David Gray, Brought to You by the Letter "D"

After the joy of seeing David Gray not once but twice last year, I thought for sure that it would be a few years before I was able to see him again.  But through serendipitous good fortune, I scored tickets to see him this June - as in two months from right now.  In Row D of The Fox Theater.  The video below was taken from Row D of the Atlanta Civic Center when I saw him last April.  I guess D is my lucky row.  I can hardly wait to be this close to my favorite, favorite, favorite musician once more.

Color Me Obsessed

I'm lucky enough to work with my musical soulmate.  When Rob Entsminger says, "Listen to this" followed by a link, I'm 99.7 percent sure I'm going to be smitten.  After catching The Civil Wars at Unplugged in the Park back in October, he messaged me the next day with the duo's video for "Poison & Wine", which I proceeded to listen to on repeat for the next three or four hours.  I hopped from video to video after that based on YouTube's handy recommendations of other performances. By the end of the day, I was a fan. 

The Civil Wars met through a quite literal eHarmony - a Nashville singer/songwriter service that matches collaborators.  Both John Paul White and Joy Williams tried to ditch the first meeting, but, lucky for us, neither had a bonafide excuse.  And when they met, they discovered an other-worldly connection as though they'd known each other a lifetime.

When I heard that The Civil Wars would be making a visit to Athens to play The Melting Point, I made plans to be there by corralling my good friend and features reporter Joe VanHoose into covering the show.  It came just a week after The Civil Wars' debut full-length album Barton Hollow soared to the top of the iTunes chart.

In concert, The Civil Wars are every bit as stripped down and haunting as they are on recordings.  There is no overwrought instrumentation or backup band.  Their performance is comprised of nothing more than White's collection of guitars, Williams's occasional stint at the piano, and the best instruments they've got - their perfectly matched voices.  People often mistake them for a married couple - and they are married, just not to each other - but the mistake is easy to understand once drawn into the intimate circle of their voices matching bravado and mixing low throaty notes and contrasting Williams's sweet, clear, rich voice with White's gravelly baritone.  And their performance is both musical and an embodiment of what they sing - alternately assuming impassioned lovers, the broken-hearted and sad longing.  Interspersed with ballads and lullabies were quiet jabs spoken to each other in jest and amazed delight by these newly minted superstars.  Their astonishment at hearing the audience sing along with them was genuine, and it's rare that you get to see a band that's on the first leg of their meteoric rise to fame.

There's a vintage quality to Barton Hollow.  The Civil Wars almost feel like two souls from that time period telling their stories through the plucked guitar strings and the haunting, melancholy voices of Williams and White.  You really believe the title track that no preacher man can save their souls - that wailing ache in their voices - and that the desperate plea in "Fallen" to know that love is over is in earnest.  And "Forget Me Not" is a plaintive duet that seems like it should be listened to over a grainy radio connection in the 1930s.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I've been listening to Barton Hollow nonstop since it arrived in my mailbox.  (Yes, I still buy real CDs.)  And if you're a friend who has music taste similar to mine at all, I've urged you to download their free live performance at Eddie's Attic from their MySpace page.  And if you live in a city where they're touring, I've sent you the link and instructed you to buy tickets.  So I thought it only fitting that I take my message to the masses and blog about my Civil War obsession.

If you're still on the fence, please note they do a killer cover of "Billie Jean" as an encore. What more could you possibly need to convince you?

That's the Ticket

In attempts to make progress toward moving into my house (no comments from the peanut gallery, please), I do sort through possessions from time to time to determine what goes to the house and what goes to File 13.  I found a cherrywood box on the shelves in my room that contained a one-way ticket down memory line - a one-way ticket comprised of a plethora of little tiny tickets.  Tickets to concerts.  Tickets to sporting events.  Tickets to theme parks.  And like a confetti of memories, dozens of movie ticket stubs, each with the name of the movie and my companions written in tiny, tiny handwriting.

