“I could write my name by the age of three, and I don’t need anyone…“

Ingrid Michaelson performed at the 930 Art Center with Matthew Perryman Jones on Monday thanks to my dear friends at Production Simple. She sold the show out completely and despite the horrific weather, the house was packed. Thanks to Audra for helping me out with a great seat so I could get a few photos. Ingrid laughed about her debacle with the snow storm, noting, as I had earlier in the day, that Kentuckians are completely incompetent drivers in the snow. She didn’t use harsh words at all actually, just laughing at one particular man whose fish-tailing didn’t keep him from just pushing the pedal to the metal. I was surprised by her sense of humor and how quickly it was revealed. Virtually as soon as she sat down at her Yamaha keyboard, she complained that people sitting on the sides were able to see her “muffin top” (a roll of fat pouring over the top of her jeans), which she only pretended she had. Further she commented about us looking like a very NPR crowd who eat organic foods and have compost heaps, which was, no doubt, absolutely true. Only NPR listeners go to a art gallery/church to see a concert. Then, there was a conversation about deer and what they eat. Eventually she said she didn’t know what they ate, but that she knew she ate deer. It was odd, but it is the sort of intimacy that comes from a venue of this type. Also, she laughed that there were baby cribs in the back and thought perhaps it was an orphanage too. She was very funny and personal and I really feel like I got a glimpse of who she is.

She looked absolutely beautiful and my pictures do no justice as I had a hard time with the lighting. I’ve mentioned before that the 930 Art Center has quickly become my favorite new venue. There are, however, pluses and minuses. The plus side is the incredible intimacy of the concert experience. The minuses are exclusively as an incompetent photographer…the light is very difficult to deal with there. Nevertheless, Ingrid looked beautiful in a sort of cute geeky way.

Ingrid started out with one of my favorites, Breakable, which was a great song to start out with as one of the key lines is “we’re all just breakable girls and boys”. If you don’t know why that’s quite so appropriate, I’m guessing you don’t have the newest album. Last year Ingrid came out with her second album “Girls and Boys”.

She introduced the next song with a little story about how her parents own a home in Maine (she’s from Staten Island), and that she still often goes there with her parents who go every summer. On one recent trip, she’d brought a friend along (the whole thing feels so high school, which seems so fitting, and I mean that in the best way), and they’d gone out on a boat with a Lobsterman who was teaching them about the profession. They’d both though he was attractive & her friends leans in to her and says that she wants to fall overboard so that he’d have to save her. Ingrid proceeds to make fun of the high schoolist way of her friend, but then admitted to having gone home and essentially written a song about him (with a few other experiences thrown in as well). The song, of course, was “Overboard”.

She spoke of many of her songs, and played with an emotion that was beautiful to watch because you could really tell that she was really enjoying herself. She seemed so affected by every song. At one point, she noted that sometimes she gets into a groove and mindlessly plays songs, which is more than fair considering the rigors of touring. However, tonight she mentioned that she had really gotten into many of the songs and was really thinking about why she’d written them in the first place. She then told us how halfway through Corner of Your Heart she’d nearly lost it looking over at her guitarist/tour manager Allie Moss with her ricola, tea & tissue paper. Ingrid had given Allie her cold recently when they were in the Bahamas, but as retribution of sorts, she received shocks for the rest of the night from her mic.

On the song “For Me” which isn’t on any of the albums, Ingrid performed a fantastic mouth trumpet near the end. At one point as she was doing it, I think she enjoyed how well she was doing it so much that she messed up by laughing in appreciation of herself. Don’t take that to be ego, it was deserved because it was really impressive. Apparently she didn’t normally do it, or at least not so well because Allie’s expression was amazement as well as she clearly enjoyed it as well. Enjoying her own quirkiness for a moment, she did a few tongue tricks and sang an impressive homage to “Huey Dewey & Louie”.

She spent a little more time making fun of Kentucky drivers & telling us about her proclivity towards using profanity, but mostly refrained with a single slip-up that I recall for the sake of a 14 year old audience member. From those sort of fun and funny topics, she transitioned into a song about the documentary of the jumpers of San Franciso’s Golden Gate Bridge. The song was an incredibly sad song about the people being “broken” and unable to see the goodness in life & how she’d wish she could have met them just to try to tell them nothing was worth killing their selves.

Next, as the song started I thought it was my favorite song, Massochist. Unfortunately, it wasn’t and it was never played. In fact, after the show I wanted to find her & just ask her to sing the first verse or so of it, because I absolutely love that song. Instead, it was another one that I do really like called “The Hat”, which involved audience participation. She requested that we rebel like 13 years olds, eating venison, wearing black when we’re told to wear pink and that she needed us to help her rock the effing church by singing “I should have told you that you were my first love”.

A few songs later she asked for another sing along to “Love to Love You” in our best Ron Burgandy voice as the result of the enthusiasm from one of the members of the audience. I can’t help but mention again how interactive she was with the crowd, because later we spoke of her previous trips to Louisville, about faking Irish accents, learning spanish phrases from friend’s answering machines, watermelons and radiators, numb hands and how they somehow entice you to bite them, and passengers on her flights. She even said that it was “one of the awesomest shows” she’d played.

One of the best songs of the night came a little later as she did an impromtu piece entitled “It’s Snowing in Louisville” which was really quite good and included many of the things she’d spoken of through her experiences with the city so far including her butchering our mispronunciation of the city’s name. She seemed quite happy with the song as did Allie, so Allie told us of another previous impromptu song she created while out on the road called the “GPS Song” followed by a request for a song from her first album, “Charlie” which she’d forgotten but gave her best at by performing a little interlude.

She said that if we could clap for 30 seconds, she’d do an encore and that if she did, she might have something up her sleeve. Up her sleeves were two great covers, “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song and ” Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”. The show was all-around wonderful, but I’m crossing my fingers she one day reads this and calls me to sing Masochist, the song she forgot (not holding my breath).

For the Setlist & plenty of photos,

Setlist:
Breakable
Overboard
Corner of Your Heart
Die Alone
For Me
Far Away
San Francisco
The Hat
Are We There Yet?
Love to Love You
The Way I Am
It’s Snowing in Louisville
GPS Song
Men of Snow
Charlie
Keep Breathing
Fresh Prince of Bel Air

as usual, you can get all of my photos in a higher resolution at my Picasa Web Album