(You may have noticed that over a year has elapsed between my last concert report and this one. A lot happened during that time. The most exciting is that I fell in love and got married. Now, my concert reports will be about the experiences of two people!)
Saturday night my beautiful wife Linda and I saw Jeordie in concert at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa. This is my initial report of the concert.
We drove down on Friday, so we could take it easy and have a good night's rest before the show. Linda was recovering from a bad cold, too, so I didn't want things to be too hard on her. Saturday we had all day to mess around, so we went to the Florida Aquarium (where you can actually pet a shark if your are so inclined), and we also went to an air museum, where I got to see, for the first time, the inside of a B-17 and also a 30's vintage large flying boat. They also had the actual Ford Tri-motor airplane that was used in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (you know, the one with a cargo of chickens on board). Before we did all that, we checked out Skipper's Smokehouse, because we had no idea what to expect and we wanted to know how to dress for the evening. The place turned out to be some weathered wooden structures covered with graffiti, so we scrapped our original plans to dress up somewhat. One area had an opening with no door so I went in side and saw that it was the area where the show was to be held. I saw some aging hippy-type guys there and asked them about Jeordie performing that evening.
One of them said "Jeordie?", because the only names on the billboard were the Jolyn Daniel Band and the Mary Karlzen Band. But they looked on their paper list of performers, and Jeordie was there, and so I thought, "Whew!". I said, "She's Melanie's daughter", and they said, "Oh, Yeah, Melanie's been here, too."
Well, after a "power nap", Saturday evening we went to the restaurant part of Skippers and had dinner -- not too bad, actually, and then we went to the show area. The show area is a wooden enclosure open to the stars with wooden benches and tables, with a covered stage in front, a covered table area in back, and a bar on one side. When we walked in, I had my camcorder with me and a tripod to put it on. It was known by one of the guys that Jeordie was going to have someone videotape her performance, so they thought I was him and let Linda and I in for free. I never found out if her "official" video taper had to pay or not. Oh, well, it was only 6 bucks to get in any way.
We picked a bench near the front with a table sort of like a thin picnic table in front of it, and I set my tripod up on the table in front of me. We didn't see Jeordie anywhere yet, and 8 o'clock came and went with nobody starting to sing yet except for a few sound checks by Jolyn and her group. Then I saw Jeordie come in through the opening, and hollered "Hey, Jeordie!". She waved and went into the back-stage area for a bit and then came out and talked to us for a bit. She said, "I've got pictures!", because Andrew Jason had taken pictures of when Linda and I got married, but hadn't given them to us yet. So he gave them to Jeordie (she sang in his area the night before).
She didn't talk too much then because she was kind of busy, but later she came out again and gave us the pictures and looked at them with us. She also said Leilah was coming soon, and that Peter and Melanie were coming too. Jolyn Daniel and her group did their set first. They were pretty good, but not remarkable, so Linda and I just hugged and kissed through their set. (After 5 months of marriage, we were still in "newlywed" mode -- still are!) While Jolyn was performing, Leilah, came in, very pregnant looking but still very beautiful, and later Melanie and Peter came in. I got up and spoke to them briefly.
Then Jeordie came on for her set. I set up my camcorder and started the tape rolling. I taped the entire set, so later I will review it and try to get a song list from it, because I didn't write anything down while she was singing. She said the guitarist she has been using in shows had planned to be there, but couldn't make it, so it was just her and her guitar. For the first two songs, her guitar was a bit out of tune, so she apologized after each and did a bit of tuning. The guitar was just fine for the rest of the songs.
After about 30 minutes of singing, she stopped to announce that her sister Leilah would be joining her for a song. Jeordie said, "She's going to give birth any second now, but she's going to try this anyway." Well, they were so good that the audience demanded another song, so they did another one together. Then Jeordie said, "I have some CD's for sale", but someone offstage said they were all sold already, so she said, "I guess that's a good thing.", and told how folks could get one on jeordie.com. Melanie and Peter had sat down for the show in the covered table area in the back, so Linda and I packed up our gear and went over to talk to them. She showed them the wedding pictures from Andrew, and seemed to hit it off well with Peter, who asked for copies of some of the pictures. Mary Karlzen had started her set while we were talking, and I know that someone on the list asked me to describe Mary's performance, but we really didn't pay too much attention to her, and after spending some time with Melanie and Peter, we left, because Linda was getting tired. So I apologize to the Mary Karlzen fans out there.
Linda enjoyed meeting Melanie and Peter, and Peter seemed quite taken with Linda. She's a joyful person to be with, if I do say so myself!
One more thing -- I don't recall Jeordie saying anytime during her set that she was Melanie's daughter. I suppose she is trying to make it on her own, and not ride her mother's fame. She just said that her parents were in the audience.
(I have no pictures from this concert. Leilah had her baby on March 18th, and named her Annalisah.)