Earlier relics include tickets from White Water and the Braves game from my one failed attempt at summer camp (aside from sports camps) at 4-H's Camp Fulton in 1991.  Stuck to these was one square photo from a photobooth strip featuring Sally Aamoth, Jessica Purvis, Bryan Chancey and me. For the sake of all of our dignity, it is not included here.  Then there's the Campbell's Soup Tour of Champions Figure Skater's on Ice at the Omni featuring the 1992 Olympic champions of Albertville, France.  I remember sleeping in the back of Heather Putman's parents' Jeep Cherokee on the way back from Atlanta in what seemed like the middle of the night but was probably 11:30.

Into the high school years with some real treasures: the Variety Show ticket from our senior year at which David Nudelman dropped the infamous f-bomb - my stub is signed by legandary English teacher Roger Bailey as "Rog the Cow" due to his bovine performance in a departmental skit.  The 1996 Homecoming Dance themed "Into the Mystic" that I attended with a pack of girls including Allison Murrow, Jenn Oglesbee and Heather.  Instead of a dance ticket for my senior prom, there's a ticket for Six Flags where my sister took Heather, Niki Hancock and me since we had no dates to prom.  For the record, I also recently found photos of us from that same day with our calculus books that we turned into our teacher for extra credit.  (And in calc, I needed all the extra I could get.)  There's the Fiddler on the Roof ticket that I went to with my sophomore year crush, Chad Dudley.  And the Annie Get Your Gun and Sound of Music stubs from lending moral support to performances by Tim Burger and Jenn.

Which brings me to the slew of musical theater performances I attended when I latched onto drama with a vengeance my junior and senior year.  Singing in the Rain and Grease at the Classic Center.  And Les Mis.  Oh, sweet, lovely Les Mis in my very first time to the Fox Theatre.  I remember being in awe of the ceiling, the grandeur, the smell of the theater.  I loved it so much that I went twice in two weeks with Tim, Jenn, Allison and Tommy Raymer.  I went on to see Rent with the same crew sitting in the very last row of the Fox.  And Stomp - a notable event on the way to which I broke down on the side of I-85 leading to the demise of my beloved 1992 Honda Accord with the pop-up lights and at which was the first time I met my sister-in-law.  (A fact I recognized whether my brother did or not.)

Speaking of my brother, I found the Universal Studios stub from when we went in high school.  And a dozen or so tickets from baseball games and tournaments he played in over the years.  Also in the sporting category is my scorecard from the now defunct Q-zar that suggests I need shooting lessons.

Tempe Landrum took me with her to the dress rehearsal of the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics.  I'm not sure I even knew who Jessye Norman was when I went, but I remember the still humid air being broken by her amazing voice.

Which brings me to a host of concerts - Don McLean, Rod Stewart, Counting Crows, St. Etienne, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, all three Lilith Fairs.  When I saw the stub for Jump, Little Children at the Georgia Theatre, I had to smile remembering going with Niki and standing under the mirror ball listening to "Cathedrals" and totally falling in love with Matt Bivins during "Body Parts."  And then I felt a little shiver when I realized the ticket was from a night almost ten years to the day before the theatre burned down.

As for theaters, there's a hilarious compilation of movie stubs - some mortifying - and some with funny notes like "First time I drove to Athens."  For the record, that was to see Apollo 13 with Niki.  My first rated-R movie stub: Legends of the Fall.  A first date to see Speechless with Michael Keaton and Gina Davis.  Major League 2 with Lizzy Keister, and Twister with Tempe - oh, how many times she watched that movie.  The Cutting Edge with Heather during my figure skating obsession.  Scream with Andi Jones, Jen and Niki when the Alps Cinema was "the dollar theater."  Remember how scary Scream was the first time you saw it?  Several stubs are noted as mine and Niki's "Loser's Night Out" - clearly, high school was bursting with self-esteem.  And speaking of Niki, the ticket that notes we attended opening night of Jerry Maguire was no doubt due to her undying love for Tom Cruise.

These little pieces of paper, bent squares of cardboard, some so faded you can hardly read them,  decades of adventures that all fit neatly in a little cherry box - which, for the record, is totally making the cut for the move to the house.