Natalie Merchant awakens from 8-year slumber with Leave Your Sleep, leaves a lasting mark on Ann Arbor with two shows 7/27/10

When it comes to artists, true artists in every aspect, few are as pure (and under-appreciated) as Natalie Merchant. Formerly known as the lead singer for 1980s college-rock phenom band 10,000 Maniacs (yes, they’re still around), Merchant built quite a cult following for herself after splitting with the Maniacs in 1993 and releasing her debut album, Tigerlily, with hits such as Carnival and Wonder.

I am among that cult following.

Since leaving her label Elektra in 2002, Merchant’s only album had been The House Carpenter’s Daughter, which resurrected many all-but-forgotten gospel and folk songs. However, up until recently, I had always regarded her 1998 release Ophelia as her best work.

After an eight-year hiatus from cutting any albums or touring at all, Merchant is back with Leave Your Sleep, which is sure to be considered her magnum opus for years to come.  In these eight years “off the map,” she focused on raising her daughter Lucia, and between Motherland and motherhood arose a creative curiosity in children’s poetry.

A week ago today was a very special day for a die-hard like me. I was able to catch not one, but TWO performances by Natalie Merchant in downtown Ann Arbor.

At the very last minute, she agreed to do a special noon in-store performance at Borders Bookstore 01. Lucky for me, this is about 5 or 6 blocks down the street from my office, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a lunch break than to watch one of my favorite artists perform for the first time in eight years in an intimate performance in a bookstore, with a special meet and greet afterwards.  Ann Arbor’s 107.1 hosted the event, and broadcast half the show on air. (Tip: If you go to their website and sign up to be an “Insider” (it’s relatively hassle-free), under “Audio Archives” you can stream the six tracks they recorded.)

I only wish I thought enough at the time to write the entire setlist down in my BlackBerry, but was too captivated by the performance to think of anything else but how awesome it was to be there. I took a few shots with my phone, but AnnArbor.com has a nice gallery of that performance you should totally check out.

The main show itself was . . . wow. For someone who has seen her as many times as I have throughout the years, I can tell you that it was much different than “the usual,” but in a good way. Overall, she collaborated with over a hundred musicians on Leave Your Sleep, all of whom are named in the liner notes of the album, and her live band was much different than she’s had it in the past. There was no drum kit, nor a keyboard/piano, but plenty of strings, including a cello, an upright bass, a banjo, a fiddle, the usual lead and rhythm guitars, a snare, and an accordion and a tuba thrown in for good measure.

The first half of her set was entirely composed of songs from Leave Your Sleep, and each song had an accompanying story about the poem it was grown from, along with slides of the poet and educational, sometimes amusing commentary beforehand by Ms. Merchant herself, on her research of the poet, the song, and how it came to be.

She opened the show with her adaptation of obscure poet Charles Edward Carryl’s poem The Sleepy Giant, about a giant who used to eat little boys and is now reformed, much to the relief of the little boy to whom giant is speaking.  From there she led into her adaptation of the classic Mother Goose The Man in the Wilderness, a song with a very classic Merchant-esque musical arrangement, in the same vein as her Motherland album.

However, the rest of the first half of the show was anything but classic Natalie Merchant musically. One of the things that stands out about Leave Your Sleep over her other albums is the amount of thought and research that went into every song, not only about the poem and the poet, but the time period in which they were written, the musical stylings that accompanied the era, and of course, her creative liberty to adapt the piece. In all of Merchant’s performances, she is not just a singer, but a full-out interpretive dancer to each and every song, and this show was no exception.

For example, not much is known about the British poem The King of China’s Daughter, whose author is unknown, however the song itself has a very classic Chinese sound to it, and in fact, she had some very talented Chinese musicians record the song with her for the album. She danced a hypnotic interpretation to the arrangement using a Chinese paper lantern as a prop, and took you back to one of the ancient dynasties right there in the theatre. (Or, as someone I know would say, “it sounds really plinky-plinky.”)

