First Night Saratoga has grown into a grand smorgasbord of events that are altogether too numerous to absorb in one evening. There were over 30 different sites and venues with a myriad of musical choices, performance art, dance (modern to ballet), children’s entertainment, theater, a video festival, even Tarot card readings, Alpacas on display, Face Painting, magic, and a Swashbuckling Circus of some sort. To pay for all that, in addition to the reasonable $15. button fee, there were 27 major and minor sponsors (including our own “saratoga.com” website) listed on the comprehensive program put out by SARATOGA ARTS, which helped organize the whole shebang. I read somewhere that over 700 performers were involved in one way or another…but I gotta tell you, there was one that stood out for me, and she was a revelation.
Our favorite radio station, WEXT (97.7 FM), which I have already hyped many times on this site, was involved with a subset of entertainment called First Fest, which was held in Meeting Room #1 at the recently refurbished Saratoga Springs City Center. If you haven’t seen the inside of the new additions to this landmark building in Saratoga Springs, this would have been a great chance to do so– the large brick-&-columned courtyard which had formed an overly large outdoors entry to what used to be called the Civic Center is now a beautifully-glassed in area on both south-facing levels, so where Meeting Room #1 now exists was formerly exterior space.
The radio station had set up the soundstage there and their two main-men– Dave Michaels and Chris Wienk, with encyclopedic knowledge of eclectic rock history between them– were the alternating emcees for the occasion. As huge and relentless advocates for “Local 5-1-8” musicians, which they feature on a rotating, hourly basis in their programming, they brought together seven acts for this “Mini Fest”– and I thank them for that.
My primary goal for the evening, as stated in my last post, was to finally see MaryLeigh Roohan, who was a featured performer scheduled at 6:45. As older son #1 had headed north to Lake George with his college friends to socialize elsewhere, and my daughter had chosen to spend the night at her BFF’s house, son #2 was our companion as my wife and I hustled over to the City Center to catch Miss Roohan’s act. Melinda did not understand my urgency to get there on time, since it seemed early in the proceedings of the evening, but within 15 minutes of hearing MaryLeigh, she knew I was right– this girl’s voice was amazing, which I knew going in– but her poise, phrasing, songwriting, stage presence and guitar playing were all a bonus and a surprise. All of the above got better as the night went on, which I will here describe…
First off, for First Fest, she was on her own: “No more Fauves…” as her dad would tell me later in the evening. This alone could perhaps have been daunting for a 21-year old performer– a solo gig when she previously was accustomed to having a band behind her. And this was not exactly an intimate coffeehouse setting, no Caffe Lena debut– this was a wide-open, well-lit, cavernous room with seating and standing room for a few hundred people, like a corporate cafeteria with a slightly-elevated stage at the back end. In lieu of a folksinger’s standard equipment, an acoustic Gibson, for instance, MaryLeigh had a Fender Telecaster around her neck, and handled it deftly as her sole accompaniment for the full 45 minute set. (I here note my Thanks to Rick Bolton, who later verified my guess on the electric guitar brand.) I’m not saying she was playing slide like Bonnie Raitt or Ellen McIlwane, but she created a fine kind of drone and chiming tapestry that perfectly, cleanly, gave a backdrop to her songs. Certain chords from the amps hung in the ambient air of the room in a manner that held the spell in between her well-spaced lyrics. I got chills on more than one song. In a large public space in which people were coming and going and not exactly behaving in an attentive, operatic manner, she had 90% of the audience respectfully captivated, it seemed to me.
She began with a tune that appeared on her first CD called “The Docks”– with the full band, MaryLeigh & The Fauves. It was a steamy solo version of “Candy Man,” with lyrics full of sensual innuendo & provocative implications, comparing favorably to the recorded original, which is very suggestive in its own right:
I don’t know how much I can have,
your sugar is the sweetest, but
my Mama says it’z bad–
I like you in the morning,
I like you after work
I like you in the afternoon
I like it when you’re my-y-y
Another I would recognize from being played on WEXT was “Foolish Girl”– which features the enchanting line: I just want to be ARM in ARM in ARM in ARM with you… which with her exuberant voice conveyed so well how wrapped up and entangled in love she was with her flawed-but-passionate object of affection.
