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Legendary Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly began his North American A-Z tour Wednesday night at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles. Paul is performing 2 consecutive nights each in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, and New York City. Paul sings, plays guitar, harmonica, and piano, and is joined by a backing musician on a varying assortment of guitars and ukulele.
Each night features an alphabetical list of songs, accompanied by poster-boards of individual letters which Paul mounts on a large display stand. Wednesday’s show moved from A through L, in a 2-hour set. Thursday’s show should traverse from M through Z.
A very enthusiastic audience, presumably including many Australians, plus the usual fascinating array of distinctive personalities from the Los Angeles music scene.
By the way, Band of Heathens are at the Hotel Cafe tonight. I love them but a 10:30 show in Hollywood on a work night would be unsound. Yes no?
P.S. This show and the earlier Paul Kelly show each require their own ticket, Paul.
A very special night. Although he has never been able to make big inroads in this country, which is still a mystery to me, he is a master songwriter with an incredible catalog of songs as these two nights prove. I always hate comparisons like “he is the (fill in artist) of (fill in country)”, but in the case it is unavoidable because he is of that stature -it would be easy to say that he is the Australian Bob Dylan, but his songs also bring to mind Bruce, Elvis C, Neil and Lucinda. I was actually struck last night listening to the songs at how similar he is to Lucinda in regards to the literate storytelling and the descriptions of location within the stories-the natural ease of all the different musical styles -then throw in a subtle but powerful mastery of emotion and you’ve pretty much got it. I have been a fan of his for years and, although she knew of him, Lu wasn’t really familiar with the records and had never seen him live. At one point early on she turned to me and said simply “he’s a fucking poet”-a few songs later she was in tears and as the last song was ending she said “I’m humbled”. That pretty much sums it up. While I have seen her effusive about other non-singer songwriter artists, I have never heard her say what she said last night about another current singer-songwriter. And this was only songs A-L. Incredible.
PS-It looks like he is going to get another push in the US as they are putting a 2cd Best Of and an 8 cd box called the A-Z recordings in October (as well as a biography). I was also told last night they will be reissuing a lot of his records over here after the first of the year. He had three completely brilliant records on A&M Records in the 80’s that I hope will be included in the reissues–Gossip (1986), Under The Sun (1987) and So Much Water So Close To Home (1989).
(LWJ- He is coming to Toronto -obviously I would highly recommend it)@TOverby wrote:
(LWJ- He is coming to Toronto -obviously I would highly recommend it)
Thanks for the suggestion Tom.
Toronto next Fri., Sat. $20.00 at the famous Dakota Tavern-great intimate venue, I’ve been there for their all you can eat Sunday brunch + music.
Here are 2 of Paul’s letters from last night at the Hotel Cafe, both of which I really enjoyed.
Letter D- “Dumb Things”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fygiStcBXU
Letter I- “I Was Hoping You’d Say That”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHf3Jnrva_c
And here is the concert review. Paul is accompanied by his nephew Dan Kelly.
http://soundcheck.ocregister.com/2011/09/15/paul-kelly-goes-a-z-in-rare-nights-at-hotel-cafe/61220/Australian music is great, I tune in to the Rockwiz TV show regularly. That’s where I discovered Anne McCue.
Since joining the friendly forum over three years ago, I have been introduced to a lot of great artists.
I had a top 5 list, but thanks to Lafayette in a recent post under Kathleen Edwards, I’ve had to expand to a top 10. Going to see Amos L. and Pieta B. in late October at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto. ( That’s when I had the pleasure to meet Lu and you Tom during the 30th Anniversary Tour).lwj
p.s. I looked at Paul’s Wikipedia-One of the longest ones I’ve ever seen.Great report and insight, TO!
