Cayamo Cruise: Day 5, the Boat

[livingdeb]

Here's a view of the ridiculously ornate entrance to the Stardust:



I like the dragonflies on the carpet. The mirrors crack me up. I like the ceiling fixtures. Here's a close up of several of the mirrors:



Here is a close-up of a ceiling lamp:





Lucinda Williams

So, I like some of the songs Lucinda Williams writes, and I like how she sings them, but something about her accent puts me off so much that I gave away my one album of hers. To Robin. Doh! I was looking forward to this performance the least.

Two nights before I had been waiting outside one of her concerts trying to get into the Lyle and John concert that followed hers, and I knew and liked most of the songs. So, then I was looking forward to it after all.

However, at the start of the concert, she was just phoning it in.



She sounded good; she just seemed so bored and elsewhere. I wondered if this were like the debate I heard about where if you heard it on the radio, you thought Nixon won, but if you saw it on TV, you thought he lost. Lucinda Williams, the Nixon debater of music.

I'd heard that her performances were all disappointing, so I guess this was why. Here are possible titles of some songs she sang:

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road"
"People Talking"
"Well, Well, Well"
"Greenville"
"Overtime" - which she called one of her favorite songs to do
"Concrete and Barbed Wire"
"Still I Long for Your Kiss"
"Out of Touch" - she said she loves Doug's solo on this one; I like this new-to-me song, too
"Honey Bee" - I like this new-to-me song, too

Then Buddy Miller snuck in.



Lucinda didn't notice for several songs. (By the way, you can just about see the three pom-poms hanging from the part of Buddy's guitar where you tune it, though it looks like only two.)

When she did notice Buddy, she started cheering up. Then an extra drummer showed up and she cheered up even more.



The two drummers traded places and the regular drummer tried to play with some kind of percussive instrument he just didn't like and finally used drumsticks on something random.

Some other possible titles of songs:
"I Changed the Lock on My Front Door"
"You Took My Joy"
"Get Right with God"
"For What It's Worth"



Edwin McCain and Maia Sharp

Someone told us that Edwin McCain had "the best voice on the ship." By that time, he had only one performance remaining, and it started halfway through our ticketed Lucinda Williams show, but we got there as quickly as we could. Here they are:



Sadly, I don't remember their voices. But I do have a couple of notes. My favorite was Edwin explaining his strategy for when his daughter starts dating. "I'm going to love every boy she brings home." So much more fun than disliking them. And more effective for getting teenagers to stop liking the icky ones. "Whatever happened to that nice ..."

For one song we were promised, "As a special treat tonight, we'll play it in the same key."

Possible song names:
"Uncharted Carolina/California"
"How Long Can She Be the Girl on Her Way"

Then they explained that we're halfway through the cruise, so "if there's anything you haven't done, get on course to make it happen." It's a good idea in all kinds of situations.

Buddy Miller

We got to hear Buddy Miller again.



Possible song titles include

"I Worry Too Much"
"Gasoline and Matches" again
"Halfway Home"

He told a great story about when he was boarding the ship. There were a bunch of guys arriving from the Marriot in vans. He goes to get his luggage out, and he sees that one of the guys is wearing a "name tag" that says "Porter." (He hadn't had enough sleep.) One thing leads to another and, the porter ends up belting out a Porter Wagner song, perhaps "What Ain't to Be Just Might Happen." (My knowledge and notes are not so great.)

Then Buddy did a Porter and Dolly Parton song, "Poison Love."

Then:
"Don't Tell Me to Stop Loving You"
"Don't Wait"
An accordion song
"Price of Love"
"I'll Keep on Falling in Love until I Get It Right"
"I'm Pretending"

On tuning the guitar: "It's a technical process that I do. Rarely."

"Trouble" again.
"It Don't Matter Where You Bury Me"

Mysterious Guy

Then we got to see a guy who was replacing someone else, but whose name we couldn't quite hear. Maybe you know him:



I have no notes on him at all. So sad.

Floating Vehicles

We walked around a bit before the next show. During this time we saw a ship literally passing in the night:



We got a close look at the bottom of one of the lifeboats:



Two hulls. Two propellers. No obvious holes.

And some sort of inexplicable underwater handrails:



Holly Williams

Then we got to see the granddaughter of Hank, playing with someone named Chris:



Possible song titles:
"Waiting On June" - her favorite John Prine song
"Make Me an Angel" - about her alcoholic friend
"I Saw the Light" - a Hank Williams song

We also learned that it is true that she got left behind on one of the islands.

Richard Thompson

We managed to stay up for Richard Thompson's midnight solo show. Before he came on, the announcer suggest that instead of clapping when Richard got on stage, we should just quietly wave our hands in the air. Because it would be funny.

I am not a fan of surprises, but Richard handled it well. He looked at us sideways. He waved his hands back. And he announced, "Okay, I'm just going to mime the first number."

And he did. He was totally into it.

I don't know what song that was, but I have some guesses at the more verbal ones:
"When the Spell is Broken" - where I learned a lyric I never caught before: "This grindstone's wearing me."
"Walking on a Wire"
"Valerie"

Here's him singing:



Then he said, "I think I'll do a mellow set. Interspersed with sort of wake-up calls."

Then he did "Johnny's Far Away," trying to get us to join in on the chorus. "A sort of 'Hey, mind if we join you and vomit over the side?' sort of chorus."

Other possible song titles:
"I Give You My Vincent to Ride"
"The Sunset Song"

Here he is playing:



Then a mini selection from "A Thousand Years of Popular Song." First he asked, "Anyone speak Italian here?" [No.] "Fantastic!" Then he sang a song from 1590 in Medieval dialect Italian.

Then he told the joke about how in heaven, the English great you at the door, the French do the cooking, the Germans organize everything, and the Italians do the entertainment. In Hell, the French meet you at the door, the English do the cooking, the Italians organize everything, and the Germans do the entertainment.

Then he did "another song of the sea" that "started as a sea chanty, then was a big folk song in the 1950s," "Shenandoah."

He also did "A Legal Matter" and "Misunderstood." I'll leave you with this face:





Wave motion quote of the day - "The really hard thing about playing at sea is trying to step on a pedal. You're on one leg for just that split second. If you hit a bump, it doesn't happen." - Richard Thompson.

Comments

[chikuru.livejournal.com]

Great pictures! Sounds like a great experience that I would have enjoyed too.

As for Lucinda Williams, I had the same impression a couple decades ago when I saw her for the first time--she has both a lazy voice and a lazy manner. I guess it's part of her schtick.