In The Janitor’s Boy, by child prodigy Nathalia Crane, whose first book of poems (by the same name) was published at the age of 11 in 1924, Merchant appropriately adapts the poem to a very swanky, jazzy arrangement in the style of the 1920s, and glides across the stage as if to portray a sultry lounge singer.

She closed the Leave Your Sleep portion of the show with a haunting song entitled Equestrienne, by Rachel Field (1894 – 1942), a song so haunting it’ll linger with you hours later. Here’s a video of her doing the song at the Philadelphia show in April:

The encores. Oh the encores. . . .

. . . the encores began the second half of the show that night, where the majority of the audience would be a bit more familiar with the material, as she began with Life is Sweet and played other more-well-known hits such as Carnival, Wonder, and closed with Kind and Generous (typical). But it was a couple rare nuggets that she threw in that had old school fans like me in love with this show — she played Eat for Two, from her 10,000 Maniacs days, the lead track from Blind Man’s Zoo (1989). I can’t honestly remember the last time I saw her do this live, if ever, but . . . what a dramatic performance. She slowed the tempo down significantly from when she did it back-in-the-day, and the song was all the more intense with abrupt breaks at strategic intervals — if it gives you any indication, I literally watched this one with my mouth open and chills down my spine.

The other pleasant surprise? Don’t Talk, another 10,000 Maniacs-era one, from 1987’s In My Tribe album. I was very glad she threw in a couple of the really old songs for the die-hards, and all in all, I can’t say she’s lost any of her stage presence and/or zest over the years. Natalie Merchant is looking and sounding better than ever, and though she said she “won’t be coming back to Ann Arbor for many years to come,” I can only hope that isn’t true. She’s in a league of her own, one of the most seasoned singers, songwriters, and all-around true artists of our era, and it would be a shame to not see her again for another eight years.

Natalie Merchant Full Set List 7-27-10 Michigan Theatre, Ann Arbor

The Sleepy Giant
The Man in the Wilderness
The King of China’s Daughter
Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience
Spring and Fall: to a young child
maggie and milly and molly and may
The Peppery Man
The Janitor’s Boy
Bleezer’s Ice-Cream
Adventures of Isabel
Calico Pie
If No One Ever Marries Me
The Dancing Bear
Equestrienne

1st Encore:

Life is Sweet
River
Eat for Two
The Worst Thing
The Letter

2nd Encore:

Carnival
Don’t Talk
Wonder
Michael Row Your Boat Ashore (improv)
Kind & Generous

Note: All links to albums in this post are Amazon Affiliate links.

Here is a link to AnnArbor.com’s review of the show.

Amazee: A winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities

In April 2010, custom social network service Ning decided that they were going to start charging and do away with their free service. Beginning August 20, Ning will charge the following for usage of their custom social network platform:

(Features included in each plan are not shown because of space.)

As you can imagine, this decision by Ning caused (and is still causing) quite a stir among users and administrators of such networks.  Even if it’s only $2.95, many administrators of smaller groups are unwilling to pay for it, and many are struggling to find effective Ning alternatives, especially nonprofits and “cause” networks. There’s even a Facebook group dedicated to prevent Ning from doing so.

Well, have no fear, activists — Switzerland-based Amazee is stepping up the plate and offering FREE Ning migration service to their platform.

What is Amazee, you ask?

Though it hasn’t caught on in the United States (yet), it’s a popular custom platform for projects and reaching goals, whether it’s fundraising or non-monetary aspirations. It’s very popular in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

Here’s a quick video Amazee made explaining the benefits of migrating to their platform:

Welcome, Ning refugees! from Amazee on Vimeo.

From Amazee’s blog:

First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning*: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.

Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).

Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.

