I'm going to clear my head [...]

 [...] I'm gonna drink that sun.

The saddest sight my eyes can see

Is that big ball of orange sinking slyly down the trees,

Sittin in a broken circle while you rest upon my knee.

This perfect moment will soon be leaving me

Indigo Girls. "Get Out The Map". Saliers, Emily & Ray, Amy. 1997

(see track 2 on Shaming of the Sun)

I did a thing.

A thing that caused me to be out past my normal night time driving range (I try not to drive at night because I can't see well) and past my normal bed time (don't laugh; I'm in bed by 8:30 some days. Florida has gotten to me. #old).  

The thing I did, was big enough to warrant forgetting all of the above and risk it all: I went to the Indigo Girls concert on Tuesday. 

This concert was is in support of their 2020 album, Look Long.

All because... you know.. a certain crisis that stopped the world for a couple years prohibited people from playing. *cough*cough* No names... no names. ~Waves it off ~

So this was the bounce back promotion tour. 

It is was my first (ever) Indigo Girls concert. The last concert I went to was the Live On Mars thing in 2019. I did go to see Mrs. Doubtfire: The Musical about a month ago, but that's a different event bucket I put things in.  

As per usual lately, this concert was at the Barbara B Mann theater on the Florida Southwestern State College (formally Edison Community College) campus. It's pretty big of a theater but can pack a pricy punch for certain artists. 

Since living in Fort Myers and getting opportunity to see live shows, I've had to pick and choose who and what I want to see, because there's no way I justify paying close to $100 to sit in the balcony area (or $120 in the Mezzanine), let alone over 500 to sit in the orchestra. 

Please don't take this the wrong way or misinterpret it. It all depends on the event and seat section. Big name artists bring out big name prices. Some do keep the cost low, but then the merch can run you the cost of another ticket if you're not careful (like what happened for Indigo Girls. LOL). 

I know it's no comparison because it's been a couple decades. The highest I've paid for a ticket was Elton John at the Fleetcenter in 2005. That was $125 for the Loge section (which was still not so close). Plus train tickets from my house to Boston and back home. Yet, I paid $66 for Bowie at the Orpheum in 2002 (Orchestra seat) and then $76 for a Floor seat at the FleetCenter. Both db concerts were while I was still in school so I only had to worry about train fare from school to the venue.  Therefore, loosely speaking, Elton clocked in at the most expensive and the longest concert (almost 4 hours). 

I know, I know... "if you really want to see the band or comic, you should just spend the money and go. Otherwise you'll regret it". Which is true for a few musicians. I wish the Goo Goo Dolls would come back around because they were here in 2011 and I didn't know enough about the area at that point, so I missed the concert. I had just been here for a month and wasn't going adventuring out as much as I should have been. Otherwise I would have gone. Barenaked Ladies is coming with Toad the Wet Sprocket in October. That's a "high end" ticket (the aforementioned mezzanine price) but I've seen BNL play City Hall Plaza (twice) back in the mid 1990s. It'd be cool to see them in Florida, but October is too far away right now for me to make that call, especially for said $120. 

I've totally side tracked. But it's also kind of relevant. 

The seat I was in, was Left Loge. A box seat of sorts. I did have the row to myself, for no extra cost (my seat was $66 after taxes). I had a good view of the stage and can't complain about sight lines since there are seats in bad viewing area and people still pay for it. 

It's the experience, I know. 

The pictures were taken with my iPhone 11 and I edited (hastily) a woman in front of me, but I didn't do a lot of editing for the rest of the photos. It's just to give an example of where I was sitting. They were taken as people piled in, so it's before the concert started.

I've also got a video of the intermission and a couple songs from the end of the concert. I'll put that video up after I type some more. 

As you can see from the pictures, I was in a good spot. The backdrop on the stage is a bookcase of all banned books, said someone at one point in the night. I don't know what the books are that are on the backdrop, but it's totally relevant for what is going on in society lately, as well as it jived with one of the songs (Go from Come On Now Social *). They actually introduced Go as "this is for the teachers and librarians". 

