Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, CA, 5 Apr 2014

[Bud]

Krall dips into the long-ago past

Special night ahead for mapache61!

http://www.dailypilot.com/entertainment ... full.story

[mapache61]

Nice little interview/preview. Thanks, Bud. And yes, very much looking forward to this Saturday's show, and the tour in general. Its been quiet around here lately.

[mapache61]

Another great GRD show last night! DK was in fine voice, as always. And Anthony Wilson is back on guitar. I know he played the Australia dates, but correct me if I'm wrong, I believe this is his first outing with the GRD band. He played beautifully and looked thrilled, often grinning from ear to ear and laughing at DK's jokes like she was Carson and he was Ed McMahon.

SEATS: "Is mapache really going to b*tch about his seats again?" Yes and no. The DK pre-sale and venue seating charts show Row CC as the venue's very front row. In what other venue on earth is the front row lettered CC? Ridiculous! I digress...Turns out Row CC is actually third row. The first and second rows are lettered EE and DD. Apparently, these seats aren't sold to the general public (and obviously not shown on seating charts); looked like they're reserved for the high-rolling Segerstrom Center Arts donors. Imagine my HUGE disappointment had I purchased Row CC seats thinking they were front row? Instead, I bought Row BB seats (thinking they were second row, but actually fourth row) on the outside aisle and ended up having a primo view of DK's keyboard action. And when she moved to the far end of the stage to play the upright piano, we had THE best seats in the house, with no one in front of us obstructing the view. All in all, a lucky accident...

DK AUDIENCE BANTER: In addition to several of the same anecdotes and jokes she's been telling throughout the tour, she talked about her early days playing piano in the nearby Westin Hotel lounge and eventually getting fired because "I don't think the manager liked my shoes." Another funny story involved DK being recently called into a school parent-teacher conference because one of her boys said "Piss off!" at school. When she moved over to the upright piano and solicited audience requests, there were the usual shouts for "Peel Me a Grape!" and other DK oldies. Someone yelled "Elvis!", another "Billy Joel!", and another drunk "Ray Brown!" This drunk yelled "Neil Young!" She then talked about how much she loves Neil and how great it was to recently be on a "Full-on protest tour with him." By the way, I just saw Neil's solo-acoustic show in Hollywood last weekend and it was fantastic.

VENUE & ACOUSTICS: Segerstrom Hall is your general-issue, soulless Performing Arts Center venue. I've never liked the place, but at least the sound was nice. Can't complain when one of the main DK-voice speakers was 10-feet in front of me.

Anyway, as I said, wonderful show. Clocking in at @ 1-hour & 45/50-minutes, a bit shorter than the Greek Theater last fall. About the same length as Humphrey's in San Diego. No way to declare which of my three GRD shows was best (they all had their sublime moments), so I'll just bid a fond farewell to the GRD Tour and look forward toward the next go-round. Hopefully we'll get a new album later this year, or in 2015. Mahalo for the good times, Diana.

Setlist:
1. When The Curtain Comes Down
2. We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye
3. There Ain't No Sweet Man Worth the Salt of My Tears
4. Just Like a Butterfly That's Caught in the Rain
5. You Know I Know Everything's Made For Love
6. Let It Rain
7. Temptation
8. The Frim Fram Sauce
9. Glad Rag Doll
10. East of The Sun (and West of The Moon)
11. Neil Young Medley: Man Needs a Maid > Heart of Gold > Man Needs a Maid
12. I'm Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
13. Simple Twist of Fate
14. Sunny Side of the Street
15. Just You Just Me
16. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
17. Little Mixed Up
ENCORE
18. Ophelia
19. Prairie Lullaby

[narrowdaylight]

http://www.ocregister.com/soundcheck/kr ... o-rag.html

Diana Krall unearths forgotten gems at Segerstrom

The Canadian singer-pianist explored obscurities from the ’20s and ’30s during her O.C. return.

