From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V11 #113 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Monday, May 26 2008 Volume 11 : Number 113 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- SW in Spring Lake MI 5/24 [capitoltee@comcast.net] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 14:59:25 +0000 From: capitoltee@comcast.net Subject: SW in Spring Lake MI 5/24 Hello, all, Had the supreme pleasure of seeing Susan at Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, MI, last night (5/24). This was an offering by Quiet Faith Productions, as a fundraiser for the church. Spring Lake is just northeast of Grand Haven, on the Grand River, near where the river feeds into Lake Michigan. It is a beautiful area, and Susan expounded on that, saying that the western shore of Michigan is where people from the Windy City go to 'cheat on Chicago'. The sanctuary of the church was modern, beautiful, and acoustically perfect. There was a beautiful grand piano on stage, complete with an adjustable padded bench - no phone books for SW tonight! She opened with a stunning rendition of 'Why is Your Heaven So Small' - doing the opening verse a cappella, immediately showing off the aforementioned acoustics. Gave me goosebumps!! This was followed by 'I Will have My Portion', then the always well-received 'Our Father', which really got the crowd going. She then moved to the beautiful piano for 'Forgiveness'. Then she talked for a while about her own history, saying that she preferred the term 'elapsed Catholic', and how, in order to be a 'good' Catholic, you have to keep 'putting money in the meter'. She then went off on a series of one-liners about all the religions she'd tried - Crystal Methodism', 'Zen Boozism', etc. She followed this soliloquy with 'Sunday Mornings' - again, the acoustics shone on this (and every other) song. She then spoke at length about her family, specifically about 'daddy prays because the money's tight' - and how the Alaskan pipeline went thru their back 40 not once, but twice, so daddy was doing all right. :-) And 'mommy prays she'll raise her children right' - there were six kids (so her parents were considered underachievers on their block), but that she'd done great, and that all six of them had turned out pretty good. And 'my brother prays he'll change, so he won't feel so strangely out of tune' - well, he was crowned the winner of the 2002 Miss Rochester Minnesota contest, and his drag queen name is 'Anita Man', so he'd found his own peace. :-) She then introduced the song that has often been a 'flight risk', but that since this was a UU church, she figured it wouldn't present a problem - 'Probably Not', followed by 'My Lord Did Trouble Me'. She announced the last song of the set, and that the 2nd set would contain the 'hellbound secular stuff for which I'm known', and ripped into 'Help Somebody'. I've seen SW 20+ times and I've never heard her sound so great. This venue was amazing, and between the architect and the sound man, they sure had their act together!!! The church offered great refreshments at intermission, to which Susan had referred during the first set, singling out the cheesecake. I was wandering around in the hallways, and, having glanced at the recording of the show at Passim that was for sale (and that I'd downloaded some time ago), was thinking about 'Chicago Any Day', hoping that she'd do it, and rather unthinkingly started whistling it as I was walking. And I was surprised (and a little embarrassed) to have this door fling open, to see Susan yelling about how she couldn't believe she heard somebody actually whistling one of her songs, and doing it accurately, hugged me and yanked me into what had been commandeered as her dressing room! She offered me a slice of rhubarb pie and chatted a bit. It was very cool!!!!! She opened the second set with 'Time Between Trains', then turned and picked up a plate, complete with a slice of rhubarb pie, picked up a fork, and ate it right then and there. It was hilarious. She announced that 'I don't believe in heaven, but I believe in rhubarb', and kept repeating 'I love this gig', with her mouth full of pie. She followed this with 'Big Car', then 'Barbed Wire Boys' (note to list - go back to 'New Non Fiction', and tell me if you don't find the studio version of that song a little jarring now that she's been performing at a much more sober pace) Then, a stunning 'May I Suggest', after which she said she'd like to do another song like that - but she didn't have any, so she'd do this one instead - 'Movie of my Life' - her life being 'as of yet Larry King Unworthy'. Then 'Give me Chicago', with the usual plays on cities at the end, with a few Michigan towns thrown in for good measure. She then prefaced the next number as half a song, since she only co-wrote it, and found her co-writer to be very easy to work with - since he was dead - and launched into 'Barack Obama' to the tune of 'Get Happy'. She ended the set with 'I Can't Be New', which had placed on some e-tunes download list between Edith Piaf (Little Sparrow), and Eartha Kitt (Catwoman), prompting SW to ponder that she may need a nickname - and that it was very popular with 'gay boys and women of a certain age'. She made her bows to an immediate standing-O, then walked off stage, and stood next to us in the front row, clapping and hooting and hollering - then walked back up, admitting that the sanctuary was just too big to go all the way out and back. She did two new songs as her encore! One, the result of her recent Alaskan tour, called, perhaps, 'Ketchican, Alaska', a fun little waltz all based on true stories/people she'd met, the last line of the chorus being 'where the strange and the abnormal meet'. Her last song was also new, observations on life in general, intro'd by, among other things, her saying 'I'm 43 but I read at a 44-year-old level', called (perhaps) 'Why is it so Hard for Me'. And that was it! Another fabulous SW experience! Chatted with her a bit after the show, saying we'd see her at the Ark in November, and she alluded to the new project, saying that she was pretty sure she'd be revealing it by then, but for now was keeping things tightly under wraps. Happy Listening, Suzie Tee HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V11 #113 ******************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message