Cascade Canyon School presents a Mother's Day Benefit show featuring Joan Baez; Jai Uttal & Friends
2014-05-11
Angelico Hall Dominican University, 50 Acacia Ave, San Rafael, CA
7:00 PM, Sunday, May 11, 2014

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[7:09 PM lights down, announcements from Tom Asher]

1. [7:12 PM] ? #
2. [7:18 PM] ?
3. [7:28 PM] ?
4. [7:38 PM] Let Me Be Sky
5. [7:44 PM] ? Govinda Gopala
   [set ends 7:52 PM]

[8:17 PM lights down, Joan alone]

1. [8:17 PM] God is God &
2. [8:22 PM] There But for Fortune &
   [add Gabe Harris & Dirk Powell]
3. [8:26 PM] Flora (the Lily of the West) &#
4. [8:31 PM] It's All Over Now, Baby Blue &@
5. [8:35 PM] ? (en Español) &^
6. [8:41 PM] the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll @
   [add Grace Stumberg]
7. [8:48 PM] ? %
   [GH, GS off]
8. [8:52 PM] Jerusalem %
   [DP off]
9. [8:56 PM] Diamonds & Rust &
10. [9:02 PM] Swing Low, Sweet Chariot &
    [add GH, Jasmine Harris, DP, GS]
11. [9:05 PM] Lean on Me
    [JH, GS off]
12. [9:10 PM] Dig a Hole #
13. [9:14 PM] House of the Rising Sun &$
14. [9:19 PM] Gracias a la Vida &$
    [9:23 PM offstage after bows; back in a minute or two]
     
    Encore
15. [9:25 PM] Imagine &%
    [add GS]
16. [9:28 PM] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down &%
    [show ends 9:32 PM]

• Joan Baez: & acoustic guitar, lead and harmony vox;
• Gabe Harris: cajon, djembe, congas, percussion;
• Jasmine Harris: lead and harmony vox;
• Dirk Powell: # banjo, ^ mandolin, @ acoustic guitar, $ acoustic bass guitar, % piano, harmony vox;
• Grace Stumberg: lead and harmony vox.

• ?Amy Marenelli: congas, percussion;
• Celso Alberti: drums;
• Ben Leinbach: bass;
• José Neto: guitar;
• Jai Uttal: # harmonium, acoustic guitar, vox;
• Prajna Vieira: hand cymbals, vox.

What a huge clusterf#@k! As Dominican is set in a neighborhood of small streets and many stop signs, a couple hundred cars can really mess things up. We encounter a small wait trying to get to the campus and into the parking lot, but it's not too stressful since we're early, so we sit in the car and groove to the Grateful Dead (12/12/69, yeah!), rolling forward one car length every now and then. Eventually we are admitted to the parking lot, which is strangely quiet, but then we walk ove to the venue and see the huge line of folks waiting to pick up tix from will call. Yikes! We obediently wait, and after a good 10-12 minutes of shuffling forward inch by inch, the process accelerates when a bunch of volunteers begin pulling selected letter groups out of the line (A to C over here! D to J over by the tree, etc), and the resulting vacuum allows us to zoom forward, nearly to the front. We wait a few more minutes with renewed patience, and soon we receive our tickets and enter the hall. The lobby is packed crazy full, but I pretend to be smoke and drift over to the side and then up the less crowded stairway on house left. Our seats are almost dead center, front row balcony, but between the squishy seat cushions and the short pitch to the rail, this isn't necessarily as good as it sounds. Fine for viewing, if you can fold up like a pocketknife and then stay comfortable, but I found it kind of painful within the first few minutes, so I stand up to wait for the show to start.

About ten past seven, the show begins with thanks and announcements from Cascade parent Tom Asher, then with a short set by Jai Uttal and Friends. Jai's first tune, on harmonium, doesn't seem to click with the crowd, as it ends to utter silence. Guess the audience just didn't know what they were in for, and forgot to be polite! Anyways, I enjoy his set, and I'm sorry when it ends, about ten minutes short of 8 PM, though I'm glad that the impending set break means I'll have a chance to stand and stretch a little before submitting to another misery session in my teensy little seat.

Twenty minutes later, Joan walks out unannounced, guitar in hand, and launches into Steve Earle's God is God, a tune he wrote in 2011 that Joan subsequently adopted for her live sets. We get one more solo tune, Phil Och's 1963 classic There But for Fortune, and then the band comes out, along with Joan's dog. The show tonight is pretty casual, with Joan cracking jokes and teasing the crowd about this and that (like the subdued reaction to her mention of Bob Dylan). Midway through the set Joan brings out her granddaughter Jasmine, a student at Cascade School, who sang lead on the 1972 Bill Withers classic, Lean on Me. Joan's personal assistant and guitar tech, Grace Stumberg, also joins the ensemble for a couple songs, adding a marvelously alto voice that richly complement's Joan's soprano, most notably on the night's final tune, the Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

All in all, it was a fine event, despite the inconveniences!

Back to the previous event ☸ Back to the 2014 yearbox ☸ Back to the 2014 event list! ☸ On to the next event!