Paula West at Herbst Theatre, January 25, 2019

San Francisco Performances presents Paula West performing the Bob Dylan Songbook
Herbst Theatre
Veterans' Building, San Francisco War Memorial Performing Arts Center, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102-4522 USA
7:30 PM, Friday, January 25, 2019

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2019 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2019 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[7:30 PM lights down, announcements from Melanie Smith, band out]

1. [7:32 PM] Mr. Tambourine Man
2. [7:38 PM] I Want You
3. [7:45 PM] In My Time of Dying
4. [7:51 PM] Subterranean Homesick Blues
5. [7:55 PM] Short People (Randy Newman)
   [banter, tossing “No.” hats into the crowd]
6. [8:03 PM] Blowing in the Wind
7. [8:09 PM] Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
8. [8:14 PM] Gimme Some Truth (John Lennon)
9. [8:20 PM] Put On a Happy Face (Lee Adams)
10. [8:24 PM] The Times They Are A-Changin'
11. [8:29 PM] Just Like a Woman
12. [8:34 PM] It Ain't Me Babe
13. [8:39 PM] Rainy Day Woman, #12 & 35
14. [8:44 PM] A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
15. [8:54 PM] Make You Feel My Love
16. [9:00 PM] Like a Rolling Stone
    [show ends 9:07 PM; bows, then off … no encore]
    
    Post-performance talk
    [9:10 PM; Cyrus Musiker talks with Paula West]
    [talk ends 9:23 PM]

• Jon Arkin: drums;
• Owen Clapp: contrabass;
• Adam Shulman: piano;
• Scott Sorkin: hollow-body electric guitar, semi-hollow-body electric guitar;
• Paula West: vox.

Tonight was the first public performance of this show from Paula and the newly constituted back-up band. Seemed alright, if not perfectly seamless and well-oiled like a seasoned production. I'm darn glad I attended, even if I was a little disappointed that the song selection seemed to focus mostly on Dylan's early classics.

Since I started bitching, I guess I'll also complain that the Post-performance talk wasn't all that interesting. Most of Cy's questions were kind of long-winded, and phrased so as to push Paula into a corner where only a brief response was appropriate (“Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah, don't you agree?”).

Given the current events of the day (indictment of Roger Stone for perjury; see details here), many of the tunes on the setlist seemed more topical than you'd expect for something written 50+ years ago! Paula made brief comments about this throughout the show, but tried hard not to let her thoughts derail the flow of the set too much.

Program Notes or program notes

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2019 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2019 event list! ☸ On to the next event!