Dave's Music #149 Bluff View Concerts - Good Morning Bedlam
Sometimes I wonder if I host the BEST and ONLY great live music in Holmen WI, which is kind of embarrassing for an exponentially growing suburb of LaCrosse WI. At least we are the best listening room so you don't have to go to Smokey's or HD Tavern that have an infrequent schedule. Even though we've been doing four concerts a year since 2010, we're still getting our name out to the 9,000+ people that now live in the area. (yes it was in the 3,000 range when we moved to the area in 1985).
Good Morning Bedlam was both an absolutely wonderful concert, and a marketing event to new audience of Americana music. A sold out show with a cross section of ages and newbie that were brought to us because they were fans of GMB. Now I have to repeat for new readers, I take NONE of the door, I donate the suggested amounts, and we provide a night stay, meal and any preferred adult beverages.
My rewards are many which include the friendships built with some of the best musicians in the nation, the repeat audience that I end up seeing at other venues, and of course the best bootleg concert recordings as memories. Today's blog post will dive a little into all of that and more of Isaak and Tori's music.
First let's start off with the fact I told Isaak I couldn't book them because I had the spot reserved and the date would have been when the Christmas tree was up which would be tough to work around and reduce the number of chairs. Well, my two reservations kind of fell through when I said, give me a date or I'm moving on. Keep in mind, both might be back in the schedule when a tour brings them closer so I'm not saying who. We agreed right after Boats and Bluegrass and Lori had a chance to see them. Here was my recording of them from there:
Of course... deep dive, this is the studio version of the song:
Next I knew about them from my all-time favorite Twin Cities Americana source for music information, Adventures in Americana and their podcast with Smouse in the House. Give it a listen or come back later:
Now the life of a house concert host includes getting the word out via email list, Instagram and Facebook. I am totally thankful for building a reputation of an audience that trusts my tastes to a point where they just show up if they don't have anything scheduled. That will tend to give us a house that feels nice, and I put out say 24 chairs for 20 people. When an artist is known in the area, I get the next layer of 30 to 40 to tops 50 if I don't have a Christmas tree and it's a solo or duo. Yes.. in our past Chicago Farmer sold out so fast we added a Thursday before and got 27 people to come to that one too.
While we sold out fairly early it's all reservations and not ticket sales. So up and down, add more chairs say yes, remind a few regulars, and get surprised by newbies; it brings you all to the final few days. The check list was put in this Facebook post:
This host's weekend:
1) Move furniture & vacuum
2) Set chairs and speakers
3) Stop at the store for salmon, wine, and fizzy water
4) Wait for the snow to stop
5) Shovel, run sound, and nap
6) Sound check, cook dinner, and meet artists
7) Completely enjoy a full house and wonderful concert
Stay up way too late talking9) Get up to feed Hobbes at 7:00
10) Coffee, say goodbye, and start tear down.
11) Lunch with Dustin and more tear down
12) Nap
13) Pizza with our nephew Jamie and his son Noah
14) Binge 3 more shows on Netflix
15) Start looking at videos and recording
16) Decide it will be Monday's blog post after I run to the library and upload the high resolution videos
17) Tease about the two videos coming
18) Hope you enjoy it.
So here are the two videos I took and the studio versions of the songs:
Haunting:
Their LuLu album is absolutely wonderful, I am surprised this was their first time in the blog.
St. James Infirmary is one of the best songs for anyone to cover, and Isaak and Tori excelled at it. Sadly I didn't know they had a jam out 30 seconds tag at the end and did not finish recording it.
It's available on Bandcamp, so BUY it like I did.
Picking up after a concert I find myself deferring help, because you know every chair has it's place and that's what the unwind period is all about the next day. I did love to pick up the set list from the floor though...
So I could go on and on about how warm these two people were and the stories they shared both in the concert and during after concert chat with them and my son's friends that hung around past 1:00 when I went to bed. I truly knew I needed to watch more of the videos we talked about; and the stories of moving from one tiny fiddle player to the other. Wow, I had never noticed this picture before, I didn't get Tori's comment about when Isaak would sweat a lot with his other hair cut... oh my.
So I watch all these videos with so much more backstories, which just like Vegas what's said after the concert at Bluff View is confidential unless I get approval. Truly I love them MORE, and you should look them up and subscribe
Sticks and Stones:
Salt:
This song was not played because as a duo it was just too hard to pull it off
Ok my journey may never be over in diving deeper into their music, but I'll leave you will this cover to make you as intrigued as I am. (Yes this Beatles tune is one of my favorites that I think I first heard from the Paperboys.)
UPDATE after initial post. Isaak & Tori approved for the concert to be released on Bandcamp, so you can give it a listen (maybe 2 or 3) before Bandcamp asks you to buy it. All the proceeds go to them and not me... so drop them a few bucks and get a really cool bootleg live recording.
Click here to see the past releases. You can find and follow us on Facebook and as always Good Music has NO Expiration Date, so if you are listening to this ten years from now, it still will be awesome music. If this is a first time visit, check out the index of themes for past Reviews and Playlist editions and for the Reviews alone, click here. Find out why I do this here, who I am here, and why I hate Spotify here.
#MusicHasNOExpirationDate #MusicDiscoveryDate #LPDualRate #musicblog #Mixtheme #musicblogger #playlist #musicislife #musiclife #musicvideo #blog #musiclover #musicindustry #songlist #notonspotify #newmusicalert #musiclovers #instamusic #explorepage #musicreview #singer #artist #musicians #musicnews #blogger #Americana #bandcamp