Those two tunes, plus the equally addictive “Song for my Lovelies”– its haunting refrain is: “My darling friends….Gooood Byyyye…”– were all from the CD she made with The Fauves, still purchasable, and well worth the $10 they charged at the table that night. Lots of idyllic hooks and a solid, catchy back-up group therein. But the tune I had come to hear was from a demo that WEXT had been playing regularly– Baby You Should Know– when I finally heard her play it, I was content, like a sonic addict who needed a specific fix. Now that I am home, and don’t have a recorded version of it on hand, I am craving it again– so somebody please get me a bootleg copy or a live recording, and send it along. (PS– while listening to Hello Pretty City on WEXT Sunday night, I heard Laura play that incredible demo, and then confess that when she first heard it, she was “stunned, just stunned…”–so I am not the only one blown away by this song.)
MaryLeigh then offered a song that she had just written that day, fresh from the imaginative hopper, as it were, and it came off well, but didn’t stick with me like the 3 or 4 others I mentioned so far. It takes temerity and creative courage to do that, put a brand new composition out in front of a large crowd, however, and it bodes well for her long-term output that she is that confident in her production at an early age.
In her between-song patter she self-promoted just a bit by mentioning that she was going to be performing later that night at One Caroline Street from 9pm to 1 am, and my wife and I looked at each other like that might be a good idea…for a bit later. (O yeah, it was.)
When she was done she was surrounded by well-wishers, so instead of acting like groupies and trying to get in a word of congratulations to her, we moved on to the other band playing in the same building, but in the much larger Main Hall (where the high school proms take place in recent years), and down the corridor we heard a massive sound echoing from behind closed doors– upon opening them the wave of kinetic audial energy that is known as Alex Torres & His Latin Orchestra was holding forth, full force.
A horn section, a host of percussion, thundering bass-lines, and a couple of guitars backed up the nominal bandleader and a second enthusiastic front-man who sang as well. I counted 13 or 14 members of the aggregation, so let’s say it was 13 an a half, given that a dark-haired lad who looked about 6 was banging on a clave on stage, helping to keep the rhythm with his elders. At first the crowd seemed laid back, and somewhat unresponsive. There were half-a-dozen to a dozen folks dancing in front of the stage when we first walked in and sat down. Next tune announced was something Cuban, a hot number from The Buena Vista Social Club movie, Alex said,
and next thing you know there was a rumba line moving up toward the front and before the song climaxed there were about a hundred or more dancers up front, and a butt-shaking throng snaking up and down the aisles– good fun. This effusive big band’s motto seemed to be: “Making upstate white people shake their booties since 1989…”
On another occasion we would’ve hung out and joined in, but we were on a mission, and it was time to find a brandy or a beer, something to warm the night, and christen the impending new year. Daryn (son #2) had taken off on his own by then, and we would not catch up with him till about five or six hours later. We briefly stopped back in Meeting Room #1 to hear a bit of original guitar music by a duo named Benjamin Franklin– one dude in a Dr. Seuss hat emphatically strumming an acoustic, while his counterpart in a green shirt wailed on electric and yielded some impressive blues licks…I would’ve stayed but my wife was tugging me toward the door at that point. I will make it a point to try to see them again, as well as the ska band Uncle Joe’s Comb we ended up missing completely. The huge array of musical offerings on a night like this is a big sprawling buffet, and you can’t eat all of it, even though you’d like to taste as much as you can. (Now I’m mixing metaphors like MaryLeigh…)
The streets were not crowded at 8pm but for each hour thereafter you could notice the slow surge of pedestrians increase. There were singers in the windows of both The Turkish Bazaar, and Lifestyles, as we moved south on Broadway. with a small crowd of people watching from outside, as if the performers were exotic specimens in a fish bowl, with sound broadcast to the outside world.