I’ve had an account at Amazee for over a year and have been (minimally) involved on this platform with a few projects in South Africa, and absolutely love the functionality of it. There are other Ning alternatives, like GroupSite and Mixxt, but personally, I don’t find the others very conducive to the needs of collaborative activism.  Amazee, on the other hand, was designed for that very purpose.

So if you’ve got a cause-based community on Ning, don’t fret – head on over to Amazee and they’ll make migration easy, painless, and free.

Have you found any other good Ning alternatives? Please share in the comments below if so. Thanks!

Note: I got no form of compensation for writing this post.

Mozes provides mobile marketing miracles for mobs.

Last week I attended the “Detroit” (read: Auburn Hills) stop of the Martina McBride & Trace Adkins Shine All Night Tour, which was, as any country fan can imagine, a helluva show, to say the least. Of course, it wouldn’t be a show in the Metro Detroit area without a special appearance by everyone’s favorite local concert crasher, Kid Rock, who did a duet of “Picture” with Martina in her encore and then a song of his own.

This is not a review of the show. (I’ll write one of those later if you want.)

This is a post about a cool service that I signed up for a few weeks ago that I finally got to see in full action at the concert. It’s called Mozes, and it’s a mobile marketing powerhouse of awesome.

When I first discovered it a few weeks ago, I signed up as a fan to receive mobile marketing content from some of my favorite country artists, like Brad Paisley, Sugarland, Lee Ann Womack, and yes, Martina McBride. When you sign up, you join a “mob,” which is short for mobile list. It’s totally opt-in and since I signed up for all those things it was never once spammy. From the Mozes site:

When you sign up for a mob, you receive exclusive announcements, offers and content from your favorite band, brand, team, event or organization via the mobile phone. You can communicate back using either text or voice messages and can opt out of a mob at any time.

When I signed up for Lady Antebellum’s mob, I received a wallpaper for my phone and the option to hear a special voice message from the band. I thought that was pretty nifty, but I didn’t think much beyond Mozes until the Martina McBride show last week.

That’s when I saw the true power of Mozes. There were screens on either side of the stage that you could text messages to, using the Mozes service. If you texted the word “shine” plus your message to 66937 (that spells “Mozes”), as long as it got by the invisible moderator, your message would appear on the screen. Every text you sent also entered you in a drawing to win front row seats or something else. (I didn’t win anything but my date won a free 3 month subscription to Martina McBride’s fan club — which he’s giving to me.)

As you can imagine, people had a lot of fun with this. Aside from a lot of “pick me! pick me!” texts, there were a lot of cute messages like “Our kids got us these tickets for our anniversary … and we’re in the nosebleeds!” and “Hi Mom!” type things. (Unsurprisingly, my own message: “how about that $15 parking fee? Now I can’t afford a t-shirt!!” didn’t make it up to the screen.) There were also a lot of marriage proposals, such as “Kristie, will you marry me?” which got me wondering how many Kristies were there that night with their boyfriends who were not the intended recipient of the proposal and accidentally said yes, thus creating a lot of awkward moments.

But I digress.

Mozes is not just for music.

Yes, musicians seem to be the ones embracing it most, but there are endless possibilities for this service. On their site, they list a few ideas on how it could be used with sports, such as sending text updates with game stats; for brands and agencies, such as running in-store promotions such as text-for-info providing consumers with additional product specs; for causes and non-profits, such as integrating data captured, including issue and opinion data or extended contact information, into your supporter database; and my favorite, live events, where you could connect with attendees via pre-event announcements, poll the audience and see live voting results on-screen in real-time, and even send post-event thank you messages, coupons or links to images and videos … really, the possibilities are endless.

Of course, like everything these days, Mozes is integrated into all the major social networks and sharing options, and what I think is the coolest about it is the ability to target your messages very specifically by age, location, gender, likes and dislikes, and more, PLUS you get instant analytics on engagement/ROI.  Above the standard level, which is free for a month and then only $10 a month after that, all pricing is custom depending on your needs.

