Audience joins trio on stage
It was a night of breathtaking harmonies. It was a night of finespun narratives. It was a night of wondering why only 160 attended the I’m With Her concert at Kelowna Community Theatre on Monday night compared to 900 in Vancouver on Sunday.
The third concert in five days at the 853-seat downtown theatre was absolutely the best full concert.
On Thursday, Steve Earle and The Dukes, plus the Mastersons, had good and bad vocal performances. On Friday, Mavis Staples was a shining R&B star, but Jonny Lang was all instrumentals and lacked vocal clarity.
Monday’s concert showcased Grammy-Award winners Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’ Donovan who came together by chance for an off-the-cuff performance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado in the summer of 2014. The same day, a mutual friend texted a last-minute request to open a show that night.
Two hours spent preparing six or seven songs for a 30-minute set and I’m With Her was born.
Their Kelowna setlist of 17 songs included most of the numbers on the trio’s debut album, See You Around. However, after deciding only a few days before that it would be OK to include some of their solo work, each had their moment in the spotlight.
The opener was the Brother Brothers, identical twins from Brooklyn, N.Y. The tight-knit harmonies from Adam and David Moss were eerily similar to Simon and Garfunkle, song after uplifting song.
The vocals for both acts were crystal clear, an absolute necessity when all of their musical instruments were acoustic.
With only 160 tickets sold, the I’m With Her women decided to reverse the usual seating arrangements. The 853 theatre seats were left empty. Instead, 160 stacking chairs were set up in eight rows on the stage with the artists on a raised platform at the edge of the stage facing the back of the stage.
Two relatively small speakers were hung on either side of the raised platform.
It was incredibly intimate — like a coffee house or a Kelowna Folk Club house concert.
The encore of I’m With Her involved the three women standing in the narrow space between the raised platform and first row. They stomped their feet four times and then clapped in a rhythmic chant for an a capella version of Nina Simone’s Be My Husband.
The staging and seating were so unusual that at the beginning of the two-hour concert, the theatre issued exit instructions as if everyone was on an aircraft. In case of emergency, there were three exits, pointed out. If it wasn’t an emergency but the intermission, audience members should leave by the entrance they came in.
Everyone from Brother Brothers to I’m With Her to the audience remarked on how this concert was “pretty unique, pretty cool and special.”
It was not only the incredible folk music from both that made it special but their witty repartee with the audience literally at their feet.
When someone asked Brother Brothers where they are from, the response was: “We’ll do the talking, thank you. All of your questions will be answered in time ... at the merch(andise) table.”
Then one brother asked the other: “What song are we doing?” As the other fumbled with his guitar, the first joked: “Wrong key.” Not bad after their seven-hour drive from Seattle that day.
One of the best aspects was the instruments: the two Moss brothers using fiddle and guitars; I’m With Her switching almost every song from fiddle and guitar to ukulele, banjo and mandolin.
Like their recording session when they were face-to-face in a small room, I’m With Her only used one microphone — one musician facing the audience and the other two like bookends facing each other as they shared the mike.
Hopefully, I’m With Her (and Her and Her) had such a memorable experience during their first visit that they will return soon. Ditto with Brother Brothers. Both loved the Okanagan in spite of Monday’s rain showers, the women even joking they enjoyed the change from sunny skies. Their warm harmonies made everyone forget the cool, inclement weather outside.