one dame leads to another
jolie holland. photo by scott irvine.
Here’s a show we didn’t see coming. Well, actually we did, but we had given it up for lost.
In the lingering days of summer, Texas songstress Jolie Holland, who has long been a Lexington favorite, was booked for an Oct. 16 performance at The Dame. Come August, of course, The Dame called it a day. So those of us who have been championing the stark, poetic nature of Holland’s songs, as well as the fascinating encyclopedia of folk, jazz and pop voices she uses to display them, sat with sunken hearts.
But fear not, friends. Holland’s concert is still on, but at a new venue. She will perform tonight at the new Cosmic Charlie’s at the sight of the old Lynagh’s Music Club on Woodland Ave.
This will be Holland’s first local outing since a set at WRFL’s FreeKY Fest last year. Since then, she has sent us another stunner of an album - a collection of sweetly sung stories of heartbreak, addiction and isolation titled The Living and the Dead. Holland co-produced it with the great Shahzad Ismaily, who performed as guitarist and percussionist (at times, simultaneously) during an in-store show last year at CD Central with the experimental bi-coastal pop trio 2 Foot Yard.
Eastern Kentucky-born New Yorker Matt Bauer will open tonight’s performance.
Jolie Holland and Matt Bauser perform at 7 tonight at Cosmic Charlie’s, 388 Woodland Ave. Tickets are $10. Call (859) 309-9499.
I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.