The building being packed was a good thing, but I did have to laugh as when I sat in the lobby waiting to get in to the seats. All I saw were waves of old lesbians (old like over 50). I'm not being mean, please don't take it that way. But you have to take it for what it is - this is an LBGTQ band so the rainbow fans come to hear the band play. There were baby dykes and gay men and quite a few straight couples. The box area I was in was seemingly all straight. There's nothing wrong with it, as it was definitely a sight to see for social experiments. I wasn't expecting to see so many hetero couples, quite honestly. My straightness did not feel compromised at any point in the concert. I was perfectly fine and thought it was too bad my friends weren't here to see all the different people. Again, it was definitely a social experiment for me - where you sit on a back wall and just people watch. My friends would have entertained quite the conversations with me about the array of people. I enjoyed that. 

Sorry; I squirreled again. 

I know I mentioned an intermission. That's because they had Lucy Wainwright Roche open for them. 

Lucy comes from a musician family (yes, those Wainwrights - Loudon III is her dad, Rufus is a half brother). She talked about her life recently, as she did some tiny tours with her mother and Lucy had a baby, where she stated "let this be a PSA not to go on tour with your mother and your baby" because it was also when we all got out of lockdown and she wanted to get out and tour. Lucy is actually pretty good of a musician. I bought her two CDs that were promoted on the merch table. I honestly didn't know anything about her until I heard her play. I had to google her name, which is how I read who her famous family is. 

She did half the set with the Indigo Girls as backup so once she ended her 30 minute opener, she came back out to perform with the band. 

The Indigo Girls also had Lyris Hung, a violinist, perform majority of the songs as well. Lyris also did her own solo song at one point in the concert. It was pretty haunting of a tune, and she took her time to set it up. She used some sort of pedal board to create each type of strum she needed before going full out into playing. It was amazing but it did take a few minutes to get it the way she wanted. 

The overall length of the concert was from 7:30 to 10:30 with a 20 minute intermission, so it was really 7:30 to 10:10. 

There was a mix of songs played, most from the new album, some from the vaults. 

The Girls played well, although Emily did warble through a few songs. Amy played some angrily, I don't know why. But their sound was totally on point. No low points or cut offs from the microphones. You could hear everything fine (you'll notice it in the video I'll post - no distortions). 

They also had some guitar problems through out some of the songs they played. They said that the guitars weren't tuned properly and one of Amy's actually had a break in the stock head (I think she said?).

Since there was no backing musicians, the Girls switched instruments for every song, so it took a minute or two to tune it to the right chords needed. 

Emily actually came in a little early for "Get out the Map" because Amy was tuning her mandolin and talking about touring and how they were going to play Seth Myers the next day when Emily started singing. #awkwardoverstep. 

But the whole tuning incidents were shrugged off, as if they were back to playing small venues (clubs and bars). There's nothing wrong with it as it was part of the overall scheme of the night - the magic of it all. It grounds everyone because you know it's not autotuned or fixed in any way. The making sure everything is up to snuff is warranted because they're known for their folk songs and guitar/ukulele/mandolin/ etc. The tuning didn't prohibit anything except when they tried to play one of the songs, Amy was having trouble with the aforementioned guitar, so they didn't play that song. I forget which one it was, but they marched on and circled back to it a little later. 

I guess I will put the video in here, as I have it uploaded. It was taken on my iPhone 11. I only edited the wording into the video and nothing more. So you'll see Lyris Hung, Amy Ray, Emily Saliers and Lucy Wainwright Roche in the video. Left to right.

I do have to admit I was a little nervous to go at first. Not for fear of anything bad happening to me; it is hard to explain. I did enjoy the concert and would like to see them again. It's too bad I won't be in Boston in the fall, as they're taking a 2 month hiatus and starting back up in August. That leg of the tour will be co-headlining with Melissa Etheridge. That's going to be a wicked cool concert. I guess the question is, "do I want to spend the $$$ plane ticket? Then the $$ for the concert? Hotel? Etc?" Big decision but I'll keep the blog posted on that update...

I think that's it... since I did such a roundabout review. 

Now go out side and play!

Cheers;

See Also:

- The * for Come On Now Social isn't widely available on Amazon, so if you want to hear Go it's track 13 on  Retrospective

#KofiSocialChallenge