Well, last weekend I saw / heard Dougie MacLean - truly excellent. His song "Ready for the Storm" is just amazing. He plays the guitar very accurately and beautifully and simply - it sounds. It's hard to explain for someone like me, but he really only strummed chords on one or two songs. He "plucked" the rest, I guess, but that makes it sound less marvelous than it really was.

Unfortunately, he was losing his voice, and he did not sing my favorite of his, "Caledonia". His stories were hilarious, tho, and he interacted with the audience marvelously.

Last night, I saw Judy Henske and Odetta. I think I'd heard of Henske, but I didn't know any of her songs. She was introduced as "The Queen of the Beatniks". I guess her famous song was "High Flying Bird" which was a little strange, lol. She did "Dark Angel" about drug addiction and "Western Wisconsin" about where she grew up.

She recited a hilarious beatnik-ey poem about the goodyear blimp (silver salami in the sky), and finished with what seemed to be her most popular song (I liked it best), "The Salvation Army Song". (Hallelujah, hallelujah, throw a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum, hallelujah, hallelujah, throw a nickel on the drum and you'll be saved!)

Then was Odetta - who pretty much did a similar set to the one I saw at Fermilab about a year ago. Quite a bit of Leadbelly - probably a couple that she did not do last year (like Roberta), because her new album is a tribute to Leadbelly.

She started with my favorite quote "Our worst fears are not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are worthy beyond measure-". Opened and finished with "This Little Light of Mine" (with the audience singing along).

There was one ... different part. Odetta was introducing "Midnight Special" as a prison song written in Texas, and commenting on the land of "bushmen" and a lack of pardons for people without money - and someone started talking back to her about Clinton and pardons for drug dealers and how he's our president and we should not be talking about him like this, at this time... I wasn't sure why someone would come to the "Old Town School of Folk", where people like Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton and others like them perform and figure there was going to be a Republican Rally, or even that there'd be a refrain from politics... anyway, he left, and she sang Midnight Special wonderfully.

Next week: Richie Havens and Janis Ian.

If I'm not mistaken, Star, Judy Henske is the one who made a couple albums in the very early '60's on which Bob Dylan played harmonica before he ever made an album himself. They're collector's items today.

Sounds like it was a great show. Glad you liked it.

I've heard Carolyn Hester tell the story of Bob Dylan playing on one of her albums before he hit it big.

more on Carolyn Hester:
http://wfma.net/hester.htm