At the Birchmere, the crowd was probably tilted slightly in
favor of Del n' the Boys. Washington is, after all, an old
bluegrass town believe it or not. I thought Del's set was in
many ways the highlight of the night and was certainly paced
the smoothest. Made me go out and buy his new one, I tell
ya.
Steve's solo set dragged the most, IMO. It wasn't due to his
politics (with which I agree, mostly, although some of my
friends grumped about his speechifyin'), but rather due to
the fact that he tried out a couple of new ballad-y songs.
That's tough under any circumstance.
Incidentally, I thought "Hillbilly Highway" was the most
successful "bluegrassed up " of Steve's songs. That's the
one that should be a festival staple.
PS -- Mucho thanks to P2er Tom Herman (I hope I got this
right, please correct me if I didn't) who actually *called*
me up that afternoon to say that the Sleater-Kinney show
was postponed. Now that's an incredible demonstration of
the kind of community represented on this list. Damn.
Drove out to Annandale instead to catch the last set of an
apologetically croaky Bill Kirchen.
William Cocke
Senior Writer
HSC Development
University of Virginia
(804) 924-8432
