Molly Tuttle and her great band are on tour again this Summer, and announced a date at the Waterville Opera House on July 25. They also announced gigs in Boston and at the Ossipee Valley Festival in Southern Maine, but we settled for just the one.
Sarah and I drove out to Waterville on an afternoon which was threatening rain but then clearing up as we approached town, maybe. We had looked at several places for dinner and settled on the Lion's Den Tavern, which had cold beer and very nice food. It was pretty empty when we arrived but the crowd was right behind us. The place was soon packed and while we ate a thunderstorm struck hard and heavy rain soaked the downtown.
By the time we left, the sun was back out though, and after wandering over to check out the river we got our Will Call tickets and joined the line already waiting to get in about 15 minutes before doors. Most concerts in the Waterville Opera House are reserved seats, but for this they did General Admission for the orchestra (reserved upstairs), and a woman announced that the GA policy meant, "You're free to sit anywhere you like. So that means that if someone is standing up and dancing in front of you, you're free to move to another seat." I wish they'd say stuff like that more often! We opted for seats in the fourth row, on the center aisle, knowing that the front of the theater would jam up with people standing, and strategically insuring fine site lines and fine sound. We were right, especially when, as they do in the WOH, they let people rush up into the orchestra pit.
The Chatham Rabbits opened and they're a fine, mellow, husband and wife, folk-country duet from North Carolina with a bunch of very good originals. Sarah has a pleasing, untutored voice and picked workmanlike leads on her large banjo while Austin backed her up on guitar. But after a long break the real deal came on, and the crowd erupted.
Molly Tuttle and her Golden Highway band, with Bronwyn, Kyle, Shelby, and Dominick, has been touring heavily for a few years, riding the crest of the wave of bluegrass stardom, and the people of Maine were Dooley (no pun intended) thankful that they'd paid us a visit. They've become such a mature band, playing together flawlessly and upping the difficulty level with each show. In one jam they rotated between each player soloing with four bars, then two bars on the next round, then one bar, then actually trading notes before Molly's guitar took dominance. They can play downhome bluegrass and instantly switch to a baroque arrangement, and then finish the song like a rock and roll band. Molly is of course one of the best bluegrass guitar players and female singers ever, and the rest of the band is of exceptional quality, particularly Bronwyn and Dominick.
They opened with the hard bluegrass of Over the Line and followed that with their excellent cover of the Stones' She's a Rainbow and then just went on and on with their top notch songs. It didn't take long for them to get to the spacey/spooky stuff, which on this occasion included Where Did All the Wild Things Go?, Stranger Things, and Alice In the Bluegrass.
She did so many of her other great songs too, including Downhome Dispensary, Crooked Tree, and El Dorado. A high point for me was their unexpected cover of Queen Of Hearts, written by Hank De Vito (I'd thought Guy Clark wrote it) and covered by Rodney Crowell. But the real highlight was when the band left the stage and Molly moved up front with her guitar and asked for requests. Several were shouted out (I wanted Cold Rain and Snow), but she knew what she wanted to play, and gave us a priceless cover of Standing On the Moon, playing it like a folk song sung around a prairie camp fire.
She asked the Rabbits back out for the last song, and they traded verses on Big Backyard, which of course includes the line about the rocky coast of New England. Molly said she and Shelby had taken a ferry out to Vinalhaven while they were up in the mid-coast, too bad the weather was not the best for them.
Great show, and then a long drive home through deserted country roads.
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