I saw two great concerts last week. Wednesday, I was headed out to see Chris Isaak give an in-store acoustic performance at Best Buy. However, I got my wires crossed and showed up on the wrong night - actually, the night he was playing the Ryman. Stupid me. Since I was all dressed up with no place to go, I thought I'd see if I could get a good last minute ticket to catch his Ryman show, with the Wrights opening. Turns out, for $75 (ouch) I managed to get a front row seat an hour before showtime! A little pricey, but, hey, it's FRONT ROW. The Wrights were fantastic, as always. They are flawless. I've never seen them hiccup. I dig their laid-back, groovy style. And they write great songs. Check them out, if you're not familiar with them. My favorite recent thing is their cover of the Roger Miller song "In the Summertime." Bea-U-ti-ful. Oh, and their drummer for the evening was my next door neighbor, so that was cool! I love East Nashville! Chris and band were awesome, as usual. That's my third C.I. show. He never disappoints. Wish I could've seen that in-store, though. Holy cow. Saturday night it was back to the Ryman for Neko Case -- a concert I've waited a longgg time to see. Ohmygod. Words cannot describe how much I love this woman and her music. I sat there completely mesmerized, knowing every song, and filled with such appreciation for all the people who showed up to hear this music. It seemed it had existed only in my head, until the moment I was hearing it live. Kinda like seeing a ghost in a roomful of people who are seeing the same ghost. And that roomful of people was certainly varied - in age, sexual orientation, what have you. Quite a diverse group. Very encouraging. No histrionics or rock and roll moves from the woman herself. She just stood there and delivered those songs in that voice. Great band too. I wish I would've had a better seat. I was about as far back as you could get. The show was not advertised long enough, in my opinion. I checked her website. No mention of any Southern U.S. dates. Then, boom, the tickets had already gone on sale by the time I saw an ad on Facebook. Seating was the only disappointment of an otherwise amazing evening. I've been debating the importance of, me personally, playing live, given the current state of the economy, the music industry, and trends for youth and/or gimmick. Some of my independent artist friends have said for a couple years that people just aren't turning up for their club shows. Many of the rootsy bands who are enjoying success are young and attract a similarly young audience. And, of course, the mainstream high-level artists always seem to sell tickets despite whatever may be going on in the world. So, as an unknown artist playing laid-back, heady kinda music in small venues, it's a high mountain to climb in order to try and build a following in that way. As a gigging artist my age put it yesterday, “people our age just don’t come out for shows.” My stubbornness on this issue is that I don't believe, as many music business professionals posit as though it is gospel, that playing live is the ONLY way to build a following. I believe it is ONE way. How much time do people spend surfing the internet, watching t.v., going to movies versus attending gigs? My 20-something niece tells me that if she hears a song she likes in a t.v. program or movie, she writes down the name of the artist and looks them up on the internet. A good song placement can be a tremendous profile raiser. My point was that, despite my recent musings and misgivings, my experience seeing Neko Case convinced me that it IS important for people who dig your music to see you perform it live. That's all I was really trying to get at. Now, to find people who dig my music...