Music & Concerts
Michael W. Smith, Sandi Patty wow with Kennedy Center patriotic shows
CCM legends join massive choirs, orchestras for 4th of July-themed extravaganzas
(Washington Blade photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
Last week at the Kennedy Center provided a rare one-two punch for lovers of ’80s/’90s CCM (contemporary Christian music) — Michael W. Smith played the Concert Hall July 1 with the True North Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of David Hamilton; Sandi Patty played the same room two nights later — an unrelated coincidence — with the Bellevue Baptist Church Choir & Orchestra, a Memphis-area-based church outfit.
Smith’s concert was part of a larger event that found hundreds of his fans descending upon the capitol to see sights, though standalone tickets were available for the concert. Smith tours constantly, but it’s a fairly rare opportunity to see him with such lavish accompaniment.
Patty has retired from major touring but, thankfully, still makes occasional appearances. Historically the best chance you had to see either one with full orchestra was at a Christmas concert, so both concerts were refreshing changes of pace.
Smith truly headlined at his concert singing or playing on (several numbers were instrumentals from his “Freedom” and “Glory” albums) all but the opening number, a choral arrangement of his song “Shine On Us” recorded by Phillips, Craig and Dean on the classic ’95 multi-artist album “My Utmost For His Highest.” There were 62 in the orchestra/band and about 196 in the choir.
The Patty concert was more half and half, with Patty and four family members (husband Don Peslis, stepdaughter Aly Peslis, daughter-in-law Katie Peslis and son Jon Helvering) singing on 10 of 20 selections, the rest handled by the 130-voice choir and 34-piece orchestra.
Standouts included the Patty classic “Love in Any Language,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (from “Carousel”), “God Bless America” and Patty’s trademark rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which she debuted to acclaim at the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. She doesn’t go up quite as high on the big final note as she did 30 years ago, but her voice still sounds mighty and robust. On her 2017 farewell tour, it was played on a video montage, so it was great to hear it live.
Especially nice to hear were renditions of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” which Patty has never recorded. YouTube clips have surfaced the last couple years from patriotic summer mini-tours Patty and her family have given (never in our region) but there’s no comparison to hearing them live. Both were stately and regal.
The Bellevue group was better than I expected in a rousing, shimmying set (many arrangements were by accompanist/arranger Josh Stewart who was at the piano most of the evening) that included bombastic medleys, gospel standards and hymns. All the soloists were stellar but standouts were Cooper Patrick who delivered a rollicking “Walking in Memphis” with true star power and Audrey Lawrence on gospel barnburner “Heaven Bound.”
Soprano Lisa Parker initially seemed to have the deck stacked against her tackling “The Lord’s Prayer” just moments after the great Patty had left the stage, but she acquitted herself nicely with an understated performance that felt both delicate and sturdy.
Interestingly, Patty seemed most energized on two of the quieter numbers — “His Eye is On the Sparrow,” which she sang with just piano accompaniment from her long-time pianist Jay Rouse, and during the encore, a richly harmonized rendition of “It Is Well With My Soul” she sang sans mics with her family. They’ve done numbers like this at other concerts; it always whets my appetite for a whole evening of this sort of thing. They truly give Chanticleer and Pentatonix a run for their money with their a cappella harmony work.
Patty seemed in good spirits greeting and offering sign language to long-time fans such as Lee Tucker in the first couple rows. Minor quibble: um, hello — blue gown change for act II? We know you have ’em, girl.
Smith’s concert ran the gamut from glistening instrumentals (“Glory Overture”), a roiling Christmas number “Gloria” that brought to mind the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, choral worship thunder on “Total Praise” and even a swampy spiritual “Down to the River to Pray” from one of Smith’s Cracker Barrel hymns projects.
(Washington Blade photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
Things meandered a bit in the second half during a lengthy worship set in which the orchestra and choir sat out and Smith and his usual band took the reins. None of it was bad — these passages are a staple of Smith’s usual concerts — but at the Kennedy Center, it felt like filler, as if there weren’t quite enough charts done for a full evening of symphonic work so they padded it with easy-to-deliver classic Smitty worship fare.
The crowd enjoyed it just fine but the orchestra players looked bored out of their minds (perhaps they were merely deferring, who knows). Two Mikes who showed up — Pence and Pompeo (along with Karen Pence, the second lady) — were rapt if not especially demonstrative. Smitty’s crowd — almost all white Bible Belt evangelicals — went wild when they were introduced. I somehow managed not to vomit. It’s not so much that I mind political dissent — that’s fine and healthy — but it was a stark, right-there-in-front-of-you reminder of the white evangelical infatuation with this administration. How anyone takes it seriously is beyond me.