Example of real-world application for non-real rock stars

Most people are not real rock stars (or country stars, for that matter). So let’s say you were a person in charge of marketing the conference du jour, and you were aiming for people from all over the region to attend. You’d go with the Group Edition, which allows up to 25,000 messages and many more features and options than the basic. Once people signed up for your mob, you could send them a text or voice thank you, custom ringtone, and/or wallpaper of the conference’s brand.

Then, closer to the conference, you look at your stats and realize you’d really like more people from Ohio over 30 to attend. You could narrowcast to everyone in your mob over 30 about a promotion that if they referred two colleagues to buy tickets, they’d be entered to win something special – a conference package upgrade, hotel discount, whatever.

And then, at the event (which would have plenty of people over 30 from Ohio, thanks to your previous efforts), say you had a Q&A session with your keynote speaker. Attendees could text questions that could appear on a screen (or not) and there wouldn’t be any need to pass the mic, or have them stand in line, nor would there be any loose cannons that end up on CNN spazzing out and getting tased.

Or maybe you wanted to have a poll. Instant results could appear on your screen.

Or maybe lots of people at your conference were taking pictures with their phones. You could have them send those pictures to your screen at the event instantly.

My point is that this service is absolutely, amazingly flexible and the possibilities are endless. Have you used Mozes before, as a fan or as a business? What were your experiences like? I’m curious to see what kind of creative ways people are using it!

Musical Monday Edition | Show review: Amy Millan at Pike Room

Keeping true to my obsession with semi-obscure Canadian independent music, last week I was lucky enough to find myself on the guest list for one of my favorite alt-country/folk artists, Amy Millan, when she was in town at the Pike Room, a swanky dive upstairs from Pontiac’s Crofoot Ballroom. Now, it should be said that playing in the Ballroom downstairs that night was this angry-guy band that sounds like every angry-guy band — extremely loud, obnoxious, and with a cool sounding name like Five Finger Death Punch, which was was so loud that we could both feel and hear it over our nice, intimate, folky show of about 60 attendees.  Oddly enough, in my Harley Davidson jacket I could have easily slipped into the other show and not looked out of place, but any band whose name sounds more like a concoction prepared by a goth mom at a Halloween party and whose album is entitled “War is the Answer” can safely be assumed to be the very antithesis of the very Canadian, very folky music that I love and came to see.

Opening the show was an interesting fellow named Afie Jurvanen, who also goes by artist/band name Bahamas, for what reason I have no idea except to perhaps convey sheer irony in being a Finnish guy from Canada. I was pleasantly surprised, however, as he opened with a beautiful ballad called “Hockey Teeth” and instantly won me over. His drummer was missing, but his goofy demeanor and commanding stage presence made him make going solo look easy. His vocals are reminiscent of Jack Johnson but he can play a mean stratocaster.  Always one to support the opening act, I bought his CD, Pink Strat (affiliate link), and encourage you to check him out and support him, too. He’s really, really good.

Now, onto Amy Millan. The best way for me to describe her sound is the bastard child of musical Williamses – Dar Williams, Lucinda Williams, Victoria Williams, and Hank Williams – somewhat folky, somewhat breathy, somewhat twangy, somewhat depressing, but everything she plays sounds instantly classic. She opened with a strong “Losin’ You,” the lead song off her first solo record, Honey from the Tombs (affiliate link), followed by a steel guitar-infused cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” From there she played a mix of songs old and new, this tour to promote her latest album, Masters of the Burial (affiliate link), which has a slightly sad tone but is nonetheless beautiful. 

Any band who can play live with a steel guitar, an upright bass, a mandolin, a ukulele,  and a trombone and make it sound AWESOME earns MAD RESPECT in my book. (The only thing that could have made it better would have been a successful accordion accompaniment, but they can’t all be like Cowboy Junkies.)

