The ladies just keep getting better every year. OK, every two years, which seems to be the length between releases for them. That's alright, The Woods was worth the wait.
Good show, high energy, setlist as I recall (spoiler alert!), not in order, was The Woods (except Steep Air), several from One Beat (including Oh!, Step Aside, Combat Rock, Sympathy), nothing from All Hand's, only a couple earlier (Get Up. The Drama You've Been Craving), and one surprise at the end.
Janet Weiss just kicks me in the head. If I could play drums like her, I could sell all my guitars on EBay. Fun stuff this time around included her playing harmonica on Modern Girl Bob Dylan style, with a harness, while playing drums! And then again on the last song (of the four song encore), Bruce Springsteen's Promised Land!
Corin's Les Paul sounds good, and I'm constantly impressed with how she can both fill in the low end, and riff & melody on the same setup, within the same song. She seemed genuinely glad to be there, and looked sharp (though where did that polyester & lace blouse come from?), and it's funny, I'm having a hard time remembering when she wasn't blonde. The setlist seems to have very few songs with Carrie on lead vocals: Corin's voice got a workout, and at times her voice seemed a bit worn out - but she never let up. And after all the times she's sung Sympathy, I was struck by how she still seems to feel what the song says.
Carrie was in fine guitar-hero form, all over the stage and rocking stadium-style, especially on songs from The Woods which featured her new black Gretsch with the big Bigsby tremolo. (Surprise though: she used her Gibson SG instead of the Gretsch for The Fox, and did the tremolo's just by pulling strings - easier I guess when your guitar's tuned to C#!)
Just a few pix culled from a hundred ones that came out even rougher. Maybe some vid clips'll be posted later...
Special Guest: The Pony's
(Bummer, none of the pix with Jared & Melissa came out good.
Or Nathan, for that matter. Only Brian must've had decent lighting.)
St. Andrew's Hall, waiting in line from 7:00 p.m.:
The view across the street:
