At exactly 10:30 (half an hour late), Jill strolled onto the stage with her little acoustic guitar that looks like a mandolin, and did a great half-hour acoustic set, the highlight of which was "Karen By Night", sung to the real Karen, who was in the audience. Jill tried to get her to come onstage to sing the song with her, but she refused and just stood in front of the stage instead. (Interesting factoid about Jill Sobule: when she mentions somebody's name in a song, chances are that person really exists. She had a couple hysterically funny stories to tell about running into those people later and having some explaining to do. :)
Then she brought her band onstage, for a rocking (and too short) set of mostly stuff from her latest album Happy Town. I was stunned to realize that her drummer was none other than Dean Sharp, the official beat farmer of ecto (he's everywhere!!!). She replaced him on drums for the final songs of the set, "Bitter" and a really funkified version of "I Kissed A Girl".
She came back for a solo acoustic encore, for which she took requests, and ended up doing "Love Is Never Equal". She brought up a girl from the front row to sing Steve Earle's harmony part, who miraculously enough, actually did a good job. She even pulled out the liner notes from the CD she'd brought for Jill to sign, when they both forgot the words to the final verse.
All in all it was a seriously cool show -- Jill Sobule is wonderfully
whacked. :)
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