...being the observations and navigational extracts
from the ongoing expeditions of San Francisco Piano Pop trio
True Margrit

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Ironsong: Season 1, Episode 2: Monster Keyboard Women!

February 3, 2012
Well, it's a month later, and as I sit down to write about this show, it all comes back to me how magically delicious an evening it was. I got to share the stage with two such AMAZING artistes: Emily Bezar and LikeLove (aka Michelle Alexander) and the connections, contrasts, and strikingly good mojos between the three of us were pretty interstellar. ( PHOTOS by Tom ERIKSON! )



How to describe and do justice? It may not be possible... but here goes: Emily is a virtuoso pianist and vocalist, and with these mighty powers in play, her songs travel virtuosic distances too. You listen and you're swept off to other planets, dimensions, and times--you're transfixed, filled with awe, and yet soothed sitting by the hearth of a fireplace as the wood crackles cozily in a cottage as the wind whistles outside in the reeds, then the sun sets and the stars ignite above your roof and shed silver light upon the earth, water, and stones. She shames Tori Amos and is not to be missed.

Now, Michelle, she serves up the most newly-minted, post-modern, post-post-art-pop minimalism a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano-player ever dared to pound out. Her perfectly jagged grooves are trimmed of all excess fat and propel her angelic belting and edgy hilarity into your brain. Her songs are touching, demented, wildly funny, and utterly on their own plane of existence--one that was just this instant invented by her. And her cover of "Summertime" is insanely humorous--she had the whole cafe laughing to the point of tears. I won't give it away...just go hear her.

Oh--and me? I played some previously hatched tunes and played some of the newest iterations of newish ones ("Love on the Moon","Solo So Low", "Goldstar") and felt the warmth & love from the very generously engaged crowd (which, as a sidebar, included all four bass players from the entire history of True Margrit thus far: Gary Hobish--the current & longest standing bassist, Robert Geller--the original bassist, Mark Skowronek, and Neal Trembath).

To summarize: it was fantastic. All too soon, it was time to wind up.

However--this particular lineup will reassemble for a show on AUGUST 3rd--which happens to fall very near my very big birthday!! And! It will be held at Piedmont Piano AND we will be playing a 10-foot Fazioli!!! AND!! You will be deprived if you aren't there. Seriously.