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I'm listening to clips from Les Sampou's latest album, Borrowed and Blue. I'm going to have to send away for it - I love her work so much, and this album sounds like it's as close as a recording can get to being in a little storefront coffeehouse where Les is playing.
I've seen her perform three times. The first was at an outdoor festival in Lawrence or Lowell MA, when I was about fourteen and she was the last act in the lineup before Judy Collins. She had long tawny hair twisted up into a knot on the back of her head, and she suggested that the festival organizers should just hose the whole park down every hour or two, and though I can't remember what she sang that I liked so much, I would have gone straight up and bought her album then and there but for the fact that it would have meant losing my seat for Judy Collins.
The second time I saw her was many years later, after I'd rediscovered her through her first widely-distributed album. She was playing in a little storefront coffeehouse. I went with BF#3 and K, and we were so early that we sat on the sidewalk eating tuna sandwiches and watched her soundchecks through the open door of the hall. What struck me most that time was her physical presence and the way she interacted with her instrument as if it were a co-performer, as if the two of them were engaged in some form of Tai Chi. She performed barefoot, with her hair loose, and I had a sense of being able to see her drawing on some deep and elemental strength and transforming it into music. That's rather a dippy way to put it, but that's how it felt. We were sitting in the second row, and when she asked for requests in the second half, I shouted "TWO STRONG ARMS," which was then my favorite, and she played it.
The third time was three New Year's Eve's ago, at First Night in Boston, in a cavernous Unitarian church. She'd gotten her hair cut, apparently with a weedwhacker, into a dreadful David-Bowie-In-Labyrinth mullety mess, and she was wearing an oversize silk shirt in pea green, but she still embraced her guitar like a lover and sang "String of Pearls" so powerfully that my entire party was nearly in tears. (Well, except BF#3, who wasn't much for that kind of thing.)
At least judging by the cover art, her hair is back to normal, and from the clips the album sounds fantastic.
If only I didn't have so many tickets and wedding presents to buy..
I've seen her perform three times. The first was at an outdoor festival in Lawrence or Lowell MA, when I was about fourteen and she was the last act in the lineup before Judy Collins. She had long tawny hair twisted up into a knot on the back of her head, and she suggested that the festival organizers should just hose the whole park down every hour or two, and though I can't remember what she sang that I liked so much, I would have gone straight up and bought her album then and there but for the fact that it would have meant losing my seat for Judy Collins.
The second time I saw her was many years later, after I'd rediscovered her through her first widely-distributed album. She was playing in a little storefront coffeehouse. I went with BF#3 and K, and we were so early that we sat on the sidewalk eating tuna sandwiches and watched her soundchecks through the open door of the hall. What struck me most that time was her physical presence and the way she interacted with her instrument as if it were a co-performer, as if the two of them were engaged in some form of Tai Chi. She performed barefoot, with her hair loose, and I had a sense of being able to see her drawing on some deep and elemental strength and transforming it into music. That's rather a dippy way to put it, but that's how it felt. We were sitting in the second row, and when she asked for requests in the second half, I shouted "TWO STRONG ARMS," which was then my favorite, and she played it.
The third time was three New Year's Eve's ago, at First Night in Boston, in a cavernous Unitarian church. She'd gotten her hair cut, apparently with a weedwhacker, into a dreadful David-Bowie-In-Labyrinth mullety mess, and she was wearing an oversize silk shirt in pea green, but she still embraced her guitar like a lover and sang "String of Pearls" so powerfully that my entire party was nearly in tears. (Well, except BF#3, who wasn't much for that kind of thing.)
At least judging by the cover art, her hair is back to normal, and from the clips the album sounds fantastic.
If only I didn't have so many tickets and wedding presents to buy..
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