We made our way to the Saratoga Arts Center, the former library when I first moved to town, and in the front room gallery our friends Dave Casner and Crispin Catricala were setting up to play their second set. Dave played vibes that sounded like crystal bells, and Crispin’s guitar work is a flavorful amalgam of Latin/bossa/jazz and gentle funk which spoke of Pat Martino or Wes Montgomery at times, a subdued Santana-on-acoustic at others. Appearing with them to flesh out the quartet was Crispin’s (Berkeley) College-aged son Leonardo on upright bass, plus a crisp, tasteful drummer who had never played with these guys before, and meshed perfectly. The music was well-received in the large bright space of the art gallery, but seating was limited and
most listeners had to stand. As their set concluded we got an urge to move on in search of food, and to see what else lie ahead. (Their CD is called Geo Beat, by the way, produced locally at Wood’s End Studio, and quite good– a spin-off from their previous 5-piece band called Pangaea.) Down Spring Street, alongside Congress Park where the fireworks would be held later (Daryn would attend but we would miss it), then left on Putnam, across Phila past Bailey’s, noting a large group of crazy young ladies exiting a limo in summer attire, bare backs and short skirts in the 20 degree evening air– must’ve thought it was always August downtown. We turn up Caroline Street, already getting crowded with partyers, and from which we would not stray much further for the night.
Here I will give a pitch to a place that has been a great source of late-evening sustenance for many years, and where I used to eat many a lunch when I worked at the former RE/MAX office on Putnam Street: ESPERANTO. My wife was craving the traditional doughboy while I went for the veggie burrito and a thin slice of pizza, defying my strict diet for one last time in 2012. For 10 bucks we had made up for not have a formal dinner and could continue in search of entertainment, which was right across the street.
I apologize for giving short shrift to the dozens of other musicians we could have seen if we had prowled First Night further, but we wanted more MaryLeigh, sorry.
We had not been in One Caroline Street for a long time, I must admit. On the rare occasions we’d ventured downtown we had sought out Four Down The Band, as you might know from my earlier posts. Sultry jazz performers had not been on our radar lately, nor piano trios, which are usually featured at Dave Pedinotti’s great semi-underground venue, just off-Broadway. But the bartender I’d known from years before, the always amiable John Caraco, greeted us warmly and we felt like we just entered Cheers, except that there was music instead of sitcom banter.
MaryLeigh was finishing up one set and playing with another female guitar player named Meagan Duffy, who synched up quite well with her on a couple of the songs we’d heard as solo versions earlier in the night. We saw Rick Bolton and Sharon Dwyer in the seated assemblage, and congratulated them on looking relaxed as listeners, rather than being performers on this occasion, though Rick had just finished a couple of sets over at the Library. He seemed to be part of a large entourage of MaryLeigh’s friends, family, and local supporters, including a couple of guys who would form the rhythm session in the last long set. The place was fairly full, considering how many options were open to people on New Year’s Eve.
After the first full set we saw her play as a duo with the impressive guitarist Ms. Duffy,
MaryLeigh came by and answered questions about some of her songs. I tend to latch onto certain lyrics an then wonder what the tune is called– she sang: I shoulda kept running as soon as my feet hit the ground… and that one was called “Running,”
simply enough. Another that started with the beguiling phrasing, O, pretty boy… and ended with the phrase… Con-se-quently Cruel… was called “Coward.” The hooky “Arm in Arm” catchphrase that caught me early at the City Center, she confirmed, belonged to the song “Foolish Girl.” I never did learn the name of the one she had just written that day, but hopefully there will be other occasions to figure that out. She seems prolific for a 21 year old, and her writing has depth and originality– no offense to Taylor Swift but at my age I’m not usually fond of hearing about the shallow romantic entanglements of fickle young girls, but MaryLeigh made me pay attention, like a wizened old soul with an innocent-looking young female’s voice.
The final set which climaxed not only 2012 but the long evening seemed like even more of a revelation because by then she moved into cover songs, and really blew us away. Without going into a song-by-song analysis or review, I will tell you she made these songs her own, and her band was tight skilled throughout the 2-hour marathon. In no particular order, from my scribbled bar notes, this is a sample of her musical breadth that night:
She tore up (in a good way) two of the late Amy Winehouse’s tunes, in tribute: “Valerie” (with Meagan Duffy just ripping the solos), and “I Told You I’m No Good.” Awesome and confident in delivery, and I think Amy herself would’ve approved…
Delving way back to the ’50’s, MaryLeigh performed the Sandra Dee classic “Fever” which normally is reserved for more mature chanteuses, and carried it off beautifully. Another surprisingly primordial chestnut (for me) was a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” — more recently brought back to life by Social Distortion– as it was the first song I can ever recall hearing on the radio, circa ’58 or ’59, when my Aunt Sue took me ice skating with her teenage friends, as a very little dude– that was a trip in the wayback machine I was not expecting.
