So there I was, on my feet as usual, totally revved up in the moment while attempting to keep my rollicking limbs moving somewhat in time with Marcia Ball’s wailing honky-tonk Texas-Cajun blues piano riffs. It was the summer of 2004 and it was all about ecstatic bliss. I couldn’t help myself. I had become an out-of-the-closet holy roller.
I’m recurrently awash in just such uncontrollable behavior at concerts. Which means, more often that not, I’m a nuisance and an irritant and a burr under the collective saddle blanket of those behind me. “Down in front” is an oft-heard refrain. This particular instance I took the high road and moved off to the side to continue my spasmodic gyrations.
“Her Tallness,” as Ball likes to refer to herself, has long had her fingers not only on the ivories but also on the widely varied ethnic pulse of southwest Louisiana and east Texas. A cultural treasure with a beautiful, yet devilish, smile, her aura is of a roadhouse along a two-lane just outside of town.
This coming Saturday night, February 7, however, it will be at the Eccles Center along Kearns Boulevard just inside Park City that Marcia Ball will be struttin’ her stuff. Word has it, with one of those “big” birthdays on the horizon, that she’s in a celebratory mood and more than likely will be taking it out on us.
An attempt will be made to remain in my seat so as not to infringe upon the line-of-sight view lines of my fellow concert goers but I have a feeling that the auditory and visual antics of “her tallness” may have something to say about that.
The following Saturday evening, February 14, will find the Eccles Center once again hosting a concert of note one where both acts on the bill have a bit of local performance history.
As one of the featured performers at a Deer Valley Folk and Bluegrass Festival now lost to time (early ’90s?), Loudon Wainwright III had achieved moderate renown mainly through his wry, hilarious, and insightful self-penned songs, his marriage to Canadian folksinger Anna McGarrigle, and his recurring role as a guitar-playing soldier philosopher on the TV show “M*A*S*H.”
Long before his billing changed to “the father of Rufus and Martha Wainwright,” he rolled out a rather hip irreverence with his performance art. Wainwright’s sensibility in those days featured more than a pinch of George Carlin and others with a humorous take on the human condition.
At the time of the Deer Valley show he had just released the LP “History,” and if memory serves, his set list included the entire album in chronological order.
He flaunted an expanded awareness, as the folkies liked to say. He had found his voice and it didn’t relate all that much to what other singer-songwriters had fashioned. As to whether he kept up with the “latest and greatest” by listening to other artists, he at one time remarked: “Haven’t for years, really. Scares the fish away.”
Leo Kottke, who will also be performing at the Eccles Center on the 14th, once shared a bill at the old Treasure Mountain Resort with Gordon Lightfoot on one of Park City local John Vrabel’s early 1970s productions.
Those peering back at what is now the Park City Mountain Resort might well refer to the early ’70s as the “one-gondola two-chairlift” period. The stage location filled the general area later occupied by the bottom terminal of the original fixed-grip double-chair Payday lift with the crowd fanning out uphill from there.
As a part-time bartender at the Rusty Nail Saloon up at the resort lodge and a disc jockey down in Salt Lake, I was evolving into quite the backstage schmoozer. Chatting with Lightfoot earlier in the day as he wandered the site checking out the sound levels from various angles was just a warm-up.
When twilight and later the night overtook the local hills following Kottke’s blistering set (“Vaseline Machine Gun,” “The Driving of the Year Nail,” etc.) and the crowd readied itself for Lightfoot, the conversational tones were relatively hushed out back.
With the banter ranging from the at-least-cultish success of his instrumental album, “6- and 12-String Guitar,” recorded not long before for John Fahey’s “Takoma” label, to the problems he had keeping his quiver of guitars tuned in the chill at 7,000 feet, Kottke appeared quite comfortable with the setting.
Just about then a young lovely brandishing a bottle of wine came rushing up calling out, “Leo, I love you.” Kottke, understanding the responsibilities carried by young guitar virtuosos, instantly morphed from “just polite” into graciousness itself as both the jug and the head-turner were thrust into his waiting arms.
The wine, which Kottke gave me once the girl had excused herself, was a modest Cabernet Sauvignon that fit the bill perfectly as a warming device when it got passed around out front during the Lightfoot set. We were mostly culturally deprived ski bums populating a small wannabe resort town back then and, to this day, we continue to rave about that special evening.
Looks like we have a couple of more on tap.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.