Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.

Moving: walked 2 miles

17 August 2001: Cowboy Junkies

Best show ever.

The opening act, Tim Easton, was remarkably Dylanesque for how much I liked him: dissheveled hair, harmonica on a frame around his neck, guitar, and voice, by golly, his voice. Of course, I like Dylan-influenced Elvis Costello and Waterboys, Dylan-esquey David Gray, and Dylan-spawn like Jakob Dylan and his Wallflowers. Also one of Bob Dylan's own actual songs, the one he did for the movie "Wonderboys." So my usual line of "I don't like Bob Dylan" doesn't really wash. But I've held to it so long I wonder if I could let it go. I've held onto through what RDC said was the best Dylan set he ever saw, opening for the Dead at the second and last Highgate show and through Beth's saying it would be her personal mission for me to like Bob Dylan. But anyway, I like Tim Easton. He had one accompanyist, a bassist. I am a sucker, a huge sucker, for an upright bass. This is probably why "Speaking Confidentially" is one of my favorite songs (okay, that's a cello, but still).

Then, my Cowboy Junkies.

• Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park
• I Saw Your Shoes ~~>
• A Horse in the Country
• If You Were Woman and I Were the Man
• Small Swift Birds
• Upon Still Waters
• Hard to Explain
• Last Spike
• This Street, That Man, This Life
• Bread and Wine
• Thirty Summers
• Lungs
• Escape Is So Simple
• I'm So Open
• Lay It Down
• Anniversary Song
• Misguided Angel
• Blue Moon Revisited
• Thunder Road

At Toad's Place they opened with "Seven Years"; at Lilith Fair and Kinetics with "Miles from Our Home"; last year with "Crescent Moon"; at Twist and Shout and in Boston with "Dragging Hooks." They're all good opening songs, but when the first line of a show is "Murder, tonight, in the trailer park / Missus Annabelle Evans found with her throat cut after dark," you know it's going to be a powerful show. During "Lay It Down," Margo left the stage for everyone else to jam, and jam they did. Who knew anyone could jam with a mandolin? Jeff Bird can. And Michael used his wah-wah pedal (is that what it's still called, or am I tragically unhip? rhetorical question) to play his own feedback like a whole nother instrument. It was so meta I wondered if what he heard in his head was "Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich." Or, more logically, "Timmins Timmins Timmins."

I wonder if Jeff Bird knows another mandolin-ier, David Grisman, who collaborated with Jerry Garcia on not enough American folk songs and bluegrass.

I was maybe closer at Toad's Place when Margo smiled at me! me! when I sang along to "Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning." (Which I think they named in this manner: Michael typed potential lyrics into Microsoft Word and when he saved the file, MSW prompted a file name with the first words.)

But I was pretty close tonight.

Margo said she was missing the wedding of friends tonight and she was hoping if she sang them a song maybe they'd feel the vibes, a wedding song even though the Junkies don't have many wedding songs. RDC squeezed me and said "Anniversary Song." Instead they began "If You Were the Woman and I [were] the Man." Which is lovely and yearning and romantic in its way but is a duet. The response stanza is, of course, "If I [were] the woman and you were the man." The studio version has John Prine, who wasn't here this night. So they dropped the second stanza, which just isn't right.

(Why no one but Jim Croce and the Police use the conditional I don't know. I myself sing "I wish I were homeward bound." And people do use the conditional in the "Time in a Bottle" sense. I just hate "If I was." Also I'm the one who sings "Changes" from 90125 as "between you and me" instead of as written, "between you and I.")

Anyway. The last song of the pre-encore show did turn out to be "Anniversary Song." I wonder if they're trying to ditch, at least in concert, their barbiturate-blues reputation.

I am glad that at Twist and Shout I was about to thank Michael in person for Caution Horses. "Sun Comes Up," "Mariner's Song," "Witches," and "You Will Be Loved Again" are the more Me songs even than the rest of the album, but I was ecstatic to hear "Thirty Summers" (again) and, for the first time live, "Escape Is So Simple." And did I mention, right against the stage? Here, "stage" is defined as "stage plus barrier and space between for guards to walk." Still, right against the stage. Before the show RDC and another man discussed how such proximity sacrificed sound, but I didn't care. They could go find chairs. (And afterward, he said the sound was fine.) He didn't, he stayed with me, just behind me so we could get all smoochy during the (relatively) romantic songs. And when I held his arms around my waist and mouthed--I don't sing out loud (anymore) in such a context---"I'll love him the rest of my days," she grinned at me or us. Again! Me! Or us.

Around me were people calling for "Common Disaster" and "Sweet Jane." I heard "Common Disaster" at Lilith Fair and "Sweet Jane" at Kinetics but I felt their pain: I'm glad I didn't check the message board until after my own show, because they did "Witches" at Beaver Creek. And the complete River trilogy. And Margo didn't mess up that I noticed--I don't know the songs from Open in my gut yet, as I do those of the other albums. She came in a beat, a measure, a bar, or something, too early in "Hard to Explain" (I think) but that was all. When someone persistently heckled for "Common Disaster," she said they hadn't played that for so long, and she didn't know if she could, and the lyrics weren't in her book. I see how a setlist enables her to perform at all.

I asked the soundboard for the setlist and they peeled it off and gave it to me. From the stand I bought Tim Easton's The Truth about Us with "Carry Me" and "Don't Walk Alone" on it, and also Rarities, which I have not been able to locate. (Buying it will probably make it appear from under the microwave or wherever it's got to). We waited with Jana and Laura, the women I met buying tickets last year, whose dog is named Margo, and whom we have seen at every show since. I guess I would rather Margo had signed Rarities, but the setlist was the most accessible. So I thanked her for a great show and for "Escape Is So Simple" as she scrawled, and then we left. Margo had said the back bar, gesturing to the rear of the floor, and that's where most people waited; we asked the staff at the back bar and they indicated the stage door, at the back of the building. This spared us a 100-person queue, and we left.

What a great show.