{"id":584,"date":"2015-08-19T21:48:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T21:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2015-11-29T03:57:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T03:57:58","slug":"willie-and-alison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"Willie and Alison"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bannerwilliealison\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No one makes Kathleen sing along like Willie Nelson. He was having that effect on most people at the Santa Barbara Bowl last week. Why the Santa Barbara Bowl, you ask? Because we could get cheap tickets for $50, and that\u2019s as much as I will pay. There were 5000 people there; I guess the concert took in $500,000. The cheapest tickets for the Los Angeles concert were $80 in a 7000-seat venue\u2014you can do the math. Anyway, it\u2019s nice to have an excuse to go to SB. And sitting at the back in the cheap seats you can see the ocean. In addition, why is it called the Santa Barbara Bowl<\/em>, Alison Krauss asked. Yes, why?<\/p>\n

Maybe they had an excuse to charge a lot because the concert was a double-header. Alison Krauss is not your average opening act, though the people in the expensive seats were the average expensive-seat-audience in failing to arrive for the opening act. This was unwise because Alison and her band can carry a concert on their own, and usually do \u2013 they were the main act the previous time we saw them, four years ago, a couple of weeks after I had my prostate out, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

\"Record\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Alison has the world\u2019s best player of the dobro (a lap steel guitar), Jerry Douglas. She also has Dan Tyminski, whose voice you hear coming out of George Clooney\u2019s mouth in Oh Brother<\/em> (Dan\u2019s wife says that her husband\u2019s voice and Clooney\u2019s face constitutes her dream man). But most of all she has her own pure, subtle, elegant, mesmerizing voice. I\u2019m still humming \u201cBaby, now that I\u2019ve found you.\u201d But she sang fewer songs than I expected; I think because she is careful about not overdoing it because she has had vocal chords trouble. But anyway she is also a formidable fiddler. She is bluegrass for people who don\u2019t like bluegrass.<\/p>\n

\"07222015_Willie_Nelson_08_r175x200\"<\/a>When Willie Nelson came on, a giant Texas flag dropped behind him. One also has to comment on his age (82), but over against Alison its significance lies in one\u2019s sense that he has lived in his songs for so many decades. The voice that\u2019s husky or gravelly (not pure like Alison\u2019s) helps to convey that impression. The songs come from deep inside. Maybe that\u2019s especially true of On the Road Again<\/em>, but it\u2019s also somehow true about the songs that don\u2019t necessarily relate to his own experience.<\/p>\n

Kathleen and others were especially vocal during Mammas, Don\u2019t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys<\/em> with the telling line, \u201cThey’ll never stay home and they’re always alone, even with someone they love.\u201d A striking aspect of Willie\u2019s set was the way he letting one song flow into the next seamlessly without missing a beat, song after song. Another striking aspect was that most songs lasted two minutes and twenty-five seconds, presumably because they were written by people such as Hank Williams back in the days of 78 r.p.m. records when every song had to get itself over in that time.<\/p>\n

Willie\u2019s band was only himself plus two percussion (!), bass, harmonica, and keyboard, which made for a crisp, clean sound. It gave great prominence to the virtuoso harmonica, and it also exposed Willie\u2019s guitar work in a way that made clear what a virtuoso he himself is.<\/p>\n

\"SB-Bowl-Eve\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one makes Kathleen sing along like Willie Nelson. He was having that effect on most people at the Santa Barbara Bowl last week. Why the Santa Barbara Bowl, you ask? Because we could get cheap tickets for $50, and that\u2019s as much as I will pay. There were 5000 people there; I guess the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[15,14],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-alison-krauss","tag-willie-nelson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5VlqB-9q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}