From: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org (jangle-poets-digest) To: jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Subject: jangle-poets-digest V11 #13 Reply-To: jangle-poets@smoe.org Sender: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jangle-poets-digest Tuesday, July 13 2010 Volume 11 : Number 013 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [JP] "Just the Rain" - Plymouth 7/10/10 - Kennedys Rain Shows [KPalmatier] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:59:02 EDT From: KPalmatier@aol.com Subject: [JP] "Just the Rain" - Plymouth 7/10/10 - Kennedys Rain Shows Saturday, July 10, 2010, Plymouth Harbor Folk Festival, Plymouth MA. Mike Delaney and I were both seeking shelter from the storm, huddling under the tiny merch tent where the Kennedys' CDs were for sale. Mike was grasping a wet notebook of new songs he's writing, I was holding onto my show notebook of hundreds of show set lists, also wet. We hadn't bumped into each other prior to this. Fancy meeting you here! "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" It had been hot, hot, hot at the Plymouth Harbor waterfront, with frankly fairly sparse attendance. The mainstage for the folk fest was a stone's throw from Plymouth Rock in Pilgrim Memorial State Park. During the set by the trio Cat Man Two, who were on just prior to Pete and Maura on the schedule, I noticed the ominous-looking black clouds slowly moving in from the north, coming across the water to where we were. The heavens opened almost as soon as the Kennedys got going. Pete and Maura flowed seamlesly from "Life is Large" to the Beatles' "Rain" to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" going right into "Half a Million Miles." Medley time! But they never even made it through "Wall of Death" as the downpour intensified, sheets of rain scattering the already small crowd and forcing the Plymouth Harbor tech crew to turn off the power to the stage as everything was getting wet. I waited about 25 minutes before it seemed clear that the Kennedys' set would not resume. That was a long way for Pete and Maura to come (from NYC) for a disappointing set cut short by rain, and I don't see how they could have sold many CDs. I was telling Mike Delaney in the merch tent how many Kennedys rain shows I'd seen before. The following list describes these Kennedys Rain Shows, along with one Nields rain show which needs to be included because it relates to a later Kennedys Rain Show. 8/14/99 -- Nields "Lightning Show," Levitt Pavilion, Westport CT. -- The first "Lightning Show" was a full-band Nields show, after Nerissa & Katryna had played a duo appearance at the Northampton Folk Festival in the Pines at Look Park, earlier that same afternoon. Nerissa, Katryna, and the 3 Daves got through only "Best Black Dress" and "Jeremy Newborn Street" before drenching rain and huge, scary lightning bolts, seemingly thrown from Zeus himself, cancelled the remainder of the show. In 2001, Katryna Nields went on her first maternity leave from performing with the Nields, beginning after the 3/24/01 St. Thomas More Church, New Haven show. I started following the Kennedys beginning 4/14/01 just 3 weeks later, the Sounding Board "Across the Great Divide" show. The void left by the departure of Katryna was filled almost immediately for me by the Kennedys. Nerissa's first solo show was 5/5/01 at Joshua Tree Bar & Grill in Somerville. Nerissa's second solo show was with the Kennedys 5/18/01 at the Towne Crier on the 5th anniversary of Grail Day. Nerissa's third solo show, also with the Kennedys, was the Second Lightning Show. 5/27/01 -- "Lightning Show 2," Nerissa Nields and the Kennedys, Mayfair, Allentown PA. -- The Kennedys got in their set under the threat of heavy weather, but Nerissa's solo set was over almost as soon as it started when huge, scary lightning scotched the whole affair, just as had happened in the First Lightning Show in Westport CT, two years earlier. 5/27/01 -- Kennedys "Unplugged in the Rain," Mayfair, Allentown PA. -- About 15 minutes after Nerissa's show was cancelled due to bad weather, Pete and Maura played a short, impromptu, unplugged, all-acoustic set under a tiny picnic shelter while the rain continued to fall, for a very few, very dedicated music fans. Only a few people were able to fit under the roof of that picnic shelter to hear the Kennedys play "Unplugged in the Rain." It was one of the best Kennedys shows that almost no one saw, and very much a big part of my "First Year Following the Kennedys" mystique, in only my second month of following the Kennedys. 