Now for a real blog post! Yay!

So, last week, Katelyn and I took a road trip down to Portland, Maine to see Kris Delmhorst and the Indigo Girls (separate shows). How was the trip? In short, it was great! But why don’t we go into more detail?

I’ll be honest, I was slightly nervous about driving down. I’ve never driven out of the country before and I’ve always been wary of those crazy American drivers. But my father loaned me his GPS system, nicknamed Lola. This helped assuage my nerves a bit. Though, as we would later find out, there was no reason for it to calm me at all.

We left on Saturday morning and, before too long, we found ourselves in the long line to get across the border. Lola proved to be invaluable at certain times and completely useless, at others. We got the feeling she was mocking us, every now and then, just for her own amusement. For example, she couldn’t figure out where we were, when we were in the middle South Portland. What a bitch. I’ve been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Terminator lately, so I was even more suspicious of her motives.

However, despite Lola’s intentions, we did eventually arrive in Portland, safe and sound. We checked into the hotel, ate a regrettable meal at Denny’s, and then headed to One Longfellow Square to see Kris’s show.

The venue itself was actually quite pleasant – pretty small, good acoustics, and a decent audience. I wasn’t too jazzed about the opener. I got the feeling that she had talent, but she just wasn’t my style at all. My biggest complaint about her was that she was pretty boring, with all of her songs sounding the same. She was only on stage for a short time, though, before Kris came out and started her set with “Riverwide.”

The rest of her set was pretty much ideal. With the single exception of “Everything is Music,” she played all of my favourites, even the ones that I was certain wouldn’t get played (”Bobby Lee” and “Broken White Line”). As Katelyn mentioned, Kris is great to see because she seems to genuinely enjoy putting on a show. A nice surprise was meeting my friend Nicole at the show. I’ve known her for years from the Patty Griffin board and I’d seen her at a Patty show, earlier this year, but I’d never actually *met* her before. After the show, Katelyn and I talked to Kris for a few minutes, before heading back to our hotel for the evening, where we watched a small, independent arthouse film called The House Bunny.

The next day, Katelyn and I headed over to Maine Mall, mostly to drool at the Apple Store. I was quite impressed with my ability to restrain myself. Apart from lunch and some excellent lemonade, I don’t think I made a single purchase at the mall. I didn’t even buy anything at Newbury Comics! Though I did come across a bumper sticker that I really was tempted to buy. It had a large rainbow, with “We are everywhere” printed underneath it. Katelyn did try to convince me to buy her something at Victoria’s Secret with the company credit card, just to screw with my mother’s mind, but I resisted.

After dinner, we started walking to the Indigo Girls show. I had looked up the venue on Google Maps and chosen our hotel because it was only a five minute walk. Except, not so much. It seems that Google Maps uses the location of the venue’s box office headquarters, instead of the actual location of the venue. That was a slightly frustrating experience. We ended up discovering Lola’s usefulness, when we drove to the venue. Parking was slightly annoying, but it was still only five minute drive. Unfortunately, we didn’t budget our time well enough and ended up missing the opening act.

The Indigo Girls show was great. Katelyn had really only listened to “Ghost” before, which has become one of her favourite songs, so we were really hoping they’d play it. I think she was genuinely surprised how lively the audience once. There was a lot of audience participation and dancing. And the setlist rocked. I know that the more devout fans, who see the Girls ten time per year, are sick of hearing the “hits” at every show. But, speaking as someone who sees them once every few years, I love hearing “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo,” “Power of Two,” “Shame On You,” and “Get Out the Map.” Plus, they played “Devotion,” which I really wasn’t expecting and was quite excited to hear. We were disappointed, when they finished their main set without playing “Ghost.” But then they came back for their encore and it was the first song they played, followed by an incredible rendition of “True Romantic” and then, of course, “Galileo.”

The next day, we woke up and went for lunch at Burger King, before getting back on the road and heading home. All in all, it was quite a successful trip. I’m trying to plan the next one. Peter is playing at Longfellow Square in a few weeks, but I think that might be too soon. Madeleine Peyroux, however, is playing a free show in Freeport, at the end of June. Definitely a possibility…