And, according to this tweet, ya’ll made it last night for songs M – Z.
http://twitter.com/#!/1888Media
1888Media 1888 Media
Lucinda Williams is dancing to the acoustic groove of Paul Kelly’s last of 50 songs at the Hotel Cafe…Review of Wednesday show.
http://soundcheck.ocregister.com/2011/09/15/paul-kelly-goes-a-z-in-rare-nights-at-hotel-cafe/61220/
I’m surprised the tweeter didn’t mention the rest of us. 🙄
I’ll file a report once I remember what happened. Late night.
It’s 10:30 am and I am properly caffeinated. I decided I needed to attend the 10:30 pm Band of Heathens set after all and decided if I napped beforehand it would be Ok to stay out late on a Thursday night. I was persuaded to go early and see Paul Kelly at 7 pm and I’m glad I did. The place was packed when I got there at 7; many in the crowd were Australians or at least sounded like it. Paul took the stage promptly and mesmerized us with his great storytelling. He was fantastic on acoustic guitar and his nephew Dan was equally great on electric guitar and mandolin. Paul also sang one song on piano. He marched through the alphabet starting at M I think. He admitted sheepishly he did not have a V song so he let his nephew play a whimsical song that the audience participated in. I am surprised than an artist so talented, who can fill up a club in Hollywood on a Thursday nite, is so far under the radar here. He played for 2 hours and it was a great show.
He was followed by another singer-songwriter from Australia named Ry Cumming, who I also never heard of. He played in a 3 piece; just a drummer and bass player and he was also awesome. He played some great original songs and they also peeled off a blistering version of The Beatles “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, a song you do not hear covered too many times. Good stuff.
Band of Heathens, from Austin, Tx, took the stage at almost 11 pm and only the die hards were left in the club by then. I had wisely switched to Diet Coke around 10 pm. They were great. With 3 guitars, keyboard, bass and drum they filled that tiny room with plenty of sound and more. This band is led by 3 singer songwriters, all guitarists, who each bring their own unique thing to the band. All great players and singers. They played for almost 2 hours and when I got up to leave at 12:45 I was surprised to see the club mostly empty behind my chair. If they come to your town, they are a must see.
When I got out onto Cahuenga Blvd at what I thought was the middle of the night, I was astounded to see throngs of people up and down the street, on the sidewalks, still lining up to get into the other clubs, police everywhere. Don’t these people ever sleep? I headed to the suburbs where the sidewalks are rolled up at 10 pm every night.
The forum was well represented as always. Paul From Los Angeles made it an official scene. Tom and Lu were there. And me. We left our mark. I was thinking this morning, we are not a forum of armchair members. We are an army, out there somewhere at least once a week, pounding the pavement, pressing the flesh, tossing back drinks, eardrums vibrating, being exposed to all kinds of music and living to tell about it. I like that about us. A tad mental.
Anyway, nuff said. Carry on.
Wonderful report, tonyg!
I prefer being a tad mental. 😆 Most of my family, i.e. brothers and sister, and many friends and acquaintances think I’m truly nuts when it comes to pounding the pavement and flying the friendly skies all in pursuit of experiencing live music.
Thanks for the reports, Tony and Tom: I couldn’t agree more that the imprimatur of paul from losangeles makes any “scene” official for all and sundry. As for Mr. Kelly, I hope some Forum members (including tomO) have the live from Australia Butch Hancock-Jimmie Dale Gilmore record from some time back, wherein they cover Lu’s “Howlin’ at Midnight” (god I hope I’m remembering the title right from Happy Woman B, never heard Lu do it live), with Paul Kelly on stage with them. I can’t remember the title of that album, but it’s an official as opposed to bootleg release and has some real gems, Carter Family covers and so on. Also, a Kasey Chambers EP available once only at her merch booth had her covering a Paul Kelly song, though I damaged the EP and had to throw it out (for shame, me), once again not remembering the song title right now. That little gem also had two Fred Eaglesmith songs on it and was marketed as a supplement to The Captain CD. I asked Kasey after her show earlier this year if there were copies still around: no. My loss.
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