Guest Event Review from Jennifer
November 30th, 2009
Grrrlz (and a few Guyz) Rocked at the Axe & Fiddle on 11/20
Jennifer Kristiansen-Gonzalez
A young woman stands on the stage at Cottage Grove’s Axe and Fiddle pub, her brunette hair styled with 80s throwback blunt-cut bangs that hang below her eyebrows. She strums her guitar. “How could you ever think you’d get away with it?” she croons with a voice like early-years Jewel. “You’re such an idiot. Do I have your attention now? Do I have to scream it out loud? Do I have your attention now? Do I have to yell it out loud? Again?” Somehow, she doesn’t sound angry. She sounds searching, yearning, exasperated. The song is her own, an original, and it’s the one she knows best out of the set.
The young woman is Grace Mitchell, and she is twelve years old.
Twelve.
Years.
Old.
I don’t know her age until the end of her set, after she plays Iron and Wine’s “Flightless Bird, American Mouth,” The Weepies’ “Stars,” a version of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” that is nearly better than the original, and ends her set with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
“Grace Mitchell, ladies and gentlemen,” Phredd Talbot, the Axe and Fiddle’s soundman says. “Twelve years old and already breaking hearts.”
Any stumbling she did, any forgetting of Cohen’s lyrics, any shyness she exhibited when I approached the stage with my camera was immediately blown away. She already has more talent and guts than women two and three and four times her age, and with time and more performances all that nervous energy will dissipate, leaving nothing but a soulful, emotional, clear-voiced woman behind.
After Grace came Moniker (http://www.myspace.com/monikered), a jumping seven-piece band (although they were a six-piece band on Friday; they were down their violinist due to illness) that plays music like sex. Monika Metzler switched to her electric guitar, saying “that was just the foreplay” for a jumpin’ version of “Qué Será Será” that had me wondering why no one was dancing. Fifty people in the pub, and I was the only one on the floor. I couldn’t understand it.
“This song is by a girl who really rocked. She’s not with us anymore, but she gave a lot to the world,” Monika said before they launched into Aaliyah’s “Are You that Somebody?”
Moniker’s mixture of rock guitar, trumpet, baritone saxophone, and jazzy drums and bass had me lamenting the fact that I had to go home alone.
But I wasn’t going home yet. Halie Loren (http://www.youtube.com/user/halieloren) was up next. The Grrrlz Rock! event was her second appearance at the Axe and Fiddle. “I love this place,” she said. She’s not alone in that, that’s for sure.
With Matt Treader joining her for a few songs on piano, Loren played a double set that opened with Joni Mitchell’s “River” and ended with “Lucky,” an original tune that is about all the things and people in life for which the narrator feels grateful. In between, she sang originals and covers in a voice clear like glacier water. Some songs she wrote when she was 17 and living in Nashville. Others, like Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me one Reason” and U2’s “Still Haven’t Found (What I’m Lookin’ For)” sounded better than the originals. There’s just something about a woman alone with her piano that I can’t help loving. Sorry, Bono, but Loren has you beat.
“All the Girls” had a very Annie Lennox sound, Joni Mitchell’s “Carrie” nearly made me cry, and while she didn’t know any songs from the Muppets (Talbot’s suggestion when she said she was willing to take requests), she played “Pieces of Me,” an original from a now sold-out benefit CD that I wanted to ship to my best friend, who is losing another close friend to lung failure caused by Cystic Fibrosis. “When I’m passing through the memory/remember me for love,” Loren sang, and my heart went out to Courtney Hill, in a hospital far away, soon to be nothing more than memory.
These Grrrlz sound rad. I think they’d be a great fir for KINK.fm in PDX.
You’re so right, Scout. KINK.fm. Yes.