We went to the Mary-Chapin Carpenter/Shawn Colvin/Dar Williams/Patty Griffin concert and it was cool. They sat on stage in a row and went round and round playing songs–some were their own compositions and some were covers. Mary-Chapin’s dog Mona was on stage for most of the show. Mary-Chapin opened with Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone”. It was quite moving. Some of their songs were quite poignant and others were pretty darn funny. One of the encore songs was a duet of Mary-Chapin and Shawn Colvin doing a BackStreet Boys song. Since I’m not a fan of the boy band I don’t know which song it was (something about loving deep) but we were laughing and the women on stage were laughing.
I was fairly pleased with the crowd. As you may know, the folks of this fair city get all liquored up at shows and then proceed to shout through concerts. This really wasn’t the case last night. One person’s cell went off and Mary-Chapin asked them to give themselves a thrill and put it on vibrate. One person told them to just play (there was quite a bit of chatter on the stage throughout–all of it entertaining) and the 4 of them got a little uppity on that yokel.
Patty Griffin plays a mean guitar.
For dinner we had planned on getting pizza at Piccola’s but it was crammed so we walked down the street and found Cafe Mandolin. It was expensive. I got the grilled shrimp wrapped in pancetta and it was $20. There were 4 shrimp on the plate. I’m all for little restaurants with big flavors charging me for their creativity in the kitchen. 4 shrimp does not equal $20. The better-half wanted to get the pork tenderloin but the waiter asked the chef if that could be done in the time we had and instead he got the salmon-which he said was pretty yummy. We both had the potato and leek soup which was excellent. The chef came out after our dinner and apologized for saying we shouldn’t order the pork. She said she could have done it in time had she realized what time it was (doesn’t wear a watch). She gets points for that. We told her everything we had was delicious.
We got home around 11:30 and I stood on the front steps for about 10 minutes looking for the aurora to no avail.
I had to come back into this entry to add this little piece of information. The people in front of us at the concert last night brought their infant. Their child was a fairly recent addition to the planet so luckily it was asleep for most of the show. Hey, Mom & Dad, taking brand-new Jr. to a concert isn’t such a good idea.