From: owner-lestalkmoremusic-digest@smoe.org (lestalkmoremusic-digest) To: lestalkmoremusic-digest@smoe.org Subject: lestalkmoremusic-digest V2 #5 Reply-To: lestalkmoremusic@smoe.org Sender: owner-lestalkmoremusic-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-lestalkmoremusic-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk lestalkmoremusic-digest Saturday, October 21 2000 Volume 02 : Number 005 * Today's Subjects: ----------------- [lestalkmoremusic] New Member ["John A. Swartz" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 11:42:50 -0400 From: "John A. Swartz" Subject: [lestalkmoremusic] New Member Hello fellow fans of Les Sampou: I'm a fairly new listener of Les' music and just joined the list so I thought I'd introduce myself and share a recent experience. I was introduced to Les' music after receiving a promotional copy last spring of her "Fall From Grace" CD. I got it because I happen to run a coffeehouse at my local church. WARNING: SHAMELESS PLUG FOLLOWS... We booked Les for a performance at our venue - The Cornerstone Coffeehouse - - located at the Second Congregational Church in Winchester, MA (website listed below) for our first show of the season - last Friday (October 13th). The concert was a benefit for the American Cancer Society's "Making Strides Against Breast Cancer" walk (which was held last Sunday in Boston), and we booked Les in part because of her popularity in the Greater Boston area. At the time of booking, I knew of Les, but had not heard her music prior to receiving the promo CD. While I tend to book a fair number of folk acts for our coffeehouse, I'm not exactly a big fan of folk music - nothing wrong with it, it's just not my personal style. I grew up on rock music, and the folk scene is not something I was really ever a part of - I wouldn't know Ellis Paul from Tom Rush, and couldn't tell you how to get to Club Passim (other than it's in Cambridge). Having said that, however, I have in recent years become a big fan of the blues - mostly the Chicago style of musicians like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and my all-time favorite - Koko Taylor. So, when booking Les, I did ask her to throw a few of her blues numbers into the set... ;-) Between the time of booking the show and the show itself, I decided to pick up Les' other 2 CDs ("Sweet Perfume" and "Les Sampou") - and while all the CDs have different flavors, I find that I like them all. Still preferring the blues, I was particularly drawn to the song, "Afraid of the Dark", off her self-titled CD. Over the course of some email with Les regarding details of the show, I asked her if she'd play it - although I noted that she was backed by a full band on the CD for that song, and hoped that it would work o.k. with her doing it solo. I casually offered to "provide a bassplayer" as I put it - more on that in a moment. The show went off last Friday without a hitch - well, there were a few logistical issues before the show to deal with. It turns out that, unknown to me until days before the show, a wedding rehearsal was being conducted in the church the same night as the concert - and it took a bit of coordination, shuffling schedules, and moving equipment to ensure that soundcheck, wedding rehearsal, and performance all got squeezed in with minimal disruptions to all parties involved. Boston-area traffic threatened to upset the carefully balanced plan when Les was delayed getting to the church because of it, but she managed to breeze quickly through soundcheck to keep things on schedule. After that, everything went great. Highlight of the evening (for me) was the close of the first set, when I joined Les on bass (remember that bassplayer I promised to provide?) on "Afraid of the Dark" - we had given it a quick whirl in soundcheck and Les thought it sounded good enough to do. My bassplaying resume is quite short (maybe I'll share that some other time if I haven't totally bored everyone with this post), and I was really thrilled to be sharing the stage for a few minutes with her (helping to fulfill some of those old aspirations from my youth of playing in a rock band). Here's a list of some of the songs I recall her playing that night: Traveling Riverside Blues, Skip to My Lou, Chinatown, Holyland, Alibis, Sweet Perfume (I think), Ride the Line, Afraid of the Dark, You Are My Sunshine (you know the one), Sweet Lorraine (from her upcoming CD), When I Think of You (unreleased), a few other unreleased songs who's names escape me And a good time was had by all... John John Swartz Cornerstone Coffeehouse Second Congregational Church 485 Washington St. Winchester, MA 01890 http://www.gis.net/~swartz/cornerstone ------------------------------ End of lestalkmoremusic-digest V2 #5 ************************************ This has been a posting from the Les Sampou mail list digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe lestalkmoremusic-digest" in the body of the message