their way to the show, and stopping at Gary. (Geez, no wonder she had a cough!). She mentioned that the glass at the Subway where they’d stopped for lunch was 3-inch bulletproof glass, and she did a little imitation of herself placing her order through the impenetrable glass, squeaking out in a tiny little voice: "Could I get some mustard, please?" She pondered this image for a moment, chuckling, and then reflected: "It makes it very difficult to communicate with your sandwich artist." This elicited a huge laugh from the crowd. Between the music, "horticultural thoughts," and "sandwich artist," Harmer was thoroughly the darling of the crowd by this point of the show.

She closed with "Lodestar," and I had more Watch Kevin moments. It sounded very powerful. I also noticed here again something I noticed early and forgot to mention...I like the Kevin/Sarah harmonies too, as some of the rest of you have mentioned before.

This closed the first part of the show, but everyone knew she was coming back, so when she took the stage again she grinned goofily at the audience and said, "Encores are so funny." From there she launched into "Everytime," much to my relief, because it’s a personal fave and I’d started to despair of hearing it. I know it’s not an uplifting song per se, but something about hearing it makes me feel as though everything’s just going to be all right. :-) From there it was on to "Capsized," and I found myself mesmerized by Kevin again. When the drummer returned, he had on different clothes, and she commented: "You've changed your clothes! Is this encore-wear?" She closed this set with a song I'm guessing is called "I'm a Mountain" (?), which was rendered with such foot-stompin’ glory that I had to sit on my hands to keep from clapping along. (Michigan audiences can be very repressed, they tend to frown on audience participation, which they see as "interference"...dang, it’s hard to cope with that when you’re a full-body listener!).

The crowd was so whooped up from this song that they simply wouldn’t let Harmer leave, so even though she had exited again, she came back for a second encore and commented, "Wow, we gotcha goin’ with that one!"

She asked the crowd if they had any requests. (Now, keep in mind that most of this crowd seemed largely unfamiliar with her work). Right away someone piped up and yelled "Dogs and Thunder!", which she agreed to do, but said she wanted to wait and play something less "down" first. One very vocal guy in the front had been repeatedly requesting for her to "Play some Neil!" I think his rationale was, you’re Canadian, play us some Canadian stuff! :-) When she realized there weren’t many other requests forthcoming, she basically started to haggle with this guy over playing Neil Young:

"I don’t think I know any Neil Young...Sugar Mountain? Um, noooo...is there anything else?...No, there’s no way you’re gettin’ no Sugar Mountain outta me...oh, wait a minute, I do know a Neil Young song..."

Then she launched into "Sail Away," and though she chided herself for stumbling over the words at one point, it sounded simply gorgeous to me. Again, even though you knew the song was technically someone else’s, the minute she played it it seemed entirely, and appropriately, hers.

Then she played "Dogs and Thunder," and then called for further requests. Bad move. The crowd had been so bowled over by her ability to pull a Neil Young song out of a hat, on demand, and render it so marvelously, that they just started to yelling out all manner of songs by all manner of artists, in the hopes that she’d rise to the new challenge in equally spectacular fashion. I called out the old CCR classic, "Lodi," just because I’d heard it on the radio that afternoon and it had occurred to me then that it’d sound great with her voice...but to no avail. A vocal little cluster on the side of the venue cried out for "Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather" (a great Bob Dylan song, written in a very trad style, and covered by Nanci Griffith on _Other Voices, Other Rooms_), and Sarah started negotiating with these folks too, but in the end said she didn’t know the song and couldn’t do it. Soon she rolled her eyes sheepishly and wailed to the yelling requesters, "It has to be one of MY songs." She finally launched into a shortened but potent version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky," which capped off the feel of the show splendidly, and fled the stage before the audience could launch into a new frenzy of requests. :-)

Have any of you noticed how sometimes, while she’s playing, Sarah Harmer closes her eyes and her eyelids flicker, as if she’s in an REM state? I found myself fascinated by that at several points during the show (I think it happens to me at shows, too), and I wonder if there isn’t a nice metaphor for her music someplace in there. It makes you close your eyes and go somewhere else, see places and things not your own, but ultimately it also reminds you that everything comes back to earth--and to home--again.

That’s it from me,

Dr. T