Highlights of the show had to have been a spunky version of her Rolling Stone acclaimed hit “Skinny Boy,” and a bluesey, almost-jazzy “Bruised Ghosts,” which is her first single off the new album. For her encore, she played my request of the song that made me first fall in love with her music years ago, a very country-esque “He Brings Out the Whiskey in Me,” that rings like a classic country song a lá Hank Williams or Loretta Lynn.

Having been disappointed with my new iPod Nano video’s lack of ability to record well in loud, dark spaces, I decided to try shooting some video with my BlackBerry instead, and surprisingly, the quality wasn’t too bad, save for my obviously-shaky hand. Below is my shaky capture of “Bruised Ghosts” from Amy Millan at the Pike Room, October 15, and you can find a few more at my YouTube channel.

blip.fm adds YouTube videos, indie musicians benefit BIG TIME

Once in a while at night while super multitasking (read: not being all that productive because I’m trying to do too much at once), I’m known to blip. For the uninitiated, blip.fm is known as “the Twitter of music,” in that you can play (or “blip”) songs while attaching a little message to them, and you can follow (they say “subscribe”) to other users (“Blip.fm DJs”) much like on Twitter.

A blip on blip.fm:

And to pile on top of all that, you can even integrate it to your Twitter account so that what you blip is tweeted and not just seen by your BlipDJ friends, but by your Twitter followers as well.

A blip on Twitter:

Talk about integration — earlier I decided to blip because I had a song in my head, and suddenly the some of search results had these little TV icons next to them. I didn’t notice at first but HOLY COW is this cool.

This is why it’s important to tag your content.

I have a lot of musician friends, and I don’t upload a lot of stuff to my YouTube channel but when I do, I make sure they’re able to be found with appropriate tags. Case in point, a band that is like family to me, 60 Second Crush:

Three of the first five videos that came up in the search results for them are mine, and all of the results are their band.

So what does this all mean?

This means serious, never-before-reaching exposure for independent musicians like my buddies.

In fact, I found myself blipping quite a few of my friends’ songs that weren’t previously on blip.fm but were on YouTube (including some of my own videos), and are now on both. Blip.fm’s audience is older and spans much farther across the globe than MySpace’s, which had been indie artists’ saving grace until a year or two ago, and I hope I don’t need to remind anyone that MySpace is now in serious danger of dying.

Not to mention that the audience likely has more money (I don’t have figures for this and it’s late so don’t expect me to look them up right now), which means increased sales. Which brings me to another feature I noticed — now if you blip an artist and they’re also on iTunes, there will be a little ad that tells you which album the song is from and a link to buy it from the iTunes store.

(OK, so I know that Natalie Merchant isn’t the best example for a screen shot here but it’s 3:30 a.m. and I’m working with I already had. Trust me — if you’re a smart indie musician with all your ducks in a row and are found on YouTube and/or blip.fm and hooked up on iTunes, it’ll work.)

The only bad thing I noticed, which may have been my own fault, was that the YouTube integration seemed to freeze up my Firefox a few times, which was a real pain in the butt because this is the third time I’ve had to write this paragraph & my auto-save wasn’t auto-saving fast enough. Somebody else on Twitter mentioned that she had trouble with her browser in this, too, but it was pointed out to me that it could be a noscript or script blocking extention I’ve got installed. I’m going to have to check that out but I’m sure it can be resolved easily enough.

Keep in mind that these new features aren’t just great for artists, either. Now that there’s video involved, it’s great exposure for professional music videographers, as well as those who just like to shoot live music for fun.

In case you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about supporting local and independent musicians (and always have been). The internet has really leveled the playing field, if not given them an advantage over the “big dogs,” and if social media strategies are executed properly, the possibilities are endless. This new cross-platform integration is pretty exciting, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

I know I’ve got some indie musicians and their fans reading this, what do you think? Lots of potential or just lots of hype? Blippers, has your browser been crashing, too?

(FYI, some more technical information about the changes and how they came about can be found at gigaom.com.)

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