She then proved not to be locked into the past by playing at least two tunes from very recent times: “I Wish He Was My Boyfriend”– a plaintive croon from the duo Best Coast, and then “Sentimental Heart” which I believe comes from the equally glossy voice of the multi-talented Zooey Deschanel, when she was with M. Ward in the group “She & Him.”
Where she really caught my attention was in the R&B/soul department, crossing gender lines by channeling old Bill Withers chestnuts: “Ain’t No Sunshine” and then “Use Me Up”– both intense, the first pleading and poignant, the latter robust and rollicking (again, Meagan Duffy tearing it up). Even more amazing, she had the temerity to tackle “Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, a heartbreaking torch tune if there ever was one, and not usually attempted by young white girls, to my knowledge.
She calmed things down at one point by passing the vocal mike to bassist James Gascoyne, who sang a mellow version of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.” (I had chatted with him briefly, and knew from WEXT that he was a member of The Rodeo Barons… later he passed along a copy of that group’s fine debut CD– which is now in heavy rotation as I drive as well.)
Another soulful surprise from the history vaults of My Youth (and her parents’ day, no doubt) was an ebullient version of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back!” She was bouncing as she sang that one, and the drummer Stan Francois looked positively gleeful as she channeled another departed spirit, the pre-pubescent Michael Jackson himself, in one of those late 60’s Motown hits that swept the radiowaves back then, but is only heard on Golden Oldies stations now.
Once the clock passed midnight and our empty glasses of wonderful Smutty Nose Ales had piled up a bit, I wasn’t taking notes so well anymore, just dancing up close with my sashaying wife and a couple dozen others (it seemed) in a crowded space right up front. I may have been imagining this part– channeling another occasion?– but I thought I heard her do Eminem’s collossal rap classic “Lose Yourself” which harkened back to my euphoria at hearing that one done in a raucous grunge manner– “YOU ONLY GOT ONE SHOT!!”– by the boys in Four Down at Bailey’s Cafe, and elsewhere. (Did she really cross gender boundaries like that? Someone please SNAP ME BACK TO REE-ALITY…It was a helluva macho missive for a sweet young thing to take on, if so…)
But one thing I am sure of was the closing number– it gets to the point where the clock strikes One, and the show is supposed to be over, the dancers are all worked up and sweaty, even the seated listeners and standing wait staff are calling for more, we’re only an hour into the New Year, and we don’t want things to stop abruptly right there and then.
The band seemed to discuss for a moment how to conclude matters, and next thing you know, MaryLeigh is at first channeling Ray Charles, then it morphs into Jamie Foxx: “(S)HE GIVES ME MONEY…WHEN I’M IN NEEEEED…” and I’m going No She Didn’t, O Yes She Did, She Be Tacklin’ “GOLD-DIGGER!!!” And off she went, propelled by Stan’s nasty stacatto beat, into Kanye’s version, complete with hiccupin’ rippin’ rap scat, rhymin’ Sunday with Hyundai, and talkin’ ’bout how the character in question “ain’t messing wit’ no BROKE/BROKE/BROKE…” uh, Folks. Oh Miy Gahhd, it was beyond GOOD, it was Killer.
What a way to take things out. It was sad to have to leave after that, but just as well we did. Downtown had devolved into its usual late weekend rowdy fiasco state once we hit the street, and the best thing to do then was find your car and wind safely toward home… wishing I was within walking distance like in the old days. But we rounded up our peripatetic, athletic, pedestrian son D. at about 1:30 and headed home, raving about this phenomenal young singer and what we had just seen and heard from her.
Anyone who was there is now a converted fan, and I hope I speak for them in saying,
I Want To Hear More. You are young and there is more to come. MaryLeigh, please, more gigs like these. You were apparently born to perform: cabaret, rock, and soul are in your DNA and blood, and keep it flowing girl, bring us some more.
Adios till next time, and thanks for reading–
Copyright Wayne Perras 2013, for www.saratoga.com
via WaynesWord2
So thankful for your recap, Wayne! Maryleigh really does rule. See ya on the radio!