Another downside to Smitty’s set was that it was almost identical to a Kennedy Center concert he gave with the same choir and orchestra in Jan., 2014 with 14 songs (pretty much everything but the worship set) carried over verbatim. It was all stellar, but I’d hoped in five years time, Smith could have managed at least a new orchestration or two of selections from his mammoth catalogue. He constantly talks about how many songs he has to choose from in his vast discography and how there’s no way to get to everything. Well, that’s all fine and good but don’t show up five years later with the same set (pretty much) and expect us to buy that hollow line again (in fairness, he has gotten better at digging deep in his “regular” concerts the last couple years).
His canned bromides, while good natured, are also pretty stale — he says “I will never forget this night” at every concert, he’s playing “Gloria” (a Christmas song) because “it’s my show” and he never knew he’d be playing trademark hit “Friends” “the rest of my life.” There’s just a hint of a chip on his shoulder while Patty exudes graciousness.
And while lustrous, none of it was terribly interesting. Like so much of the fare we hear when the NSO Pops appears with pop acts like Diana Ross or Melissa Etheridge, the strings just sort of saw away, the brass adds a little punch here and there and that’s about it. I was hoping, for instance, when we got to the big electric guitar solo on Smitty classic “Place in This World,” the strings would have gone crazy with some totally new contrapuntal interlude but nah — in came the anachronistic electric guitar shooting out the exact same thing that’s on the album version.
Huge missed opportunity. With such vast arsenals of instrumentation at one’s disposal, why are the arrangements always so blah, so predictable? Smith’s long-time touring comrade Jim Daneker is a musical genius — I salivate imagining what cool stuff he could come up with given the time. And not that there was anything too wildly wonderful going on at the Patty show either but her arrangements (both vintage and those from Bellevue) just sounded less forced, more idiomatically orchestral.
Neither artist managed to quite fill the nearly 2,442-seat Concert Hall, but Smith, on a Monday night no less, came closer (and with vastly higher ticket prices). Patty’s concert didn’t appear to be well publicized; it’s a shame, too — it was a rare chance for Washingtonians to hear the gospel music legend who last played here at Sligo Church in November, 2016.
Nothing LGBT about either concert (although Patty has a legion of gay fans); both artists are straight. Just a fun couple nights out worth reporting on.
Michael W. Smith
True North Orchestra & Chorus
David Hamilton, conductor
Kennedy Center
7-1-19
STARTS: 7:05 p.m.
Shine On Us (choir)
Glory Overture (inst./orch+MWS)
Great is the Lord (MWS/choir/orch)
Ancient Words/Thy Word (MWS/choir/orch)
Above All (MWS/band)
Whitaker’s Wonder (inst./orch+MWS)
The Giving (inst./orch+MWS)
Heroes (inst./orch+MWS)
There She Stands (MWS/choir/orch)
America the Beautiful (MWS/band)
Place in This World (MWS/orch)
Gloria (MWS/choir/orch)
INTERMISSION (20 minutes)
RESUMES: 8:29
13. Freedom (inst./orch+MWS)
14. Down to the River to Pray (MWS/choir/orch)
15. Total Praise (MWS/choir/band)
16. Do it Again (MWS/band)
17. Surrounded (MWS/band)
18. Healing Rain (MWS/band)
19. Great Are You Lord (MWS/band)
20. Agnus Dei (MWS/choir/orch)
ENCORE:
21. Friends (MWS/choir/orch)
Total Praise reprise
ENDS: 9:15
Sandi Patty & Family
Bellevue Baptist Church
Choir & Orchestra
Kennedy Center
7-3-19
STARTS: 8:03 p.m.
A Mighty Fortress (choir/orch)
Patriot’s Song Medley (choir/orch)
Tennessee Medley (choir/orch)
INTRO OF SANDI — 8:23
4. Battle Hymn of the Republic (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
5. Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
6. What a Wonderful World (Sandi/piano)
7. The Star-Spangled Banner (Sandi/choir/orch)
SANDI EXITS — 8:47
8. Salute to the Armed Forces (choir/orch)
9. Taps/The Lord’s Prayer (choir/orch)
10. Be Thou My Vision (choir/orch)
11. Say Amen (choir/orch)
12. Heaven Bound (choir/orch)
13. That’s Why God (choir/orch)
14. Christ is Born (choir/orch)
SANDI RETURNS 9:29
15. Anthem of Praise (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
16. Love in Any Language (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
17. His Eye is On the Sparrow (Sandi/piano)
18. You’ll Never Walk Alone (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
19. God Bless America (Sandi/fam/choir/orch)
20. It is Well With My Soul (Sand/fam)
ENDS: 10:01
Music & Concerts
Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule
Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1
I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.
Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).
Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.
With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.
Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”
That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.
While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.
Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.
On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.
Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.
When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.
Music & Concerts
Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’
Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.
For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.
Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.
The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”
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