If you’re an Elvis Costello fan and you saw his talented wife, Diana Krall, playing with her band on Saturday at Segerstrom Hall, I’ll bet you came away from the almost-two-hour concert convinced that his magpie curiosity and wild eclecticism are rubbing off on her.

The evidence is all over Krall’s 11th and most recent studio album, Glad Rag Doll, much of which was featured Saturday. Costello, who was billed on the record under the pseudonym Howard Coward, contributed on ukulele, guitar and other elements in the studio. T. Bone Burnett, the Gandalf of American popular music and a Costello collaborator, produced Krall’s album, a collection of largely forgotten ditties from the 1920s and ’30s that are a long way from her Great American Songbook roots.

The Costello influence is undeniable, and Krall has acknowledged enjoying the creative partnership with her husband on Glad Rag Doll. But longtime Krall fans know she wouldn’t be going down this eccentric road unless she felt it was worthwhile. She has always been musically adventurous and has long chafed at the “Peel Me a Grape” straitjacket her early career success had placed her in: the role of sultry-voiced chanteuse whose low-key, sleepily sexy ballads were the perfect soundtrack for baby boomer foreplay.

These quirky songs have a personal connection for Krall as well. She heard them as a kid when she explored her dad’s vast collection of old 78 rpm records, and they stuck with her.

It was clear from the get-go that this was going to be a different kind of Krall concert. The stage was full of period artifacts: a gaudy old player piano that was pumping out jaunty snippets of Fats Waller; a wind-up gramophone; stars that looked like props from Le Voyage dans la Lune, the 1902 sci-fi curiosity by French director Georges Méliès.

Krall, humorous and self-deprecating as always, played the role of reluctant bandleader as she presented songs that were as charming as they were obscure: Harry M. Woods’ “We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye,” Fred Fisher’s “There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears,” Mort Dixon and Harry M. Woods’ “Just Like a Butterfly That’s Caught in the Rain.”

On a giant upstage screen, old black-and-white images flickered past that set a mood and occasionally tied in thematically in a loose-limbed way: Betty Boop cartoons, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a parade of Ziegfeld Follies girls. The Ziegfeld stars’ cheesecake poses were a poignant reinforcement of the sad sentiments in “Glad Rag Doll”: “Admired, desired by lovers who soon grow tired / Poor little glad rag doll / You’re just a pretty toy they like to play with / You’re not the kind they choose to grow old and gray with.”

Amateur psychologists could have a field day interpreting those lyrics in the context of Krall’s own feelings about her earlier career; I won’t go there.

Krall, who has been playing professionally since her teens, is a savvy entertainer. She knows how to banter coyly with her audience and grant them the occasional request. During the solo part of the show, she brushed off a demand for “Peel Me a Grape” but provided us with another Krall standard, “Frim Fram Sauce.”

And true to the boundary-pushing spirit of the concert, she covered “Heart of Gold” and “A Man Needs a Maid” by fellow Canadian Neil Young as well as Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate.”

Through it all, her band of five top-drawer sidemen changed up styles admirably. Fiddler Stuart Duncan (who doubled ably on ukelele) and guitarist Anthony Wilson were standouts.

What often goes unnoticed in a Krall performance is the quality of her musicianship. She started as a pianist (she took up singing only to be more employable), and her knowledge and technique are impressive. She can pump out stride style with her lightning-fast left hand; do credible barrelhouse piano; sprinkle lush Bill Evans-like added notes into her chords; go all jagged, minimal and Monk-ish; and even rock out when called upon.

All the while, Krall counterposes the brilliance with a personality that could only be described as small-town British Columbian (hey, it takes one to know one): casual, funny, a bit smart-alecky, and prone to discursive stories that might have nothing to do with anything.

It’s all part of the act, of course, but it’s an undeniable element of Krall’s magic, too. She make us feel like we’re curled up in her den, the kids are in bed, and it’s time for some fun. I thought she was joking at the time, but maybe there really is a mini-bar inside the player piano.