5/31/02 -- Kennedys "Bridgeton Fountain" show, Bridgeton NJ. -- This Kennedys show was part of my much-larger Weekend With Cone Head, on the eve of the Appel Farm Folk Festival, which was the next day in Elmer NJ. Cone and I saw the Kennedys in the rain at the Bridgeton Fountain; we camped with the Appel Farm Irregulars at Parvin State Park; we saw Jackson Browne, Nerissa & Katryna Nields, and Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer at Appel Farm (the first, last, and only full Dave & Tracy set ever seen by me, since Dave Carter died about a month later); and we saw the Kennedys at the Point in Bryn Mawr PA, later that same night after leaving Appel Farm. That was the classic Bruce and Cone Road Trip Weekend. In 2008, I started following Maura Kennedy Solo, beginning with the 6/6/08 Club Helsinki Kennedys show where I heard Maura play 5 songs I'd never heard before, "Chains," "Patience," "Sun Burns Gold," "Time Will Steal Your Heart," and "Freefall." It was at the 6/6/08 Club Helsinki show that I also learned that Pete & Maura were moving 100 miles further away from me, from Northampton MA to NYC. Devastated by the Kennedys moving away, and energized by Maura Kennedy's hot new songs, I started seeing the Kennedys several times a month, often seeing them several times a month in NYC driving all the way from Boston, and sometimes seeing the Kennedys more than once the same week in NYC, driving all the way from Boston. Usually I drove back to Boston and worked the next day, even when I saw the Kennedys more than once the same week in NYC. When that got difficult, I arranged a few times to stay the night in NYC so I could see multiple shows in NYC with less pressure. 6/18/08 -- Kennedys, Madison Square Park, NYC. -- Just 12 days after my 6/6/08 Maura Kennedy conversion experience, the Kennedys played a free outdoors show at Madison Square Park, mostly in the rain, while music fans huddled under raincoats and umbrellas. 6/22/08 -- Kennedys, Hudson River Stage, Clearwater Folk Festival, Croton-on-Hudson NY. -- Just days after the Madison Square Park rain show, the Kennedys played a set at Clearwater that was cut short because of rain. Power was cut to the entire festival, with flash-flooding cancelling sets by Gandalf Murphy, Christina Thompson Lively, Hungrytown, and others, along with the remainder of the Clearwater festival. The Kennedys' opening song was "Didn't It Rain," as they sang, "There's no protection on the Hudson Stage," replacing "There's no protection on the midnight train." After the power to the festival was cut, Pete and Maura continued for a spell, doing "Rain" by the Beatles, "Life Is Large," and "Big River," all unplugged, and with the tiny rain-soaked remainder of an audience singing along with the Kennedys on both "Rain" and "Life Is Large." 7/5/08 -- Kennedys, Custom House Stage, New Bedford Summerfest. -- The threat of rain hovered over the whole festival that year. I first saw Women in Docs with the Kennedys at the Custom House Stage; the Kennedys' opening song was "Didn't It Rain." Women in Docs played "Rain on a Tin Roof." Then the Kennedys and Women in Docs together played "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." 7/5/08 -- Kennedys, Acushnet Avenue Stage, New Bedford Summerfest. -- The Kennedys played "The Coo Coo," jamming with the Guy Mendilow Band and David Jacobs-Strain as a light rain started to fall. I huddled under the tent of the tiny Garden Stage right after that for an entire unplugged, all-acoustic set by Women in Docs, as the rain fell steadily outside the tent, just a few feet from where I was sitting right at the feet of Women in Docs. 7/5/08 -- Kennedys, Water Street Stage, New Bedford Summerfest. -- I squiggled into the front row, just inches from where rain was falling on the chair next to me, for this entire set by the Kennedys played while it rained outside. That same day was my first time ever seeing Red Molly, who shared the stage with Women in Docs. I also drove to the Levitt Pavilion in Wesport CT that same day, 7/5/08, to see Nerissa & Katryna Nields with the Crackerjack Band, at the same site as the first Lightning Show, 9 years earlier. And the next day, 7/6/08, I returned to New Bedford to see the Kennedys twice and Women in Docs twice. The New Bedford Summerfest made me go Gaga for Women in Docs. 7/26/08 -- Maura Kennedy, "Guitar Gods and Goddesses" Workshop, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Maura debuted the song "Just the Rain" on the Workshop Stage, with a stageful of musicians jamming along, including Pete Kennedy, Sharkey McEwen of Gandalf Murphy, Pat Wictor, Jim Henry and Tracy Grammer, and the House Band which included Radoslav Lorkovic, Mark Dann, Tony Zuzulo, and Eric Lee. Did Maura's veritable tornado of sound on "Just the Rain" call up the rain gods who later dropped their loads of bad weather on the entire festival? 7/27/08 -- Strangelings were onstage at the Workshop Stage, right after their appearance at the Gospel Wakeup Call, when the tornado came through with golf ball-sized hail, collapsing a food tent and leading to the cancellation of the rest of the festival. "Just the Rain" ? The "Just the Rain" saga, including the Kennedys rain shows at Madison Square Park 6/18/08, at Clearwater 6/22/08, and at New Bedford 7/5/08, had the same effect of "mystique" that the Second Lightning Show and the Kennedys "Unplugged in the Rain" under the shelter at Mayfair had on me when I first started following the Kennedys. In the first case (2001), it was just my first two months of following the Kennedys. With "Just the Rain" (2008), it was just my first two months of following Maura Kennedy. Like rainbows and sunshine, the wind and the rain follow the Kennedys wherever they go! "Didn't It Rain" --- !!! Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ End of jangle-poets-digest V11 #13 **********************************