Neko Case at Workplay

This week­end I saw Neko Case in con­cert at Work­Play, which is a really cool venue by itself.  The build­ing is a con­verted ware­house, and the peo­ple at Work­Play have made it very ver­sa­tile.  The con­cept is a place for cre­ative peo­ple to come to work and to play, so they offer places to film or record as well as see attrac­tions. I saw Gigan­tic (A Tale of Two Johns) there years ago, but this was my first time to watch a live per­for­mance there.  The front area has a lobby and a lit­tle bar, and then divides into sec­tions.  Around 250 to 400 can stand and com­fort­ably watch in the room that we watched the concert.

The inti­mate set­ting made it easy to see and hear Neko, even when she spoke con­ver­sa­tion­ally.  Her gor­geous red curls were bounc­ing and glow­ing under the spot­light.  She seemed very com­fort­able in her black asym­met­ri­cal tee shirt and blue jeans, but she imme­di­ately apol­o­gized for wear­ing her sneak­ers on stage, telling us she meant no dis­re­spect, but was just run­ning late.  She and the backup singer, Kelly Hogan decided to per­form bare­foot so that Neko wouldn’t feel old.  The ban­ter was enter­tain­ing and easy, despite warn­ings of ner­vous­ness because they were play­ing mostly new songs off of  Mid­dle Cyclone.

When she started singing, the room was entranced. If she missed any of the chords she was play­ing, I doubt many peo­ple noticed, because her voice was so expres­sive and pow­er­ful.  Since she was pro­mot­ing her new album, I hadn’t heard much of what they played ahead of time, which was a treat.   The music was moody and soul­ful with beau­ti­ful lyrics backed by a strong voice.  That’s the best kind of coun­try.   It does seem that Mid­dle Cyclone is a gen­tler album than the more pas­sion­ate, tur­bu­lent music I expected, but I’ll admit that’s based solely on Saturday’s per­for­mance.  She could very well have sim­ply been blissed out from eat­ing the Dutch Baby at the Orig­i­nal Pan­cake House in 5 points ear­lier.   Here is the very cute video for “Peo­ple Got A Lotta Nerve,” which was eas­ily the pop­pi­est song of the whole evening.

I espe­cially want to thank Sarah, who sold us tick­ets she didn’t use.  I had been hear­ing the ads on the radio for the con­cert and just pin­ing away for a chance to go.  Sarah is the per­son who intro­duced me to Neko Case a few years ago, any­way, so she’s dou­bly respon­si­ble for the evening.  Thanks, Sarah!