Going to Largo is like going to another dimension, lost in time, where the public is said to shut up (and they mean it), authoritatively told to turn off the cell phones, where the room is so silent you could hear Fiona Apple swallowing her tea on stage. The guy announcing the show also said it was absolutely forbidden to take pictures or recordings or any sort, and when he came to confiscate my camera, I thought he would also show up later to tell me to stop taking notes in the dark. That’s how imperious his tone was.
Fiona Apple was doing a concert ‘with friends’ on Saturday night, and she is so rare these days that I still don’t know how I managed to get a ticket as the show sold out in a flash. The theater inside Largo is very small (280 seats), like a secret place where she occasionally graces us of her presence, but I would not want to give a false impression, she is not a diva, although the no picture policy may be a little over the top. On stage, she is funny and witty, jovial and at ease, dropping an occasional f-bomb with charm, appearing ultra thin in her long low-waist purple skirt and long hair tight in a bun, but absolutely fantastic to listen to.
With her voice, she does whatever she wants, just listen how she rides this extraordinary song, ‘Extraordinary Machine’, with which she opened the show. Her range is impressive, from deep to high, her tone is passionate, intense, and emotionally ravaged, with a duality she manages to maintain, between fragility and strength, hurt and resilience.
Just accompanied by Jon Brion’s quiet and acrobatic acoustic guitar, and later joined on stage by many other people, she actually sang very few of her own songs, instead she did many covers of oldies, like the Everly Brothers’ ‘Til I Kissed You’ during which she was playfully hitting a large drum, and ‘You're The One I Love’.
But the whole show was conceived like a theatrical play, there were many entries and exits like in a vaudeville played in front of the large red curtain, and Fiona was the hostess, sipping her tea between musical numbers, even taking a bite of a slice of cake sitting on the table. We were even introduced to it as Jon Brion said early in the show, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,… the chocolate cake’, to which quick Fiona replied ‘It’s the new vodka!’
Brion and Apple were soon joined by Sebastian Steinberg, who played an upright large bass during two of her songs ‘On The Bound’ which made Fiona dance and jump between the two musicians, and an almost flamenco-version of ‘Fast As You Can’.
Margaret Cho, who had actually opened the show with a few of her dirty, filthy jokes (how can this girl get away with all this and still be funny?) came on stage and took a fancy guitar to sing one of her songs with Fiona, ‘Hey Big Dog’,… ‘I feel I could join Dire Straits’, said the funny girl.
There were also a few musical interludes played by Brion and Steinberg, who eventually switched instruments, letting Fiona taking a breath, then musical storyteller and Largo familiar, Tom Brosseau came to play and sing a tune with Fiona, followed by her sister, Maude Maggart, who sang the harmonies on two beautiful oldies I could not identify.
I actually was having a hard time to recognize all the songs, some were standards like ‘'She's Funny That Way", or Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’, but others were kind of obscure (at least for me), like ‘The Object of My Affection’ by 30s vocalists The Boswell Sisters.
It was a night with friends, and everyone seemed to be part of her family, ‘My other siblings’, said Fiona while welcoming on stage Sara and Sean Watkins (he is a member of folk band Nickel Creek) to play a lively rendition of Dolly Parton’s classic ‘Jolene’ and a few other old country songs like ‘Am I That Easy to Forget’, which she was not sure to be able to do at first. Then after a few hesitations and a ‘I’m pretty sure we can do it!’, she said ‘If it doesn’t work’…. ‘We’ll notice’ finished someone in the audience.
At this point everyone was back on stage, with someone else on piano, Sara on violin, a perfect combination for their ending with this old hillbilly Appalachian folk song ‘In the Pines’. But there was an encore with Fiona and Jon Brion giving a nice rendition of their take on Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’.
It has been very quiet in Fiona Apple’s world for a long time, she rarely performs and only seems to do it surrounded by friends inside the protective walls of Largo, not even performing her own repertoire. In the late 90s, she was all over MTV, and then retracted from the spotlights. Last August, she also did a show at the small club, it sold out extremely fast too and was advertised as her ‘return to the stage after a five-year hiatus’. It’s such a shame that such a great and talented performer cannot be seen more often while we have to suffer so much crap elsewhere,… last night, she had a strong stage presence despite her frail appearance, and she was showing a true confidence, so why so few shows? At least, I feel privileged to have seen her in her true element.
Setlist
1. ‘Extraordinary machine’
2. ‘Til I Kissed You’ (Everly Brothers cover)
3. ‘I Got A Woman Crazy For Me’ (cover)
4. ‘On The Bound’
5. ‘Fast As You Can’
6. ‘Hey Big Dog’ with Margaret Cho
7. Interlude: Jon Brion and Sebastian Steinberg
8. A song with Tom Brosseau
9. Tom Brosseau alone
10. A song with her sister
11. Another song with her sister
12. ‘She Thinks I Still Care’ Jon Brion and Sebastian Steinberg (John Fogerty cover)
13. ‘Jolene’ (Dolly Parton cover)
14. The Object of My Affection (The Boswell Sisters cover)
15. Am I That Easy to Forget (cover)
16. ‘You're The One I Love’ (Everly Brothers cover)
17. ‘In The Pines’ (cover)
EncoreEveryday with Jon Brion (Buddy Holly cover)
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