Review: Eliza Rickman Live in My Living Room
So you may be wondering how the Eliza Rickman concert in my house went. The answer is that it went awesomely well. When Eliza becomes incredibly famous and successful, 18 of my friends can say that they saw her Cleveland area debut in my living room. The list of attendees:
WRUW People:
gieves
my cohost Shari and her husband
Helen, who happens to be Shari's daughter
Ed from Chasing Infinity, plus Mrs. Chasing Infinity
Colleen from Museum without Walls and her date Kevin
Adam from The Spektrum
Coworkers:
Eric and Jackie
Maria, who happens to be Jackie's daughter (I sense a trend)
herpdaddy
PhiKaps (who both used to be coworkers, coincidentally)
John
Dave
Assorted Other Friends Who Don't Neatly Fit Into Other Categories
zodarzone
jackthebodyless
EJ
A whole bunch of other people RSVPed, but they all lamed out, mostly without an excuse. Their loss. If I ever host another house concert I can definitely get 25 people in my living room without even crowding them to tight.
In any event, after Eliza arrived I helped her unpack and we got takeout Chinese food, which wasn't our first choice but the usually reliable India Garden wasn't answering their phone. Shortly after we ate people began arriving. People brought snack foods and alcohol and there was much merriment and adoration of Hamlet and Tulip. In particular Hamlet was completely conked out in Jackie's lap which was pretty hilarious.
Eliza played a short set, about 60 minutes. My piano (aka, 'the big girl piano'), which I inherited from the previous owners when I bought the house, was actually used for a few songs, although it's shortcomings with respect to being in tune were quite apparent. Most of the rest of the set was performed on toy piano, with a switch to accordion for the final two songs, the last of which was a interesting cover of Ring of Fire. My personal favorite moment of the show was the song "Silly Little Soldiers", which involved Eliza passing out an assortment of plastic instruments and noisemakers and inviting everyone to play them at any time they felt was appropriate. I had a 'sheep in a can', which was good fun.
After the show I and many of the other concert goers picked up a copy of Eliza's six song EP "Gild the Lily" and I think that most of us are looking forward to her full length album, which is coming out in early December. It turns out that ice cream novelties go on sale at the end of the summer, so I handed out fudgsicles, drumsticks, ice cream sandwiches, toffee bars and ice cream bars to everyone who wanted one, which was pretty much everybody.
So yeah, the first house concert at my house was a success. Somewhat hilariously, literally the next day some random musician from Kent emailed me to ask if I always did house concerts and was I interested in hosting another. I said no... for now.
And now, some photos courtesy of herpdaddy. If you'd like to see his commentary, you can read the original posts I stole these from.
As always, herpdaddy did a great job with the photos. If you like that kind of thing, he's the only person I know who successfully does 'photo a day' posts; check it out.
Monday morning I took Eliza out to breakfast, and then she was off to New York City. As luck would have it though, I happened to be in Chicago last weekend where she was playing a show with her full band on 10/8. Her band included a full string section (Anna Walker on cello, Daniel Gillespie on violin, Roz Torto on viola) and a drummer (Kevin O'Donnell from Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire). When I stepped out of the taxi Eliza was sitting on the curb; the first thing she said to me was "Where are the dogs?" Anyway, the space was also fully equipped with a grand piano, although one key was dramatically out of tune, which she quipped was so that I wouldn't feel too homesick. With such a fine piano available very few songs were played on the toy piano this time around. She played a lot of the same songs that she did at my house, but with the strings and percussion they sounded completely different, and in my opinion even better. This time around she covered a Nick Drake (Nick Cave? I'm blanking) [EDIT - Eliza says it was Nick Cave "Into My Arms"] song which sounded really great with the string section. Oh, and this time I got to play the 'cow in a can', just for variety :-) Oh, and here are some pictures from the Chicago gig that I did not take.
WRUW People:
gieves
my cohost Shari and her husband
Helen, who happens to be Shari's daughter
Ed from Chasing Infinity, plus Mrs. Chasing Infinity
Colleen from Museum without Walls and her date Kevin
Adam from The Spektrum
Coworkers:
Eric and Jackie
Maria, who happens to be Jackie's daughter (I sense a trend)
herpdaddy
PhiKaps (who both used to be coworkers, coincidentally)
John
Dave
Assorted Other Friends Who Don't Neatly Fit Into Other Categories
zodarzone
jackthebodyless
EJ
A whole bunch of other people RSVPed, but they all lamed out, mostly without an excuse. Their loss. If I ever host another house concert I can definitely get 25 people in my living room without even crowding them to tight.
In any event, after Eliza arrived I helped her unpack and we got takeout Chinese food, which wasn't our first choice but the usually reliable India Garden wasn't answering their phone. Shortly after we ate people began arriving. People brought snack foods and alcohol and there was much merriment and adoration of Hamlet and Tulip. In particular Hamlet was completely conked out in Jackie's lap which was pretty hilarious.
Eliza played a short set, about 60 minutes. My piano (aka, 'the big girl piano'), which I inherited from the previous owners when I bought the house, was actually used for a few songs, although it's shortcomings with respect to being in tune were quite apparent. Most of the rest of the set was performed on toy piano, with a switch to accordion for the final two songs, the last of which was a interesting cover of Ring of Fire. My personal favorite moment of the show was the song "Silly Little Soldiers", which involved Eliza passing out an assortment of plastic instruments and noisemakers and inviting everyone to play them at any time they felt was appropriate. I had a 'sheep in a can', which was good fun.
After the show I and many of the other concert goers picked up a copy of Eliza's six song EP "Gild the Lily" and I think that most of us are looking forward to her full length album, which is coming out in early December. It turns out that ice cream novelties go on sale at the end of the summer, so I handed out fudgsicles, drumsticks, ice cream sandwiches, toffee bars and ice cream bars to everyone who wanted one, which was pretty much everybody.
So yeah, the first house concert at my house was a success. Somewhat hilariously, literally the next day some random musician from Kent emailed me to ask if I always did house concerts and was I interested in hosting another. I said no... for now.
And now, some photos courtesy of herpdaddy. If you'd like to see his commentary, you can read the original posts I stole these from.
As always, herpdaddy did a great job with the photos. If you like that kind of thing, he's the only person I know who successfully does 'photo a day' posts; check it out.
Monday morning I took Eliza out to breakfast, and then she was off to New York City. As luck would have it though, I happened to be in Chicago last weekend where she was playing a show with her full band on 10/8. Her band included a full string section (Anna Walker on cello, Daniel Gillespie on violin, Roz Torto on viola) and a drummer (Kevin O'Donnell from Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire). When I stepped out of the taxi Eliza was sitting on the curb; the first thing she said to me was "Where are the dogs?" Anyway, the space was also fully equipped with a grand piano, although one key was dramatically out of tune, which she quipped was so that I wouldn't feel too homesick. With such a fine piano available very few songs were played on the toy piano this time around. She played a lot of the same songs that she did at my house, but with the strings and percussion they sounded completely different, and in my opinion even better. This time around she covered a Nick Drake (Nick Cave? I'm blanking) [EDIT - Eliza says it was Nick Cave "Into My Arms"] song which sounded really great with the string section. Oh, and this time I got to play the 'cow in a can', just for variety :-) Oh, and here are some pictures from the Chicago gig that I did not take.