Bonnie Laddie, Hieland Laddie!

I promised to tell you how the Heather Alexander concert went.

The concert was held at a small community center close to the Ballard Locks in Seattle. Indeed, I got there a bit early and wandered down to the Locks and spent some time watching sailboats return from racing and got the chance to pet a small walking mop.

The crowd at the concert was small but involved. The doors opened about 7:15 to let us in out of the cold, and we proceeded to chat with a very nervous Heather until the start of the concert itself.

Because she was so clearly nervous, we did our best to put her at ease. As the clock ticked closer to performance time, she didn't relax at all. I don't suppose that our applause when she walked across the stage to "go to the little musician's room" helped much.

If you've never been to a recording conference before, it's a little bit different than a regular concert. The physical audience is really just there for background noise: the real audience is the people who will be buying the album. The sound has to be adjusted for the recording, and so there were a couple of songs in which Heather's instrument made it slightly difficult to understand the words she was singing. In particular, "King Henry" had a very loud fiddle which drowned out some small bits of the song from where I was sitting.

Also important in a recording concert is that nobody in the audience talks. So we made the most of our 45 minutes before the start. It was actually impressive, listening to us before the concert started, how quiet we managed to be during the songs themselves.

Except where audience participation was wanted, of course. During the song "High Barbary" we get to make pirate sounds whenever Heather asks "What do the little pirates say?" and during the 45 minutes before the concert we got plenty of practice making pirate sounds, much to Heather's amusement.

Another different thing about recording concerts is that at any time the performer may want to start over. On one song, Heather took three tries to get through it. Talking with us between takes, she told us about the one of the worst times she had getting through a song during a live recording. It was "Creature of the Wood" from Life's Flame, incidently one of my favorites. The last concert ran overtime, as she tried and tried to get a good recording of this one song. She told us that the audience sat there for *four hours* while she tried and tried. If you listen to the song, she told us, you will detect a note of triumph building in her voice as the song continues... because she started to realize that she was actually going to make it through on this take. At the end, she said, you'll notice the crowd goes absolutely wild. That's when they realize that she's finally done it.

It is kind of jarring to be in the audience, listening to a song, and suddenly the music stops and the performer says, "Nope! I wanna try that one again!" There were also the more amusing bits where she actually flubbed lines, much to her embarrassment. And during one fiddle song, she apparently forgot to breathe. She then told us that it was a bad habit of hers when she was nervous... forgetting to breathe.

In any case, the concert was fantastic, both for the insight into making an album and for the great music. It's been years since I've heard "Twa Corbies" performed, and I've never quite heard "Bedlam Boys" the way she sings it. "Hieland Laddie" is great, the way she's adjusted the verses to her own experiences makes it work well for crowds like the one at the concert. She did drop the verse about sci-fi cons, but it was a little awkward scanning. "Frog of Cambreadth" (what happens when Heather Alexander songs breed) was a riot, especially since it stayed true to both its parent songs. Her insight into Lord of The Rings merchandise was extremely interesting, and if you get the album you can hear it on "The Golden Ring".

There are three more recording concerts in this series, one in Oregon and two down in California. If you have the opportunity, check them out. It's a fun night out with fun people.