More Carrie Rodriguez

Show time was 8:30 for Carrie Rodriguez (and Luke Jacobs) at Johhny D's yesterday, and our "dinner seating" was 6-6:30!?!  We headed over there after the Patriots defeat in the AFC championship game to the Broncos, and still beat almost everyone, though we were a bit after our time.  The room was filled with tables and they put us right in front of the stage.  After a nice couple of burgers, some good Slumbrew beer, many hands of cribbage, and a short conversation with Carrie, we were ready.  And by then all the tables had filled up; the stage side was pretty packed, though the bar side was relatively empty.

Carrie changed into her stomping shoes (she was wearing a sparkly red dress with a big bow at the waist that made her look like a Christmas present), Luke wore his usual suspenders and derby, and they got right into it.  If you've never heard her, Carrie is not particularly flashy, not particularly funky, not in the top echelon of song writers, her songs don't have a lot of hooks, and she's not the best singer around.  But she's incredibly talented and produces beautiful music that you need to bear with a bit before it sinks into you.

She's from Texas and has the twang to prove it, but is Berklee-educated and has the technical chops to prove that.  An interesting contrast is with the Texas singer-songwriter we saw the night before, Robert Earl Keen.  Carrie would never approach a song (or a note) with the laconic ease he does, and her songs are the opposite of in-your-face, but they've both got that Texas singer-songwriter panache ... like, why would I be doing anything other than this??

Here's the setlist:

I Don't Mind Waiting
Devil In Mind
50's French Movie
Lake Harriet
Get Back In Love
Oh God (Luke's song about his parents)
Wayfaring Stranger/Greasy Strings (fiddle medley)
Bury Me Beneath the Willow (Carter Family)
Brooklyn
Waterbound
She Ain't Me
Got Your Name On It
Seven Angels On a Bicycle
I Cry For Love
Sad Joy
La Puñalada Trapera

Not bad eh?  Had another bit of a talk with her after the show, and she remembered playing at Northeast Harbor, ME with Chip Taylor, the first time we saw her ... probably hard to forget if you're from Texas!